Tag Archives: grace

Every Grace Counts

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Romans 5:20

God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant.
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How many of us have family members or friends that just drive us to seek God’s grace for their lives?  I mean it seems like every time we see them, we have to brace ourselves, stay in the love of God and just listen to them rant and rave about whatever life has thrown at them this time.  Ya know those people who can’t say a nice word about anything and feel like the whole world is against them.  Or what about the ones who are in sin and choose to stay there while there lives are falling apart?  Lastly, what about the persons who think they have it all together but you can clearly see the unhappiness in their lives?
All of these people need grace…not our grace, but God’s grace.
I have several persons in my life that I feel I need to give grace to on a daily basis.  Some of this borders with compassion, yet I feel without God’s grace I could not have the compassion to love.  I know people talk about me behind my back and some may even despise me.  Some don’t get why I divorced and remarried.  Others are perhaps envious of how happy I really am.  In the whole scheme of things, it is not I who needs to take care of these situations, it is Jesus.  God will never leave or forsake me and He will take care of my enemies, I am called to love and love means grace, forgiveness and compassion.
When you combine love with grace you are able to forgive and when you forgive you can find room in your heart for compassion.  If you melt all these things together you find freedom.  With freedom comes peace.  Sigh!  What a relief to discover that the root of all we have to do is love.  God is love and it is through Him that we even obtain grace.  If He gave it to us and it freed us from our sin then why would we not want to free others around us with His grace?
Who are the persons in your life that are in need of grace?  Are you withholding grace because of offenses?  Do you desire to be free?  I urge us all to seek out the grace God gave to us to give to others.  We are called to love and sometimes that means just keeping the peace in certain relationships.  Sometimes grace needs to be from a distance and that’s perfectly okay.  Just remember grace comes from love and all the love you need is in Jesus.

Walking in Love

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The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven. Hebrews 1:3

198graceWhat does it mean to walk in love?  Does it mean that you hang on your mate all the time and they are the center of your world?  Does it mean that with marriage you become focused on each other more than anything else?  Perhaps walking in love means that you set aside your “normal” life and learn how to become dependent on each other for what it takes to make the marriage work. Or does it mean that you surrender your will, mind and emotions to your marriage instead of God?

You may think those ideas are pretty far fetched, however for some this is their idea of a perfect marriage.  A marriage is not suppose to stop your life, it should support your relationship with God and begin to grow you stronger in that relationship.  As the two flesh become one, it means with God in the center and not that the marriage out weighs all else in your life.  God purposed for us to have a mate which is why He created woman for man to have communion with.  God delights in the union of a man and his wife but He did not intend for the couple to stop walking with Him.

So to me, walking in love is grace.  God graced two persons with a love that led them to marriage and now He wants to take that union and grow a relationship based on walking with Him.  He longs to be in the center of your life and it should not change with marriage.  If a couple seeks God first in their lives then their relationship will thrive and God will increase the love as time aspires on.

I encourage each of you who are in a marriage and you have wandered away from God being the center that you take some time to recenter God in your life.  Take time this week to seek the face of God in your marriage.  Are you still in love with your first love, Jesus?  Do you still seek His approval over your spouses?  God wants the both of you looking to Him for the answers to your marriage.  Choose to seek Him now and begin truly walking in His love.

Skip the Chapter!

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1 Corinthians 11:25

In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood. Do this to remember me as often as you drink it.”
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When one is writing a book, they usually go chapter by chapter, connecting words into sentences and paragraphs all the while telling a story.  A story perhaps about their life or a how to book or maybe a documentary, but the main point is to tell a complete story chapter by chapter.  This too is how we often live our life, we say we are going to start a new chapter and I am here merely today to suggest, why don’t we start a new book instead?
Chapters are good but it means you are still in the same story, nothing really has changed in your life is what you are saying.  If you start a new book then it will be more exciting.  Let’s take a person who has stopped drinking.  The said person has now closed the book on a life of alcohol abuse and is now starting  a whole new era in life instead of just adding a chapter to the past.  Does that make sense?  As interested as a person could be in seeing how the story ends, sometimes they are even more excited about opening a new book!
Jesus did the same thing for us when He died for us on the cross.  When He crucified His flesh the ways of the Old Testament were made new with the covenant of Grace, no longer are we bound by the past commandments.  We have been given grace and it is sufficient for all things.  Yes, if we are following after Jesus and aspiring to become more Christlike, we should have not desire to swear, dishonor our parents, lie, murder, have false Gods and all those other temptations.  We have been given a whole new book to read, the New Testament.
So are you ready to start a new chapter or does your heart desire to start a new book?  Are you tired of the same old same old?  Is it time to really seek God and say you are done with the old way of thinking?  I encourage all of us to begin a new book in our Christian walk, take a new approach to our old thinking, press further into the things God has planned for us.  Go ahead, close the book on the past and begin writing a new story today!

