Month: January 2020

What has happened to people who can be relied upon to keep their word? It’s gotten to the point where there are very few individuals that I feel I can trust.

I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling. I imagine that most individuals feel that the circle of their trusted confidants is getting ever smaller.

I remember, when I was younger, I felt trust for most people that I knew. Of course, that was not a wise way to live. I was constantly having my trust broken. Once, I lost trust in someone, I have found that I could never fully trust them again.

More recently, I am finding that I approach individuals as untrustworthy. I feel that they must now earn my trust. I might learn to care about them more easily but my ability to trust my fellow man has been shattered.

I always look at someone and think, if I tell them something real about myself, will I live to regret it? I haven’t enjoyed this about myself but it seems to be the way most of us now feel.

I have had a hard time writing these weekly articles because I expose so much of my feelings and of my past. It is the exact type of information that I don’t like to tell people of my acquaintance.

I write it here because God leads me to do so. Often, after I have written the article, I look at it and think, Why am I telling so much about what is so important to me?

There is only one answer. God is using my past to help other people. He will do what I am so unwilling to do on my own.

Even when I feel so uncomfortable with what I have exposed of my life, I don’t delete it. I know that I have prayed and God has led me to what he wants me to say.

In my experience, serving God is not easy. It is not comfortable. It is not something that I even look forward to doing. However, it is something that fulfills something inside me that has always been empty before.

While, in my mind, I may chafe at the thought of trusting total strangers with my story, I am thankful that what I have experienced in life has not been in vain.

If one person can be helped by reading of my trials, tribulations, successes and oh, so many failures, then it has been worth it all.

I have to learn, daily, to trust that God is leading me the right way. It is something we all should be doing.

Sin is always easy. Bad habits don’t have to be learned. Learning to turn away from sin is hard and most of us fail over and over again. Creating good habits is very difficult. It’s one of the reasons why New Year’s resolutions fail most of the time.

I’ve prayed that God would give me more acquaintances and friends whom I can trust. It seems like I have been praying for the wrong thing. A pastor once told us something that I completely understand.

He said, people are people are people are people. They will disappoint every single time.

What I came away from that sermon finally understanding was that trusting people will always be fraught with problems. The trust that I need to learn, that all of us need to learn, is that we need to learn to trust in God. It isn’t easy but one thing is definite, he will never fail me and he will never ever break my trust.

Psalms 91:1-2

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

It’s easy to get tired of waiting for something that you feel that God has promised you. Whether it is a promise to all Christians or to you specifically, it doesn’t seem to matter. Waiting is hard. Sometimes it seems as if our waiting is in vain and the time we have spent waiting is wasted.

We are an impatient people. We want what we want right now. We seem to have lost the ability to slow down and watch for God to move. We want to help him along.

We aren’t really all that different from those in the past. If you think about Abraham and Sarah, you will see what I mean.

God, himself, had promised Abraham that he, Abraham, would have a child by his wife Sarah. It seemed laughable to both of them because they were very old.

So, Sarah grew tired of waiting and feeling like God needed a little assistance, she gave her maid Hagar to Abraham so that Hagar would become pregnant and Sarah would adopt the child as her own.

Abraham didn’t object, so he must have been tired of waiting as well. Hagar did become pregnant and gave birth to a son, Ishmael.

Those actions created dissension between Sarah and Hagar and, later, to the descendants of both of these women.

You see, even though Abraham and Sarah had taken matters into their own hands and ignored God’s promise, God did not forget his promise.

When God makes a promise, it is forever. He will not change his mind on a whim. The child of promise was given to Sarah when she had her son Issac. He was the child that God had promised whose descendant would someday be a blessing to the entire world. That promise was fulfilled when Jesus was born, lived, died and rose again.

There are other examples of times, in the Bible, when people of God did not follow what God asked them to do. So we aren’t unique in how we are. It feels like it sometimes, though. It is the way of man. We always make ourselves the center of the universe and don’t bother to look at others. We don’t see that they are feeling exactly the same way we do.

I’ve had problems with waiting. Not only with God but with whatever I want to get done. Rather than wait and have others help me, I tend to try to do the work all on my own.

While it may get the job done, there are problems that arise. Not only do I work myself too hard but the other people who might have learned in the process are denied the chance because I wasn’t willing to wait on their learning curve. If I were their teacher, I would wait but if not, I grew impatient very quickly.

That can end up with lots of problems down the line. Not on the scale of what is going on between the descendants of Issac and Ishmael but problems none the same.

Learning to wait on God takes patience. God has a plan and a timeline and it is up to him when events will unfold. He didn’t even tell his son, Jesus, when the church would be gathered to heaven. Jesus, though, has been waiting patiently on God to let his plan come to completion.

