I watched a video last week that really touched my heart. I felt the need to talk about it after which I will share the link. First, I have to say how blessed I feel to live in Canada. We can go out and buy a Bible with so many different translations to choose from. Many local churches will even give you a Bible if you can't afford one or simply don't have one. We can also download a Bible app to our smart phones or tablets or access the Bible online. We are free to buy it, to read it and to talk about it. We have free access to God's Word yet at the same time we have so much excess available to us that we end up keeping ourselves too busy for the one thing that will truly make us happy. We have TV, internet, computers, laptops, sports (both watching and playing), cell phones, tablets, video games, movies, DVDs, CDs, MP3s, music, shopping, etc. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying any of these things are wrong. However, if any of these things are done in excess to the point of usurping your regular responsibilities or alienating your friends and family, then it's a problem.
It is all about relationships. We were created, first and foremost, to have a relationship with Jesus and I'm not talking about a casual "yea I've heard of Him" or "yea I believe in Him" and that's as far as it goes. I am talking about pursuing a deep, personal friendship with Jesus - one where you know Him personally, you trust him completely and you talk to him about anything and everything - because you are well aware of how much He loves you and because you have actually experienced that love, now you want to serve Him wholeheartedly as an expression of your deep love and appreciation of Him. That is the kind of relationship I'm talking about and anyone can have that, you can have that. It's like any other friendship, the more time you spend together the closer you become.
In Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus said:
Jesus answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and most important command. And the second command is like the first: 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.'
Who is our neighbor? Our neighbor is anyone we come into contact with. Notice how Jesus said "love your neighbor as you love yourself." There are plenty of people who don't love themselves so they can't properly love others. Maybe they never grew up having a nurturing, loving parent or parents. There are so many different reasons. Maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about. If we grow up not being or feeling loved we will have a hard time receiving love, love from others and the love of our Father God because somewhere deep inside of our heart we don't fell like we deserve to be loved.
Her comes the good part. When we receive Jesus, God's son, as our Savior He comes to live inside of our heart in the form of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit then begins working on our hearts, healing our pain, mending our brokenness, filling that emptiness, exposing damaging lies we have believed about ourselves, revealing the truth about us and the way Father God feels about us and filling us up with His love.
If we don't feel we deserve to be loved we will have a hard time receiving love from God or anyone else. If we don't feel loved it is impossible to fulfill the second command "love your neighbor as you love yourself." If you don't love yourself how can you love anyone else? You can't give away what you don't have.
Thank God He sent His Son Jesus to intercede for us. In Mark 10:27 (The Message) Jesus was telling the disciples how difficult it was for man to get into the Kingdom of God and his disciples asked who has any chance at all. He responded by saying:
Jesus was blunt: "No chance at all if you think you can pull it off by yourself. Every chance in the world if you let God do it."
Have you ever seen that movie "Jerry Maguire" with Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger? Once Tom realizes what he had with Renee he returns to her and says "you complete me." We were all created with a God-shaped hole inside of our hearts that is reserved only for God and we will never feel complete without Him. We often try to fill that hole in our hearts with other stuff like drugs, sex, alcohol, pornography, etc., but it never lasts. When you allow Jesus into your heart and life and you begin working with the Holy Spirit, you will finally become complete and full of love, so full of love it will just naturally flow onto anyone (neighbor) who crosses your path. The only relationship that can truly complete us is a relationship with Jesus.
You can begin pursuing a relationship with Jesus right now. Pick up your Bible which is the Word of God and start reading it, I recommend starting in the book of John. If you are new to reading the Bible I recommend starting with a (New Living Translation).
John 1:1 (NLT) says:
"In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God."
John 1:14 (NLT) says:
"So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son."
So Jesus is the Word of God and he was with God before anything was ever created. Jesus (the Word) became flesh and lived among us. God is a three-part God consisting of God - Jesus - Holy Spirit. The Word is the Bible which explains why we would get to know Jesus if we read it. The Word of God is our most valuable treasure on this earth and so many people don't even realize it. So many countries don't have the same freedom we have and you will see in the following video how valuable the Word of God is to those who know what it contains.
It really humbled me and made me realize how lucky I am. If any of my blog posts have touched your heart I want to hear about it. Please leave a comment on the blog post that touched your heart.
May 6, 2013
Tired of the struggle? Want to find peace and feel complete? Read on!
April 24, 2013
Satan injects negative thoughts but God provides the Ultimate Weapon!
