Happy Easter everyone. After eating turkey and ham and all the fixin's it kinda makes you loose track of what the holiday is commemorating .
Well the meal is over and everyone is gone home. I've slept off the DHT or whatever it is in turkey that makes you sleepy and now I'm thinking clearly. Well clearly for me that is.
I been sitting here imagining what it might have been like to be on earth when Jesus was here, Do you suppose he had lots of friends when he was growing up? I was thinking if I was a neighbor and grew up with him. What was he like? Do you think he was serious all the time or was he like a normal child ? I'm guessing he was an extremely intelligent child, in order for him to go into the temple and teach the teachers of the day. At an early age he knew he had to be doing his Fathers business . Do you suppose he understood that he would only live a short time and then be rejected and beaten and crucified? I'm guessing he knew and was constantly burdened about the people around him and how they needed salvation. A once and for all sacrifice that would completely satisfy God's requirements to atone for sin.
Until this time there where nothing more than rituals and commands to follow that did not rid us of sin completely. The sacrifices were made from animals and never fulfilled Gods requirements.
Can you imagine the weight that Jesus carried around on his shoulders. His love had to be the most intense love ever known . I think of my self today could I grow up thinking and /or knowing that some day in the near future I would need to die for some one to pay the sacrifice for all the terrible things they had ever done . Even though I had never done anything wrong. And then on top of that the person I had died for didn't want to accept my gift, of love and life.
I think about that and think about myself getting upset about someone not liking what I had done or laughing at a mistake I had made. yet Jesus grew up knowing that a lot of the people he was friends with would reject him and his gift of love. Did that stop him from loving ? Not a chance, he loved all the more. Its very difficult for me to think of him first of all lowering himself to become a human and then to suffer all the degradation, hate ,and abuse that he endured. Yet he never turned away from us.
I was reading somewhere a while back about Jesus in his prayer in the garden when he sweat drops of blood. There is actually a medical term for that when a person becomes so intense, from things like fear, sorrow, and other emotions that the capillaries in the skin can burst and cause them to bleed through their sweat. How many of us have been that burdened? How many of us have loved that strongly? None. Of course just because we don't sweat drops of blood doesn't mean we aren't burdened or loving.
I did a little test today just to see how people felt and what was the main thing on their minds. I sat and listened as much as possible , to see what would be said in thanks to Jesus and our Father for their gift of love and life that we were to remember on Easter. Well the answer was nothing. I don't know maybe 15 or 20 people and the mentions of Jesus' gift, " zero."
I'm just as bad as anyone else, I know , how can I learn to make this all more real in my life? Every thing is about the weather , about how work is going , and who did what and who said what. I know I sound like a goody two shoe but I don't care. Jesus is coming back and this time I'm going to be there to meet him also. So if I'm spending all my time thinking about things other than him can I expect him to be watching for me when he returns?
Today was a good day and I'm not complaining about it , I just wish we could spend more time with the most important person in our life. JESUS
Without him we have nothing and I feel we are losing sight of that in our to busy world.
Thank you Jesus for your gift of love to us. The pain you suffered the tears and the blood you shed for us. I give you my life in return, not just parts of it , but all of it. I thank you for the battles you have fought and the total victories you have won in our behalf. Thank you Father for your only Son and for allowing Him to save us eternally. Help me never to forget that or let it become taken for granted in my life and help me to show others your love through my life as a reflection of you. Eternally grateful
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Who's Will Is It ?
Ever thought about Gods leading in your life and how sometimes its a sure leading of the Lord. Then other times we might be sure at first and then later have doubts. Or maybe think you were led at the beginning and then backtrack and think that it wasn't God at all. I have experienced them all and would like to tell you about them and hear your thoughts about what I might have done right or wrong.