Rock Hunting

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1 Samuel 17:40

He picked up five smooth stones from a stream and put them into his shepherd’s bag. Then, armed only with his shepherd’s staff and sling, he started across the valley to fight the Philistine.
???????????????????????????????Most of us know the story of Goliath and how he killed his giant with a stone but I always wondered how he chose his stones.  Did he have a special place where he went to get his stones?  Did they have to be a certain size or shape?  How many did he pick up and put back down?  How should we pick our rocks to slay our current enemies?
What would our rocks be in these modern times?  It’s not like we can just go around throwing rocks at our enemies in broad daylight and getting away with it.
I think that perhaps we need some grace.  One of our rocks should be grace.  In order to properly deal with our giants, we need to have grace.  We need to be able to decide if perhaps the giant is the way it is because of past hurts or its upbringing.  Maybe we don’t really need to slay it after all, it just needs a good dose of grace.
Love should be another rock we look for.  Jesus left us with the commandment to love one another.  Perhaps if we could just learn to love our enemies here again there would be no need for any death to occur.  What about truth?  That would be a pretty good rock to have in our possession.  What if the whole issue is that neither of you know the real truth of the matter?
Compassion would also be a nice rock to have in the collection, much like grace it is very powerful.  If we could learn to come alongside our giant and maybe change some mindsets with some pure understanding the disagreement could just be dissolved.  Peace I believe would be one of the best ones to own.  Much like the river it was probably taken from, peace can begin to flow.  When we are at peace because we have sought God in the matter, things are put into better perspective.
Now that we have our five rocks, how are we going to approach our enemies?  With a mindset of GRACE and a heart ready to LOVE, we can search out the TRUTH and find PEACE while using our COMPASSION to allow God to work through us to bring about healing in a persons life.  After all, a giant is just another person with feelings, emotions and a history.  What if you are somebody’s giant, how would you want to be approached?

If Only Land

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Romans 7:19

I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.
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How many times have we said out loud to anyone who would be willing to listen, “If Only…” and then we spew out some idea of how we should have done something differently?  I know from my person experiences that I could list one million, seven-hundred and eighty-three examples for you, however for the purposes of blogging I will only pick one.  Twenty-three years ago I decided to date and marry a man whom I thought I could change.  If only he had stopped drinking.  If only he had not decided not to turn to prescription meds.  If only I had been following the Lord…..
Do you see how destructive these two words can be?  How many are stuck in a depressed state right now because they dwell in the kingdom of if onlys?  I know for me I played right into that game for awhile until I began to surrender some things to God, knowing that at that point in my life, I was in control not God and my marriage choice was not what He had desired for me.  Now, was I in love, yes.  Was a happy at times, yes.  Did good things come from the marriage, yes.  So why was I playing the “If Only” blues?
Because I had decided from the get go that I was going to fix my husband.  I figured if I dragged him to church enough times he would just come to know God like I did.  I felt if I gave all of me whenever I could, he would become happy with me and not the drinking.  I wanted so much to “make” the picture perfect family:  A happy husband, two kids and dog.    I am not sure when I realized this was not reality but as I slowly began to lose who I was as a person, it was too late.  If only I had done things differently.  If only I had loved him more.  If only I had been more respectful of my own self. If only I loved myself enough to say enough is enough before my whole life spiraled out of control.
Having said all of that, IF I had changed any of the above things, I would have missed out on two beautiful kids.  I would not have had the life experiences which have led me to where I am today with the ability to love others in a capacity I may not have ever achieved. Yes I went through a lot, yet it has shaped me into who I am today and brought me closer to God than I could ever have imagined twenty some years ago.  I am a stronger person now having experienced the life I did and I believe God knew all of this ahead of time.  When we choose to go beyond what God has already planned out because of our free will, He then works out a way for us to return to His grace and love (not that He ever stopped loving us) much like the prodigal son.
Are you playing the “If Onlys”?  Have you perhaps taken up permanent residency in If Only Land?  My encouragement to you would be start to surrender.  Accept that with your free will you get to pick where you go in life, but if you go too far and are unsure of how to get back to God it is so simple to do.  It is as easy as saying “If Only You will forgive me and lead me in the right direction, I surrender my circumstances to You, God…lead me.”