Have you ever spent time playing the PAC-MAN game when you were a kid? When I was much younger I spent many hours playing that game and I can't forget Ms. PAC-MAN as well. I remember running around gobbling up pac-dots and running away from those dang ghosts who always seemed to be just a little bit faster. I would grit my teeth and hope to make it to a power pellet with all 4 ghosts hot on my trail. Of course that only lasted for a short time and then they were back again and hot on my trail. If I remember correctly, Pinky was the ghost who usually caused me the most grief. Here is a picture of the game:
PAC-MAN kind of reminds me of myself and what I used to be like. I used to gobble up all of the garbage lies that satan fed to me. I never knew all those negative thoughts that I allowed to have free reign in my mind were actually being fed to me by satan and his army of fallen angels. Thoughts like, "nobody loves you. Things will never change. You're an accident. You don't belong here. You're damaged goods. Nobody cares what you have to say. Your life will never get any better." All of these thoughts were like those pac-dots in the PAC-MAN game and I gobbled them up as my own thoughts (it was my truth, my reality). Of course satan also uses people to spit forth mean, nasty, hurtful words and like a snake injects venom into its victim we often receive those words as truth.
When I started reading my Bible I discovered that all of those negative thoughts were lies. This is what it says about satan in John 8:44 (NLT)
". . . he has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
The Bible actually calls satan the father of lies. There is no truth found in him. When you receive Jesus as your personal savior the Holy Spirit comes to live inside you to lead and guide you through this life and that includes leading you to wisdom and truth. If you take the time to read God's word the Holy Spirit will be able to reveal God's truth to you and set you free from those lies you have been believing about yourself for so long. The bible says in John 8:32 (NLT)
"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
That is exactly what receiving Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior and reading the Bible did for me, it set me free. The Bible also says, "He whom the Son sets free is free indeed."
I have learned that God actually loves me exactly the way I am. I learned that even though my parents never planned me He did and that He has good plans for me. Jeremiah 1:5 (NCV) and Psalm 139:13 (NLT):
"Before I made you in your mother's womb, I chose you. Before you were born, I set you apart for a special work." "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb."
Now I don't just sit back and take it. I no longer gobble up every lie (pac-dot thought) that pops up, I fight back. When the devil tries to feed me more of his garbage lies I open my mouth and speak God's truth and it defeats him every time. Now, when he tries to tell me, "your life will never change" I fight back by throwing scripture back at him and say, "God has good plans for me" as it says in Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT) and Philippians 4:13 (AM)
"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me (I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ's sufficiency)."
That last scripture has brought me through a lot of tough situations (spiritual battles). I used to carry it around in my purse and pull it out whenever I needed it. Now I carry it around in my heart and mind. You would not believe how much this discovery has changed my life. It actually says in the Bible in 2 Corinthians 10:4 (NCV)
"We fight with weapons that are different from those the world uses. Our weapons have power from God that can destroy the enemy's strong places..."
I also like the way the Amplified Translation says that same scripture:
"For the weapons of our warfare are not physical (weapons of flesh and blood), but they are might before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds,"
God has placed us in this world, but He has not left us without weapons. God's word is a powerful weapon. Prayer and Worship are powerful weapons. We are in a (spiritual) battle everyday and it takes place in our thought life. The enemy's strong places or "strongholds" as the Amplified version words it are those repetitive negative thoughts we have that play over and over in our minds like a broken record.
If you receive Jesus as your Savior and if you start to read the Bible your life is going to change in amazing ways. God's word will come alive. You will begin feeding your spirit the truth and it will take root inside your heart. It will begin to expose the lies that you have been believing for so long, perhaps all your life. Reading the Bible is like PAC-MAN eating those power pellets giving you the ability to defeat the enemy (satan and his lies). When PAC-MAN eats that power pellet those ghosts that were on his heels do a 180 degree turn and head for the hills. When you feel bombarded by those negative thoughts which are like the ghosts in PAC-MAN you just have to open your mouth and quote a scripture of truth and they will do a 180 degree turn and run in the opposite direction. You also need to know that one time will not be the end of it. They will come back and try again just like the ghosts always come back to chase you in PAC-MAN. However, it does get easier.