I'm going to back up a couple of years now. After my heart attack I came to OR for a couple months to recoup and then decided to go back to CA and to finish the job I had started. I was hoping the job would take maybe three or four months. As it turned out it went much longer. My sister had joined me when I returned from OR for which I was so thankful because my nerves were horrible and she was a great help in keeping me under control : ) Everything seemed to be working well , then in May she fell and broke her leg . Not just a small break, a compound fracture. , that would require a couple of surgeries to fix it. Up to that time we had thought that it was Gods will for her to be there with me,now we started to question our selves. Now I was taking care of her and running my job. But in the end by me taking care of her it helped my nerves to be more balanced. As she got better and wanted to go back to OR she thought I should just leave and let someone else finish the job. One day we are setting there trying to understand Gods will and what we were to do. I watched a balloon that my sis had gotten in the hospital float around and around the room. It had been doing it for at least two weeks. All the windows in my house were open and without screens . The thought about putting a so called fleece before the Lord crossed my mind and I half jokingly said to my sis that if God wanted my to stay He would have to pull the balloon down from the ceiling and let it fly out the window. Again it had been there for two weeks and never once had the wind blown it down or toward the window. My sister laughed because she had somewhat the same thoughts, we both sat with our jaws dropped open when we watched the balloon float over to the window then drop clear down to the floor and then out the window and out through the trees.
Both of these instances it seemed quite clear to me what God had wanted in my life . As it turned out I finished the job moved to OR in time to spend a couple of weeks with my dad before he became sick with pancreas cancer and it seemed Gods timing was perfect.
Now after getting back to OR I thought the Lord was definitely leading me to go to work for my nephew at the bakery . Which I did and throughly enjoyed it for a short time but as things worked out I really wasn't need there at all. Now my question here is , if I felt Gods leading to do that and followed it, but now have no idea what the reason for it was. Was I trying to learn Gods will but in essence maybe I was just telling God what I thought was His will should be. I'm thinking in this case that could be the problem. But not for sure.
Next over the time we started realizing that Dad was sick I made a run to the Willamette Valley to see a friend of mine. On my way home I was thinking about Dad and what was happening at the doc that day, and praying for him. The thought came to me as I was driving that Dad had pancreas cancer . I was still processing this thought when my sis called to tell me they had figured out what Dad's sickness was, and I replied pancreas cancer and she said Oh have you already talked to mom. No but God had already revealed it to me. As I drove along God laid on my heart that when I got to the hospital I was supposed to lay my hands on dad and pray for his physical healing. Hardly knowing anything about what I was to do and scared they wouldn't accept me trying to do something like that. I was really worried, but was still being pushed by the Lord to go through with the prayer. I did. I cried , I prayed, I did what I thought God asked. As we all know God didn't physically heal him. I kept asking why why God I did what you asked I tried to have faith , so why all the leading and no results.
From this point I have asked different people and received many different answers. One person said well he wasn't healed on earth but ultimately he was in heaven.( I suppose that could be true. ) But when I prayed I asked for physical healing here on earth. Another said I needed to have the elders lay their hands on him to have him to heal him. Another thought faith was lacking. Myself I don't know but after praying to the Lord for some sort of answer this is where I ended up.
First of all I really believe God led me to pray for dads healing. But several things have came to my mind since then. In searching my life I realized I had a lot of bitterness and anger that I had carried around for years. As I came to grips with the fact that I had all this sin in my life God also made me aware that I was trying to serve Him out of fear not love like He wanted. Add that to a serious dose of doubt and you end up with me, busy trying to tell God what to do and how to heal dad. I now think this was meant to be a learning experience for me. Do I believe God would have healed dad if my heart would have been ready? Absolutely !
Here I started out feeling that it was God's will for dad to be healed but do to my lack of understanding , lack of searching my life and lack of faith , He didn't answer my prayer. Making me doubt Him and His promises for a time and then later realize that God is always true and does what He says He will do.. I'm not sure if I'm making the point clear that I wanted to and that is ,when we read Gods word and he makes promises to us and time after time those promises aren't fulfilled it is not Gods fault. We want to know His will and He says he will show us his will. But then we spend maybe a few minutes a day in prayer and studying His will and think God is going to just show us His will? I really don't think so. I know I keep harping about this but it is really bothering me.