Not Understanding, but Knowing

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Mark 9:49-50

“Everyone’s going through a refining fire sooner or later, but you’ll be well-preserved, protected from the eternal flames. Be preservatives yourselves. Preserve the peace.”

Philippians 4:10-14

The Message (MSG)

Content Whatever the Circumstances

10-14 I’m glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess—happy that you’re again showing such strong concern for me. Not that you ever quit praying and thinking about me. You just had no chance to show it. Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. I don’t mean that your help didn’t mean a lot to me—it did. It was a beautiful thing that you came alongside me in my troubles.

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Ever look into the mirror and wonder how you have gotten to where you are without crashing and burning completely?  How can you even look at the face in the reflection and have peace?  Why are you not screaming towards heaven when it all looks so dim around you?  Where does this peace come from?  Well for me it comes from faith and walking in the knowledge that God has already ordered my steps.  I often do not have an ounce of understanding about what is going on around me, yet I just know I am safe and whatever happens, God has the plans in His hands!
Just recently I had something happen in my life that should have knocked me off my foundation.  I could have found myself angry at God and the people around me. I could have become bitter and thrown a temper-tantrum for sure, yet I had peace.  I understand things will be a little tighter in the future concerning some finances, yet I have peace.  I do not understand how God can provide so much grace sometimes, yet I know He does.
Similar to Paul in the Bible, over the years I have learned to be content in what has been set before me.  I have been poor, I have been broken, I have lived in some unrealistic conditions and I have been treated unfairly in some circumstances, yet I know God provided in those moments of time.  It is from that provision that I gained the faith I have now that He will provide all things I have need of.  I have full confidence in the Lord to provide even if my wallet looks a bit dusty or I just cannot see how He will provide in the coming days.
Do you understand that God loves you right where you are and He has a plan?  He had that plan set before you even before you breathed your first breath on earth.  That is how amazing our God is. I challenge you to look in the mirror right now.  What do you see?  I can tell you what I see in you and I don’t even know most of you on a personal level…..I see a righteous child of God.  I see someone whom God loves enough to provide for your every need.  I see someone worthy of being loved.  Don’t try to understand it, just know it to be truth.

Do Not Disturb

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Psalm 78:23

But He commanded the skies to open; He opened the doors of heaven.
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How many of us are waiting for God to do something?  How often do we just plunder through doors thinking we have the right way to go when in reality God has something better waiting for us if we just become patient in His presence and wait on Him.  Of course we have all heard at some point or another, “Are you waiting on God or is He waiting on you?”  It’s the age old question and here is the answer I found in the Bible:  Isaiah 30:18