June 29, 2012
What Satan Intended for Harm God Used for Good
Genesis
50:20
November 27, 2011
Prophetic Baptism Vision Fulfilled
It was dusk on a warm, sunny, summer evening in 2010 and I was outside on my deck enjoying my time spiritually curled up in God’s lap. I had just finished spending some time reading from His love letter (the Bible) and I was pouring out to Him whatever was on my heart. Since approximately 2006 I had been feeling the desire and need to be baptised as I had never been. As I now fully comprehended what water baptism truly meant and out of my deep love and admiration for Jesus, I wanted to take this next step of faith. The only problem was that I was still suffering from varying degrees of panic disorder and the fear of all of the “what ifs” was weighing heavily on me, especially the “what if I had a panic attack” thought. My church had a baptism ceremony around 2006 and I really wanted to be a part of it, but fear and panic had overtaken my desire to be baptised.
Since then I had made a lot of progress in overcoming many fears and I had been venturing out to a lot more places and taking part in more activities that I had previously avoided. It was clear to me that my faith and confidence were growing. I cried out to God saying “please make a way for me to be baptised. What is the best way? Where should it happen?” I really wanted to be baptised outside in a body of water like how Jesus was baptised in the Jordan River. Since I had made it out for a holiday to Pike Lake the previous summer, I knew I could go that far so I thought perhaps Pike Like would be a good place to be baptised. It is part of the Saskatchewan River too so it would be even closer to how Jesus was baptised.
As I continued to cry out to God about my strong desire to be baptised wondering how and when and where it would happen, I began having a vision. Youth group was about to begin for the first year with myself and another young lady leading it in the fall. I saw myself hanging out at youth group. Then I saw myself talking to one of the girls from youth group. We were excited because we were both going to be baptised. I saw myself get baptised and she was baptised afterwards. That is where the vision ended. At that point I felt a knowing in my spirit that I needed to wait until the 2010-2011 youth group season ended. I knew that one of the young ladies from youth group was going to be baptised at the same time as me. I did not know which girl; I just knew it was a girl. After that of course I questioned whether that was just a daydream or if it was, in fact, a prophetic vision from God. I decided not to analyze it, but just wait and see what happens.
That winter after attending a membership class at church one morning, we had talked about baptism and I was all pumped up and excited about the idea of being baptised someday soon. I went upstairs and walked straight over to one of the girls from youth and said something like “have you ever been baptised” or “would you like to be baptised” or something like that, I cannot recall my exact words. Her name is Sierra. I had no idea why I said that because I had no intention of saying that when I walked up to her, it just came out. I had no idea if she had already been baptised or if she was even feeling the desire to be baptised.
A few more months passed and our pastor started talking about having a baptism service that summer. I had completely forgotten about the fact that I had mentioned getting baptised to Sierra from youth when I received a text message from her saying she was going to be baptised with me. As soon as I read that I remembered that vision I had the summer before youth group started. It was all coming together with the Holy Spirit’s help.
On September 18, 2011, I was finally baptised. It was not in the Saskatchewan River or in Pike Lake for that matter, but it was outdoors in a swimming pool and I made sure I brought a small vile of river water that I poured into the pool so I could say that I was baptised in river water just like Jesus. There were five of us that were baptised that day. She was baptised after me just like in my vision and she was the only one from youth group who was baptised that day.
Some of you might be thinking, well you mentioned baptism to Sierra and that is why it happened, but I beg to differ. Mentioning it and someone deciding they are ready to do it are two completely different things. This had the Holy Spirit’s work written all over it from the time I had the vision to the time Sierra was baptised after me.
I even shared a short part of my testimony which was optional and I am not a public speaker type. In part of my testimony I said:
“I have struggled with fear and panic for far too long. It has robbed me of relationships and caused me to distance myself from family members I was once very close to.
I believe sometimes God miraculously delivers a person, for example, from an addiction or an illness and sometimes Jesus meets you down in the pit you are in, takes you by the hand and walks you out. I believe Jesus is doing the latter for me and in the process I have been learning some valuable lessons along the way that I otherwise would not have learned as Jesus walks me out of that pit one step at a time. I am not where I need to be yet, but I thank God I am not where I used to be.
It is that same crippling fear that has kept me from being baptized in accordance with and in obedience to God’s Word, but not anymore. I will no longer be mastered by anything but Jesus.”
If you were to ask me if I felt any fear as I shared my testimony and got baptised and my reply to you would be “you better believe it,” and you know what, I felt the fear but I also made the choice not to obey those fickle feelings and instead I pushed through them in faith with Jesus and sweet little Sadie (my new best friend) by my side. Sadie is a sweet little girl who was glued to my side that whole time. She was my little angel that God sent to me to share that very memorable moment in my life.