God is after me also. A couple of days ago I had been on the computer for a couple of hours reading facebook playing games and generally wasting time. The next morning I got up and tried to use it and it was literally froze up. I couldn't log in or out. I could do basically nothing. Since I do almost all of my Bible study on it I was feeling rather desperate to get it working. Nothing worked. My sis came over tried everything she new and found it basically dead. I have no money right now and getting it fixed was out of the question . So I prayed . I just said Lord you know I use this computer all the time for studying your Word and now its going to be much more difficult study. I had an immediate answer pop into my head and that was stop wasting so much time on it and study my Word and you may have it back. So I said alright Lord I'll do that and only allow myself a certain amount of time for things other than study. I'm sitting there feeling very reprimanded and then satan put in my head your so dumb you just made that up yourself. I grabbed the laptop handed it to my sister and said , see if it works now. She smiled at me turned it on and logged in with out one problem. We both sat dumbfounded, looking at the laptop. I said aloud thank you Lord I'm going to do much better from now on. I thought to myself how badly I hated it when satan gets me to thinking wrongly. I'm sure everyone has different experiences of how God leads them along and I would love to hear them. He is our Father He loves us so much. We can spend so much time trying to do everything just perfect when what He really wants is our love and trust and willingness to be obedient to Him.
Well thats enough for today. My job is still hanging somewhere out there. My tools from CA are supposed to be coming up possibly Friday and I at this point have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Lets all pray for each other that we can spend enough time with our Lord that He can show us what His plan for our life is. I can not keep going on and make excuses why I can not get thru to God. I know God answers in His own time and sometimes the answer is no . I understand that but I have a feeling His answer isn't no everytime. So pray for me that I can learn to discern His will for my life. Love in Christ
I'm going to back up a couple of years now. After my heart attack I came to OR for a couple months to recoup and then decided to go back to CA and to finish the job I had started. I was hoping the job would take maybe three or four months. As it turned out it went much longer. My sister had joined me when I returned from OR for which I was so thankful because my nerves were horrible and she was a great help in keeping me under control : ) Everything seemed to be working well , then in May she fell and broke her leg . Not just a small break, a compound fracture. , that would require a couple of surgeries to fix it. Up to that time we had thought that it was Gods will for her to be there with me,now we started to question our selves. Now I was taking care of her and running my job. But in the end by me taking care of her it helped my nerves to be more balanced. As she got better and wanted to go back to OR she thought I should just leave and let someone else finish the job. One day we are setting there trying to understand Gods will and what we were to do. I watched a balloon that my sis had gotten in the hospital float around and around the room. It had been doing it for at least two weeks. All the windows in my house were open and without screens . The thought about putting a so called fleece before the Lord crossed my mind and I half jokingly said to my sis that if God wanted my to stay He would have to pull the balloon down from the ceiling and let it fly out the window. Again it had been there for two weeks and never once had the wind blown it down or toward the window. My sister laughed because she had somewhat the same thoughts, we both sat with our jaws dropped open when we watched the balloon float over to the window then drop clear down to the floor and then out the window and out through the trees.
Both of these instances it seemed quite clear to me what God had wanted in my life . As it turned out I finished the job moved to OR in time to spend a couple of weeks with my dad before he became sick with pancreas cancer and it seemed Gods timing was perfect.
Now after getting back to OR I thought the Lord was definitely leading me to go to work for my nephew at the bakery . Which I did and throughly enjoyed it for a short time but as things worked out I really wasn't need there at all. Now my question here is , if I felt Gods leading to do that and followed it, but now have no idea what the reason for it was. Was I trying to learn Gods will but in essence maybe I was just telling God what I thought was His will should be. I'm thinking in this case that could be the problem. But not for sure.