[ Blessings for the Lord’s People ] So the Lord must wait for you to come to Him so He can show you His love and compassion. For the Lord is a faithful God. Blessed are those who wait for His help.  We have to seek God out for our desires but then we must wait on Him before we move.
Wow! What a fresh revelation to see as I am writing this very blog.  The reason I wrote on the subject of doors and patience is because tonight I was given a prayer about 5 doors being set in front of me and I am just waiting.  I know what is behind each door and I have the freedom to choose which one I will open.  They are all good and will lead to God, however, I am patiently waiting for God to choose just the right door for me.  He is honored by my patience.  It was a pretty cool word to have spoken to me and I knew right away what it pertained to, my books.
I have been at a standstill for quite some time concerning the publishing of my books and I could probably come up with a hundred schemes on how to get them published by now, but I am waiting on God. In my standing and waiting, $800 has been provided and I know there is more provision to come.  I know that I cannot rush this.  I am also secure in God enough to know He has a much better plan behind whatever door He opens than I do.
I know it never seems easy to wait.  I personally never considered myself to be a patient person, however, looking back at my life, I guess I have been.  I have stood in places of my life where others would have ran far away.  I have chosen not to move when I easily could have made my own choices and gone off the deep end.  I see a pattern now looking back, the more I just waited for God in my circumstances, the greater the reward.
Now here I am standing with these five doors set before me and I will continue to lay it all down in surrender and allow God to open the perfect door for me.  I am placing Do Not Disturb signs on each of the doors so as not to be tempted to open them up just to see what the possibilities are.  What are you waiting on God for?  Have you even brought it to His attention and sought out His grace?  What would you do if you had the choice to open the doors?  Waiting on the Lord is never easy, especially with this free will of ours, yet the reward is so much greater when we allow the Creator of our life to move us in the direction of our destiny.

True Grace

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2 Corinthians 4:15
All of this is for your benefit. And as God’s grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory.

Ever wonder how sometimes we have no understanding of how we end up where we do? We have been given a free will and often we as humans just take advantage of it thinking we know more than God does.  Twenty years ago I made the choice to marry a man I thought I could fix.  I knew he was a drinker but I thought for sure I could cure that.  Before we even got married I got pregnant with my son, this made me think that I had no choice now but to stay.  I could not see that God had a much bigger plan for my life, yet what happened over the last 20 years has given me the ability to love with a compassion for others like I might never have gained.

As I watched my husband spiral out of control, I felt so stuck and lost in a relationship that I soon realized had nothing to do with God.  As I stood by my husband even in his complete brokenness  I felt empty as if I had no purpose but to keep this man alive for his children.  I was lost.  I was alone.  I was hurting.  I was confused and broken.  My heart was shattered in a million pieces yet I stood beside him until three years ago.  While I sat in an emergency room watching my husband fight for his life from a drug overdose/suicide attempt, I cried out to God.  I finally wanted out.  I could not stand beside him any longer.

Three years have passed and I am now divorced.  It was not a choice I found easy to make, however it was by God’s grace that I was released.  I was willing to stand and wait for my husband to be healed.  I would have done anything God said to do, but He was silent for so long on the subject until I was willing to just surrender it all and leave it at the cross.  I was alone for the whole three years up until God gave me the release to pursue divorce.  Within a few days of my release, God gave me a chance at life again.

He sent a man into my life who would show me what a right relationship was.  He stands now beside me even in my brokenness.  He seeks God first and brings me only things which will edify me.  He understands my weaknesses and does his best to love me right where I am, insecurities and all.  As we have chosen to be married due to what God had began in our spirits, we spoke about how I needed to feel release from my ex-husband.  We talked with our pastor and he said that some day, my ex-husband would thank John for taking care of me, realizing that he couldn’t.  We figured it would be years down the road as it was a huge statement to receive.

This is how great God’s grace really is.  First the phone call a few weeks before the divorce went through and then at the courthouse the day of the divorce.  After all was said and done and the judgement for divorce was granted, he called me over and said how happy he was for me and that he wished me the best.  I felt overwhelmed at his kindness and grace only to watch him them walk over to John and speak the same thing to him.  Grace, true grace.  Only God can instill that grace in another human being.  Even though I know my ex-husband was hurting, I knew he meant every word of what he spoke.

Today as I look forward to remarriage and a bright horizon of moving into the realm of a right relationship ordained by God, I am filled with such wonder at how God does what He does.  We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that our steps are ordered by the Lord, therefore, everything we endured in our lives up to this point is God’s true grace on our lives.  Even when we make the wrong choices, He sees fit to continue to give us grace until we are back on track with our destiny.

I Don’t Want Someone Else’s Trash

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Matthew 18:15

New Living Translation (NLT)

Correcting Another Believer

15 “If another believer sins against you,  go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back.

