Month: August 2019

Have you ever felt like you were at the end of yourself and there was nothing else left in you to finish whatever it is that you have to do? I think that we must all feel this way at some time in our lives. I know, for me, that it happened more often than one or twice.

It seems like, in the past, when things started to get tough or when I had failed at a goal I had set, I would want to give up. It was hard to pick myself back up and continue to work at the same task.

It was always much easier to move on to something else.

Or, in a relationship with a friend, when things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to would be easy to simply sever the ties and walk away from the other individual.

I might try several times to fix things, either in a task or a relationship, but if it appeared that it wasn’t working or I was the only one working at it, I would decide when enough was enough.

In some ways, that attitude makes sense. Why spend your days beating your head against a wall when no one else really cares one way or the other?

However, this kind of attitude can set up into something that is not good. In some cases, you did the right thing to stop and in others, it was exactly the wrong thing to do. That could be, for instance, when the relationship or the task really was important and you had just gotten into the habit of stopping when you come across bumps in the road.

I don’t know how to explain it but it sometimes seems so, so tiring to keep trying to work things out or finish things off.

I’ve noticed that many people who craft seem to be gung-ho to start a new project and they keep going until they are about 90% done and then they lose their desire to finish it. They pack it up to finish later (or probably never) and then start another new project once again.

For some people, it is books. For others, it may be a television series. Perhaps it is at work. Maybe it is all of the above. It could be just about anything in life that takes work to accomplish or to continue.

Maybe that is why so many people get divorced these days. I’m not saying there aren’t many people with really good reasons because that would be foolish. But there are those who go into marriage lightly and go along for a time, whether that be ten years or ten months and then decide they made a mistake.

Again, some times with good reason but I think, most of the time, it is merely boredom or a lack of desire to work at the task of keeping a relationship together. Because it is hard work. It takes hard work by both parties. You can’t do the work of two in a marriage for very long just because the other party isn’t willing to work with you.

There are times when one or the other needs special care or when they are sad or depressed and their spouse takes over more or even all of the work involved. As long as there is some sort of give and take, it still makes sense.

For the most part, though, it appears that we are in some sort of throw away society. If something or someone doesn’t measure up or takes too much effort or if we get bored, we throw them or it away and start over again.

And yep, I’ve been guilty of these things myself. I’m trying very hard to learn how to stop and pray for God to give me the strength to get up and start again when, on my own, I’m ready to give up.

I ask for his help when I am weary and it seems like the burden of life is hard and getting harder. It’s easy to remember the hard things and the things that I have failed at and to forget all the times he helped me and gave me hope.

You can focus on the negative so easily. Seeing the positive things in your life seems a little more fleeting and more difficult to recall. I was thinking about this in terms of living with pain. I realized that, while I was thinking that my pain had been on-going, in actuality, a lot of my pain is now in the past.

I have new pains and those pains are associated with some of the work I am doing to get better. Some of the old pain remains but it is lessened and livable with medication.

When I first got sick with shingles, one by one, I dropped all of the exercises I was doing. I sat and started to deteriorate. At some point, I had to either start working while living with the pain or give up and die.

I didn’t want to die. I had too much to live for and God had a plan and a path for me to follow. So, even though it was very hard and very painful, I started doing more and more. My muscles are still dreadfully wasted but I am much further ahead than I was six months ago.

With his continued help and inspiration and love, I hope to be much further ahead six months from now.

While it was physically hard, the true problem I had to overcome was that need to stop doing things because they have become difficult. In this case, extremely difficult to do.

That’s how it is with being a Christian. When you first accept Jesus, it is a wonderful time knowing that he loved you and that you are free from the consequences of sin.

Then comes the work of actually living the life of a Christian in a society that mocks you, hates you and would really rather do without you. For some Christians, that makes it too difficult to continue to walk with Jesus.

It’s easier to simply say you are a Christian and then live just like the rest of the world lives. Living your life where your own pleasure means more to you than what you can do and give to others. Essentially, a life that is, in truth, the opposite of what Jesus has called his followers to be.

As he served us and sacrificed for us, he calls us to live a life of service and sacrifice for others. He doesn’t call us to live a life of hedonistic pleasure or even a life where what we think of first is what we want.

If that is where you are in your walk with the Lord, it is time to wake up. If you continue on, you will find your life has been wasted. Just as my muscles wasted from lack of use, so will your ability to serve God.

But like with my exercises, all it takes to reverse this is to start to live for God. One small step at a time or one prayer or one moment of self-sacrifice is a good start. You will find that you can do more and more over time.

Before you know it, with proper dedication, you will be living the life Jesus called you to do. You will serve the purpose that God had in mind for you before he created you. Your life with God will become a clear vision for the future.

You can do this if you ask God to help you. On your own, you can do nothing, but with God’s help everything is possible.