I am trying to learn from this example. I may never have the patience of Jesus but I can do better than I have in the past. I just have to remind myself that God is there and he is watching over me. He will deliver his promises at exactly the right time.

Lamentations 3:24-26

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I have hope in Him.”

The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the person who seeks Him.

It is good that he waits silently
For the salvation of the Lord.

I’ve been recently pondering about those times when we lack faith. Sometimes it is in the big things in life but often it is in the smaller, day-to-day events.

When we are faced with tough times, we often raise our voices, prayers and cries to God. We ask him for help. We ask him to save us.

However, when it comes to things we need to do each day, we most often don’t look to our Creator. We think that what we are doing is too small to bother him with. Or worse, what we have to do is something that we can do without him.

After all, we are fully capable of getting our jobs done on our own, right? We don’t need help and we certainly don’t need to pray about what we can and do do on a daily basis.

I thought the same way once. I’ve found, in the last two years or so, that the things I once took for granted have become huge tasks. Daily living isn’t easy for me. I have problems getting much of anything done on my own.

It has certainly opened my eyes up and I now understand that I have been wrong for most of my life. It wasn’t that I could do things on my own. I just didn’t realize that God was giving me assistance with every facet of my life.

While being ill has not been what I would call huge fun, it has been a time of gaining knowledge and insight into God and his plan for my life.

I was faced with what seemed impossible tasks. I had problems laying down. I had problems getting up. I had even more problems sitting still or standing. At the time, it seemed like too much to handle, so just as I would have done with huge events in the past, I turned to God for his help.

He has given me strength to battle each day. I wake up in pain and go to sleep in even more pain. Each day, though, is a day that I spend studying his Word. Each day, I gain more insight into my relationship with my Lord and my Savior. Each day is one more day that He has granted me to spend time with my family.

I say this to let you know that God isn’t just the God of big things. He is the one who wants to help you with whatever you are going through. It may be huge or it may be small, it doesn’t matter. Just turn your problems over to him and let him give you the answers you seek.

Now, you may not like the answers. He will do what is right for you. Sometimes lessons are hard and events are long-lasting. There is something in it that we are to learn and, sadly, there are repercussions for things that we have done.

Would that we could understand everything and not have anything hidden. However, I’ve thought about that. I don’t think we are capable of understanding everything. No matter the answer, if we don’t like it, we would keep asking why?

God has the entirety of everything in his eyes. He sees our pasts and he sees the infinite future. He is working things out in our lives and we need to trust him.

Trust him with big things and with the small ones. Pray constantly. Prayer is talking with God, it doesn’t have to be a full-blown, King James style thee and thou type of prayer. It just has to be the words and feelings of our heart as we reach out to the One who created the universe. He is loving, faithful, honest and true. He will not turn us away no matter how many times we have turned away from him.

Psalms 143:8-10

Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning;
For I trust in You;
Teach me the way in which I should walk;
For to You I lift up my soul.

Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies;
I take refuge in You.

Teach me to do Your will,
For You are my God;
Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.

Things seem to be getting crazier every single day. There is so much evil, it is hard to see the good that exists out there in the world.

I’ve been reading about another time when evil was covering the entire earth. It was so bad, that every thought of man was evil. When God looked at his creation, he was sorry he had ever created mankind.

There was, at that time, only one man who found favor with God. The man was Noah. Because he walked with God and had not turned to evil ways, he and his family were saved.

God gave Noah directions to build an ark which would house him, his family, and a host of animals. Some of the animals were in single pairs, just one male and one female. Others, which were considered clean, were saved with seven pairs, seven male and seven female.

Noah obeyed and built the ark even though, at that time, there had never been rain on the earth. The idea of so much water pouring from the sky would have beyond anything that a man could imagine. Still, Noah did as God asked, just as he had done throughout his life.

Because of his faithfulness to the word of God and doing as he was told, he was saved and mankind was given a second chance.

It’s taken thousands of years, but sometimes it feels like we are heading right back to the same situation. It seems like so many people have given in to the darkness that is at the root of man’s fallen spirit.

There are still many people who follow God, though we all stumble and fall, because we are sinners. God sees us and keeps us from falling too far when we stray.

Still, it must grieve God’s spirit to see so much evil. What seems to becoming worse is that people are accepting evil as normal.

The way that people treat each others, talk about one another and lie and cheat and steal is not seen as evil. If you agree with a person’s evil thoughts, then it is normal. One never likes to think of themselves as evil, right?

I know, from reading the Bible, that Jesus talked about a time when mankind would be as in the days of Noah. At that time, people would lose the ability to see that their actions were wrong-headed. They would care more about themselves than anyone else. Paul gave us a further insight, in 2 Timothy 3, what type of evil individuals we should look for and avoid.