Next over the time we started realizing that Dad was sick I made a run to the Willamette Valley to see a friend of mine. On my way home I was thinking about Dad and what was happening at the doc that day, and praying for him. The thought came to me as I was driving that Dad had pancreas cancer . I was still processing this thought when my sis called to tell me they had figured out what Dad's sickness was, and I replied pancreas cancer and she said Oh have you already talked to mom. No but God had already revealed it to me. As I drove along God laid on my heart that when I got to the hospital I was supposed to lay my hands on dad and pray for his physical healing. Hardly knowing anything about what I was to do and scared they wouldn't accept me trying to do something like that. I was really worried, but was still being pushed by the Lord to go through with the prayer. I did. I cried , I prayed, I did what I thought God asked. As we all know God didn't physically heal him. I kept asking why why God I did what you asked I tried to have faith , so why all the leading and no results.
From this point I have asked different people and received many different answers. One person said well he wasn't healed on earth but ultimately he was in heaven.( I suppose that could be true. ) But when I prayed I asked for physical healing here on earth. Another said I needed to have the elders lay their hands on him to have him to heal him. Another thought faith was lacking. Myself I don't know but after praying to the Lord for some sort of answer this is where I ended up.
First of all I really believe God led me to pray for dads healing. But several things have came to my mind since then. In searching my life I realized I had a lot of bitterness and anger that I had carried around for years. As I came to grips with the fact that I had all this sin in my life God also made me aware that I was trying to serve Him out of fear not love like He wanted. Add that to a serious dose of doubt and you end up with me, busy trying to tell God what to do and how to heal dad. I now think this was meant to be a learning experience for me. Do I believe God would have healed dad if my heart would have been ready? Absolutely !
Here I started out feeling that it was God's will for dad to be healed but do to my lack of understanding , lack of searching my life and lack of faith , He didn't answer my prayer. Making me doubt Him and His promises for a time and then later realize that God is always true and does what He says He will do.. I'm not sure if I'm making the point clear that I wanted to and that is ,when we read Gods word and he makes promises to us and time after time those promises aren't fulfilled it is not Gods fault. We want to know His will and He says he will show us his will. But then we spend maybe a few minutes a day in prayer and studying His will and think God is going to just show us His will? I really don't think so. I know I keep harping about this but it is really bothering me.
God is after me also. A couple of days ago I had been on the computer for a couple of hours reading facebook playing games and generally wasting time. The next morning I got up and tried to use it and it was literally froze up. I couldn't log in or out. I could do basically nothing. Since I do almost all of my Bible study on it I was feeling rather desperate to get it working. Nothing worked. My sis came over tried everything she new and found it basically dead. I have no money right now and getting it fixed was out of the question . So I prayed . I just said Lord you know I use this computer all the time for studying your Word and now its going to be much more difficult study. I had an immediate answer pop into my head and that was stop wasting so much time on it and study my Word and you may have it back. So I said alright Lord I'll do that and only allow myself a certain amount of time for things other than study. I'm sitting there feeling very reprimanded and then satan put in my head your so dumb you just made that up yourself. I grabbed the laptop handed it to my sister and said , see if it works now. She smiled at me turned it on and logged in with out one problem. We both sat dumbfounded, looking at the laptop. I said aloud thank you Lord I'm going to do much better from now on. I thought to myself how badly I hated it when satan gets me to thinking wrongly. I'm sure everyone has different experiences of how God leads them along and I would love to hear them. He is our Father He loves us so much. We can spend so much time trying to do everything just perfect when what He really wants is our love and trust and willingness to be obedient to Him.
Well thats enough for today. My job is still hanging somewhere out there. My tools from CA are supposed to be coming up possibly Friday and I at this point have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Lets all pray for each other that we can spend enough time with our Lord that He can show us what His plan for our life is. I can not keep going on and make excuses why I can not get thru to God. I know God answers in His own time and sometimes the answer is no . I understand that but I have a feeling His answer isn't no everytime. So pray for me that I can learn to discern His will for my life. Love in Christ
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