Romans 12:1-2

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

What is love? We use the word so easily. I love this book, I love this perfume, I love this snack. We just about love everything there is except when we don’t. Then we may hate it or not care about it at all.

It seems like the word has lost all of its true meaning. It’s changed from being something special to being a way to describe something that, at that particular time, we simply like. We like to do, we like to eat, we like a lot of things but loving something is different.

I have certainly found myself using the word carelessly. I’ve been trying to catch myself when I do and change my wording to really reflect what I feel.

I’ve thought about it and except for people and other living things, I don’t know that I “love” much else. When I search what my heart says, I find that I can only really love something that has the potential to love me right back.

I say potential for a reason and that reason is that Jesus has told us that we are to love the souls of everyone. That includes people who actively hate those who follow Jesus. Even so, we are supposed to love them anyway.

What sort of sacrifice is it to simply love those who love you, too? You might ask, why should our love be compared to sacrifice? That is because we are told to love others like God loves us.

God loved us so much he sent his only son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins. If Jesus had come to die for only those who already loved him, this world would have been forever doomed.

Instead, he came to die for those who hated him. Not just those who were alive at the time but for all those who came afterwards as well. That means all of us.

Not a one of us is born with the love of God in our hearts. On the contrary, we are born in sin. Even little toddlers can lie and purposefully disobey.

I have seen this in my three year old granddaughter recently. I will say, don’t do that, it will hurt you. And, of course, she immediately doubles down and continues until, guess what? She hurts herself.

She then cries out with pain and suffering and wants me to come and fix what is wrong. Of course, I do. Because I love her and I want the best for her. It never fails that she tells me she is sorry and that she won’t do it again. Until she does.

We are all a lot like little toddlers to God. He loves us dearly and has given a book called the Bible to tell us what we shouldn’t do, because if we do these things, we will hurt ourselves.

Those who aren’t Christians may sneer and then do these things anyway. Even Christians will find a way to justify doing something that is clearly not good.

When we do, we bring all sorts of pain and suffering either to ourselves or to others. When the pain reaches to the depth of our souls, many cry out to God to fix what is wrong. We say we are sorry and that we will never do such a thing again. Until we do.

But just like me with my granddaughter, God loves us so much, he will reach down from heaven and give us comfort and show his love for us.

That doesn’t mean that we won’t suffer the repercussions for our sins, it means that God will forgive us and help us in the way that he deems right.

The true definition of love is the love that God feels for us. He didn’t just feel love, he actually put love into action. When he sent his son to die for us, we didn’t love him. That’s real love. It is a love that seeks to save others even if it means sacrificing the most precious thing you can.

How many of us could do something like this? I’ll be honest, it isn’t me. I couldn’t have sent my son to save others. He might have done so himself but I would have been begging him not to do so. I would have wanted him to stay safe and sound with me.

What does that prove? It proves that I’m not God. I love my family and I would sacrifice myself but I would never send one of my loved ones knowing they would die.

It is this kind of unthinkable sacrificial action that really defines the essence of real and true love. God loved us and gave everything to save us.

Jesus lived as a human like us but was able to do something we could not do. He lived without sin. It wasn’t that he wasn’t tempted because Satan himself offered him the world if he would sin.

Jesus had to live without sin so that he could be the unblemished sacrifice that would atone for the world’s sin. He denied the human part of him that would have led him astray and instead, he lived the life that God wants us to live.

In return for this sacrifice, what are we expected to do to deserve it? Simply put, there is nothing we can do to earn it. It is a gift without strings. It is a pardon waiting for us to accept. That is all we have to do.

Acknowledge that Jesus was both man and God, he lived sinlessly and gave up his life for us. Because he was God, he also raised himself from the dead to show us that one day, we too, will be resurrected to new life. But then, he also wants us to start living the life the Bible calls us to do. He wants us to become his disciples and follow in his footsteps, doing everything he called us to do.

That includes, as a top priority, loving others. That means all others and not just those who love you back.

1 John 4:7-12

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Why is everyone always in such a hurry? I hear the sounds of cars racing through our neighborhood almost every day. It is as if they are on such a time constraint, that they have to kick into high gear the moment they are up and moving around.

Life seems to be rushing faster. The things that used to takes years now take months. Things that took months, take days. The things that I took a full day to accomplish are now expected within minutes, if not seconds.

When did we get so involved with life that instead of simply living it, we have to experience, record and then upload what we are doing?

It takes time to tell everyone in the world what you are eating for breakfast. I long for the days when I could sit and eat without thinking about what everyone else would say about the meal that I had made.

In addition to rushing about, we are spending what precious little time we have for ourselves watching Youtube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. Somehow, becoming immersed in video has become our downtime and way to relax.