August 31, 2011
Treadmill workout and a precious God moment
I have a true story to share with you. I was working out on my treadmill. I have Shaw digital TV and I am scanning the music channels for “high energy” music to keep me motivated. I stopped on the 80s channel. OK, so maybe I am showing my age here, but I am an 80s girl. Anyway, this song came on called, “Got my mind set on you” by George Harrison. Does anyone know the song I am talking about? If the lyrics will fit I will sometimes turn a song into a worship song and sing it as a form of worship to God. When I heard the main chorus of the song I felt like it was the perfect worship song so I began singing the lyrics to the chorus only and worshiping God while working out on my treadmill. The lyrics in the chorus are pretty simple. They are, “I got my mind set on you” repeated over and over. So there I was singing at the top of my lungs while working out on my treadmill singing, “I got my mind set on you” and pointing to the sky. I suppose it is a good thing I workout at home instead of at the gym…lol. Here is a link to the song if you want to hear it: http://youtu.be/jQM9rwt_MHc
Then the song ended and I can’t remember if it was the very next song or the song after that, but shortly after that song I heard God say to me in my heart, “Now I have a song for you that I want you to listen to. Pay close attention to the chorus lyrics because this explains how I feel about you.” Has anyone here ever been Rick Rolled? If you have you will know exactly what song I am talking about. The song is called, “Never gonna give you up” by Rick Astley, another 80s song of course. When I listened to the words in the chorus of this song and knew that God was telling me this is how He feels about me, I felt incredibly happy; it was an amazing God moment. I felt so loved. I know He feels the same way about you too. If you have ever struggled with feeling like God doesn’t want you or He doesn’t care about you or that you are not good enough, don’t believe it, those are lies coming from the enemy. I know God feels the exact same way about you as He does about me and this song applies to you just as much as it does to me. I know He loves the fact that I am sharing this with you now. Here is a link to the song: http://youtu.be/k7oVeqs-ve8 (Play the song) Go ahead and dance, sing or do both if you want to. J
Remember this only applies to the chorus lyrics of the song, not the verses. The chorus lyrics are posted below:
Never Gonna Give you up Lyrics
Rick Astley
CHORUS
Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
For those of you who have never been Rick Rolled and would like the pleasure of the experience so you know exactly what I am talking about click on this link: http://thekickback.com/rickroll/rickroll.php
I have to tell you that sharing a moment like that with God feels incredible. Just the fact that God would care about me so much that He would send me a song to tell me how much He loves me? Little ol’ me? It is an amazing feeling. Who am I that He should care so much for me? But He does care for me. He does love me. And He loves you just as much.
In Acts 10:34 the Bible says, “It's God's own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you're from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open…”
What I am trying to say is there is nothing special about me. If God will communicate his love for me He will do it for you too, he does not play favorites as we read about in the previous verse. The fact is God is always trying to communicate with us. The problem is we become too preoccupied and too busy with the things in our life that we fail to hear him.
We fill our heads with text messages, work, video games, music, movies, sports, time with friends, etc. None of these things are bad if they are clean and moral. It is all about balance. So many people say they are just too busy to spend time with God, but the truth is, we always make time for what is important to us. If friends are important to you, you will always make time to hang out with them and enjoy your time with them. God is no different. He wants to be your best friend. If you will make time for Him every day like you do other things that are important to you, I PROMISE you, YOU WILL begin to feel His presence, YOU WILL begin to feel His love for you and YOU WILL hear from Him!
So many people say they don’t feel God or they think of Him as this being out there in the universe somewhere, but the truth is God is never far away. We are the ones who move ourselves further away from Him by crowding Him out of our lives with other things. The choice is always ours.
He communicates to each person in unique ways. He speaks to us in a way that He knows we will receive it. For example, when He Rick Rolled me He knew I was listening to the music to see if I could turn it into a form of worship as I was working out. I had just finished singing the chorus lyrics to Him as a form of worship. He knew I would hear Him at that moment. And I am here to tell you, when you hear from Him, the love you feel from Him, it is like no other, it is out of this world, literally, and cannot even be compared with the kind of love you will ever find on this earth. Just like the song lyrics say, He will never give up on you, He will never lie to you, He will never hurt you and He will NEVER leave you! Those are promises you can trust completely. We have all been hurt, lied to, given up on and left behind, etc., but there is One Who will never do that to you. I pray my treadmill God moment blesses you…