Resentment. Anger.  Attitudes.  Offences.  Misinterpretations.  Grudges.  Dishonesty.  Hard Feelings.  Hurtfulness. Trash is ugly in its’ self, however it gets uglier when it belongs to someone else.  Where I am going with this is simple, if you have a problem with someone, instead of taking it out on another unsuspecting person, go to the person who offended you in the first place and take care of business.  There is no excuse for pushing your anger towards one person onto someone else who has no idea what is going on.  Others hurt and offend us on a daily basis.  Sometimes we allow this to build up over time and it consumes us internally until one wrong word from someone else and we lose it.  We begin to throw daggers and harsh words at this person and they find themselves getting defensive and then it’s just full blown warfare.  And why?  All because we begin to operate out of woundedness.

How many times do we do this?  We are fearful of going to the person who hurt us in the first place and we begin to start wars everywhere we go, even at the bank teller or the cashier at the grocery store.  Perhaps we get angry at the drivers around us when really they did nothing wrong.  Whatever the situation may be, we direct our anger often times at the wrong people.  How can we stop this insane cycle of undeserved blaming and lashing out?  Simple.  Go to the person who offended you, hash it out, ask for forgiveness, make amends, do what ever it takes to make it right so you may begin to heal the wound that was inflicted upon you.

Let’s compare this to a leaky faucet: until you fix the leak, it is going to continue to drip causing you frustration and aggravation.  Until you actually go to the faucet and fix it physically, you are going to have to deal with the constant irritating drip.  It will drip until it drives you crazy and you just explode on the next thing that comes you way, like the dog or your husband or your unsuspecting six year old.  We often lash out all of a sudden like a volcano that has been brewing and bubbling for awhile and the victims are usually ones who have no idea that we are harboring some wound.  How unfair to them that we explode from some simple thing which sets us off.

This is where respect comes in.  You have to have enough respect for your fellow humans to correct wrong behaviors or straighten out wrong perceptions.  Who are you angry with?  Has someone wounded you and you have yet to deal with it?  Do you see this person everyday and pretend things are okay when underneath you have this bubbling molten ready to erupt?  I challenge you today to search your heart and ask God to show you how to handle the situation and then pray He gives you the right opportunity to approach this person or persons.  God will give you the grace if you are willing to be face to face.

Are You JUST Saved?

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“But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.” James 1:22 NLT

So, you accepted Jesus as your Savior, what exactly does that mean?  Well, you won’t be headed to hell, for the Lord says in His word that all who call upon His name and accept His son will be saved.  Plus, you have the added bonus of instant forgiveness through Jesus who died a crucial death to save you from your own sin.  And, you will forever be adopted into God’s family where you have many brothers and sisters to help you along your path in life.  Now, how should we live to show others this tremendous change of heart we have?

We can read the Bible and say, “There I did my devotion and now it’s me time.”  Then we go about our day not having another thought about God and then repeat it again tomorrow and over and over and over again.  At some point, God loses our interest or we just get so secure in the knowing we are saved by grace part, we forget to actually DO the things it says to in the Bible.  When was the last time we truly loved our neighbor?  Or helped a needy person on the street?  Have we visited those in prison?  Have we given a cup of cold water in His name?  There are many things in the Bible we just want to say we believe in and then we do not act.

Once again it is an issue of taking the Bible as a whole and not just fitting those things which appeal to us into our lives.  God calls us to a life of obedience and acting out the Bible is a part of that.  I know I get so busy with life sometimes I forget for a moment that I am nothing without Him who sustains me in all that I attempt to do in this life.  Everything I do should be to glorify God, even my job or grocery shopping.  I should always be on the look out for opportunities to share God with others around me.  Now I am not saying pushy evangelism, just a hug or a compliment or simply doing something out of your norm for someone else is acting within God’s word.  Isn’t that what we are called to do, be abnormal in this world, different from the rest?

God is not a difficult task master, He is merely trying to teach us to love.  God is love and He creates it through us.  He takes great pleasure in seeing His children treat each other with love and respect.  I urge us all to be the saved Christian and begin to take ownership in our calling.  We are called to be fishers of men, are we fishing?  Did we even stop to get the pole?  Read the Word daily and let it renew your mind, let God work through you to show His love.  Be obedient with the tasks God assigns you.  Let the flesh go and live life in the spirit for in the end this will be all that matters, nothing of this world will go with you.  We are given one short life in which to show others the Jesus in us, are you up to the challenge?