The problem is, it really isn’t relaxing. The part of your brain involved with watching video is not the same part that is involved with reading, crafting or doing almost anything else at all. It isn’t meditative and it isn’t something that will build you up. It turns you into a giant receptive vessel.

You stop questioning the content and, instead, you simply take it in. Is that really what you want to do with your free time?

My husband and I used to spend many hours a week watching shows. It got so that we built our lives around it instead of living and watching an occasional show for enjoyment.

I don’t think we were different than most people.

When I became ill, we stopped watching for a while. I was simply physically unable to do so. When I got a bit better, we tried to watch our favorite shows, which we had recorded.

We were both surprised to find how mean-spirited the comedies were. The dramas were overblown and filled with unlikely scenarios.

More than anything, we discovered that the shows all had agendas. It wasn’t simply there for our enjoyment, it was there to slowly indoctrinate us into their way of thinking.

So, we stopped watching television. We found that there was so much more to do with life, even though I was still confined to the house.

At this point, we spend about half of an hour, twice a day, with the television turned on to crafting stations. That is the time when I need distraction from the lung exercises that I do. Once the exercise is done, the television goes off.

Still, we don’t seem to have much time. We talked recently with some Christians and we all agreed that one of the hardest things for us to do is to find time, on a daily basis, to read the Bible.

Are we all really that busy? Or are we falling into the worldly trap of doing anything at all before we find time to spend with God?

I admit that parents with children are probably really, really busy. Those who parent and have full time jobs are even busier still.

But that still leaves the rest of us. We try to find excuses but, in our hearts, we know that we are making ourselves too busy.

I wonder if that is because we really don’t want to know what God thinks about how we are living day to day? Maybe there are some things we are doing that we just want to do even if we know that they are either questionable or downright sinful.

So, we go daily manufacturing so much to do that we can’t spend ten minutes reading the Bible. Funny, though, we can find a couple of hours a week to watch a good movie. We can find hours and hours to scroll through Instagram or Facebook. We can go to gyms, go shopping, spend time with friends, go out to eat, have a few drinks with friends after work.

Think of what you do on a weekly basis. Can you justify, truly, everything that you do? Could you maybe squeak in a few minutes a day to spend time reading about the wonders of heaven?

Once you start making your time with God the most important part of your day and the thing that does not get put off, you will start living differently.

Even so, it’s still easy to get off track. When that happens, ask God to help you put your life back in proper perspective and to help you spend your time doing things that will build you up.

It’s so much better to do that than to run around like crazy, speeding through life without actually living it to its fullest. That is, living the life that God wants for you. The life he has planned for you is so much better than watching a movie, shopping, or anything else that you seem to think is more important.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

It’s become almost impossible to speak one’s mind without offending someone, somewhere. When did we get so sensitive to every nuanced word? Most of the time, our words are being misconstrued.

We meant what we said and not what the person hearing it decided it meant.

It’s near impossible to use a personal pronoun today. If someone is male or female, one would think you could say he or she. But, no, not today. I think the proper pronoun these days is “they”.

Now, mind you, you are using a plural form even when speaking about a single individual. Somewhere, somehow, grammar was sacrificed on the altar of sensitivity to social issues.

It’s difficult for individuals, like me, who grew up when a person was known to be a singular individual. Unless, of course, the person suffered from multiple personality disorder.

In a way, that is what is happening but on a global scale. People now get to self-identify as to who or even what they consider themselves to be.

For many, the idea of being who they were born to be is simply abhorrent. While they prefer to think that what they were born as was a mistake, it seems to me that it could that they are suffering from self-hatred.

Rather than look to the cause of what is making them so unhappy, they choose to self-identify as something else. For a short term, that may seem to make them happy. They get to leave behind the parts of themselves that they don’t care for.

The problem is that part of them is still right there. It doesn’t go away because you have created a new persona for yourself. It will catch back up with you and you will begin the cycle over again.

That’s how it is with sin. And don’t fool yourself into thinking that this self-hatred is rooted in anything other than sin. We want so much to be better than we are, so we blame the results rather than the cause.

Chasing a new life, free from unhappiness with yourself, will continue on and one until you die. There is no way of changing yourself that will make you better.

There is no way of self-identifying as something else that will wash all of the evilness and unhappiness you live with.

There is only one way to become clean during this lifetime. That is to look to your Creator and Savior who came to this earth to take on your punishment for sin. It is only, through his actions, that we can actually become more than we ever were before.

Keep in mind that we are still sinners and accepting Jesus Christ does not instantly do away with your ability to sin. What it does is make you free from the guilt and punishment. The self-hatred that has plagued you can be given to him to carry.

The Bible tells you that you are a child of God. There can be nothing higher for we humans to attain. Our identity is rooted in that truth.