While, to a degree, self-caring is not unusual, it is unusual that it is now turning into an accepted way of hurting others. Not just hurting them but wishing people, who are on the other side of what you think, would just go away. Now, it isn’t just wishing, there are many who are willing to take action.

It seems like respect for human life is getting lower and lower. There is not just abortion, there is also euthanasia and outright murder.

When society stops respecting life, the thought of murder as something to be punished, becomes a thing of the past. When individuals are allowed to create their own moral code and if their code says they can kill, they can do so with impunity. Society, for the most part, will either turn a blind eye or worse, applaud those who are willing to kill for their social cause.

There have been things happening recently that have caught me blind-sided. The idea that one can self-identify as something other than what they were born as, is unthinkable to many of us. It is like slapping the face of God.

God made us all and he does not make mistakes. Mankind is broken and if there are any mistakes made, it is all because of man. It seems like we are busy trying to break every single thing that exists.

Sadly, that means we are breaking our children. We are breaking them physically, emotionally and spiritually. I can’t imagine how much this both grieves and angers God. Abusing innocent children to either make money or to get attention is unthinkable and yet, it is happening and it is getting worse every day.

The thing that Jesus talked about, when mankind gets back to the evilness of the days of Noah, was that would be the time when God would bring judgement upon the earth.

It feels like those days are approaching ever more rapidly.

For Noah, salvation was in the form of an ark. Today, salvation is available through Jesus Christ.

He died to get you a pardon and to give you a way to be saved. The judgements that will be meted out to those who don’t accept Jesus are things you do not want to experience. However, they are just and right for those who harden their hearts and stiffen their necks and deny the sacrifice that Jesus made for them.

If you want to be saved, call out to Jesus and ask him to make himself known to you. If you are sincere, he is there and waiting with your gift of salvation in hand. He’s been waiting for you since before the entire creation was made. Please don’t miss this opportunity. Life is frail and fleeting and you may never have an opportunity ever again.

2 Timothy 3:1-5

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.

I’ve been reading recently that 2020 will be considered, by many, to be the year of the Bible. Honestly, every year is the year of the Bible; however, the idea is to focus on reading the Bible.

Many Christians seem to read self-help books written by other Christians or even explanations about the books of the Bible rather than reading and studying the Book itself. While reading those other books may be beneficial, the word of God is in the actual Holy Bible.

It behooves us to spend some part of every day, if possible, reading a portion of it. It could be a chapter or simply a verse. It could be whatever works with your life.

About two years ago, my husband and I found a plan for reading the Bible in 52 weeks. It didn’t necessarily start with the first week of January (though it did have that listed), it started with Week 1. Our thought was to finish it in 52 weeks, then shingles took its toll on me.

I could barely sit up, let alone hold a Bible or bend forward to look at one on a table. For nine months that put reading the Bible beyond me. During that time, I was becoming more and more filled with sorrow for what I could not do anymore.

My husband found the same translation of the Bible on the iPhone store and purchased it for me to read. I could kind of hold a phone but it was difficult. I found a holder on a hand-crafting site and purchased it. It holds my phone upright and I can read it from a sitting position.

I was back to reading and six months later, we both finished reading the Bible. It took two years because of the delay but we were very glad that we had done it.

This time around, we will be reading it in the same order but will take our time and plan to finish it in two years as well. This time, we will access all of the information that is part of this translation (Amplified Study Bible) because of the wealth of information it has and how much it provides clarity to obscure references.

It is almost as good as a good, old-fashioned Bible Study. Those seem to have gone by the wayside in deference to life groups, which are small groups that meet in homes.

I’ve now finished the first day of reading (taking two days to do it) and have read Genesis 1-2, Psalms 19 and Mark 1. I was filled with awe over the beauty and lyrical words of the first two chapters of creation. I was swept up in the praise of God in Psalms 19. The first chapter of Mark gives a view of the beginning of Jesus Christ’s ministry.

If nothing else, I highly suggest reading these chapters. If you can convince someone else to read them, that would be wonderful. I would especially challenge those who aren’t really sure that God exists to spend time and to read these chapters. It explains much of God in just a few words.

The other thing that is part of the year of the Bible is that individuals and groups are working to translate the entire Bible into the last 1,800 or so languages which don’t currently have full Bible translations. That is a wonderful project and one that I pray is successful in the course of the next few years.

The word of God will be preached throughout the world before Jesus comes back for his church. It is written in the Bible and it is true. Those who work at this task deserve respect and help from the rest of us.

Whenever you feel like you can’t do something or things that need to be done are beyond you, remember there is something that you can always do to help others.

You can pray.

Praying with power comes with knowledge. True knowledge only comes from God. One of the most powerful ways that God speaks his wisdom to us is through his Word. Find a Bible that you can read and then, read it. You will find blessings from God are within the Book. He is there waiting for you to discover what he has in store for you.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.