In becoming a Christ-follower, you do receive a new identity. Or rather, your full identity as a creation of God will be revealed.

You will never need to change your identity again. In God’s eyes, you were made wonderfully just as you are. He had a plan for you from the beginning of the Creation. He created you and was with you while you were being formed.

He made you and he does not make mistakes. You are just who you are supposed to be. Look to God to mold you into a better person as you walk with him each day.

Rather than trying to change your pronoun, try changing your relationship with Jesus Christ. He will show you that you are beautiful and loved by God just as you are. He knows that you sin and he understands how much you have come to hate yourself.

He will give you a new perspective on life. He will help you to understand how much he loves you. If God loves you so much he would die for you, you must be something really wonderful in his sight.

Don’t try to change the outward you. Look to the inside of your heart and make the changes there that will have true and lasting value in life.

Psalm 139:13-16

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

I’m awfully glad that the criteria for getting into heaven is not that of being a good person. If that was the case, I would have no hope of ever measuring up.

While some people might look at me and think that I am a good person, I know in my heart, that I am anything but good. I know, if left to my own desires, I am evil.

Do you know the phrase, “if looks could kill”? Well, if that were true and looks could kill, I would have killed a lot of people. Not to mention the spiteful and judgmental things I have said.

It’s easy to look at others and sigh and think, “how can they be so wrong”? Being judgmental of others seems to come naturally to humans. What is funny is that the thing that we are judging others about is generally something that we are guilty of ourselves.

For some people, it is how a person looks. For others, it is what type of a job that person has. It could be their house, their car, or their political beliefs. It could even be something as ridiculous as their hair-do or whether or not they are following the same nutritional regime that we are, whether it be keto, paleo, vegan, etc. etc. etc.

We want others to fall right into line with our way of thinking and doing. I bet what we really want is for them to fall right in line behind us. After all, we’ve got it all together and if we are for something, it is obviously the best. And who better to lead the parade than us?

Well, at least that is how we think most of the time. But when it comes right down to it, we all know that we are lacking. It is the reason why we are on a never-ending quest to get better and better.

We seem to feel that, someday, we will find just the right mix of trends to follow or good works to do that will make us great. It will be the mix that lets us stop thinking of ourselves as dismal failures.

I don’t know about you, but anything I have tried to build out of my own quest for perfection has failed miserably.

Whenever that happens, I realize once again, that I am not as good as others seem to be. I wonder how it is that they can have such wonderful lives and have it so well together and I don’t.

Because of that, I become even more critical of others. I want to bring them down to my level so I can feel like I am just as good as they are. Or maybe it is that I want them to be as much of a failure as I am.

For whatever reason, this kind of thinking is doomed to be an ever repeating cycle. Judging others is a sure way to unhappiness. It is spiteful and petty and is only a cover-up for how you feel about yourself.

Some people extend this type of thinking to religion. Even born-again Christians (or maybe, especially this group) can, at many times, be hypercritical of others. It’s one of the reasons why non-Christians call them hypocrites.

We can say, this person is living with these sins, so they can’t be a Christian. With whatever their lifestyle, they simply can’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

We seem to look beyond the sins that we do day-to-day and yet, we know that Jesus loves us and continues to forgive us. We forget that Jesus met us right in the middle of our sins, no matter what those sins were.

Living in open rebellion in sin is something that all Christians do. It is when we start calling sin something other than what it is, that the problems begin in truth. It is when we twist the Bible teaching to mean something other than the obvious meaning that we can be in real trouble with God.

It doesn’t mean that that individual is no longer a Christian, it just means that they have walked away from the truth of the Bible.

The true measure of Christianity is whether or not they believe what the Bible says to be true. A person needs to enter into a true relationship with Jesus as their savior and repent of their sins.

They can’t whitewash their sins and say that xyz isn’t a sin because I don’t want to stop. I don’t repent of that because it isn’t a sin. God will want me to continue in this way because it feels good and he wants me to have my way.

Still, whether or not an individual is a Christian is between that person and God. I don’t know their hearts and minds. They certainly don’t know mine.

I want to stop my judging of others. I want to see them as Jesus does and not the way I think they should be.

Notwithstanding that, if someone starts teaching heretical ways, I won’t hang around to see how sincere they are in what they believe. It doesn’t matter their sincerity. What matters is that the Bible is true. It says what is true because it is the word of God to the world. God is good and true and so is his word.

As I said at the beginning, I am so glad that being good is not the criteria to get into heaven. What is the criteria is acknowledging that I am not good, that I am evil at heart and that I am a sinner. By doing so and accepting the sacrifice that Jesus made to take away my punishment for my sins, I will go to heaven.

At the end of this life or when Jesus comes again, whichever is first, I will be dancing in the streets of heaven along with so many other people it will be a wondrous sight to behold.

Matthew 7:1-5

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”