There's More!

 

On Christmas morning, I went upstairs to join my son, his wife, and my granddaughter Bella for a few minutes before they left the house to go to a brunch with my daughter-in-law’s family.  The plan was that they would empty their stockings before they left, but would save the opening of gifts under the tree until they returned in the afternoon.

Bella joyfully drew out small gifts, one after another; getting more excited the deeper her arm disappeared down the stocking.  She had candy, and hair accessories, and gift cards to her favorite places to eat.  At one point she squealed, "This is the best morning ever!”  

I’m glad she was so excited and grateful for what she had received, but the day held so much more for her.  There were gifts at her Pappy’s house and gifts right back here at our house that afternoon. Not only that, but there would be another gift or two the next day when she and her parents were going to another family dinner.  She had only scratched the surface of what she would receive this Christmas. She stopped short of realizing all that was about to come to her that day.

She was much like many of us are as Christians.  We are excited and grateful for the amazing gift of salvation that was bought for us by the blood of Jesus, as we should be, but God never meant for us to just stop there.  He has so much more prepared for us once we have joined His family and kingdom through being born again.  We shouldn’t quit when we’re just getting started!

God is showing us gift after gift that is available to us after we take that first step.  There are experiences and levels of understanding and depths of fellowship that we don’t even realize are waiting because we just open the stocking of salvation and declare that this is the best thing ever.  Jesus is the best thing ever, but He’s just getting started.  Look at what God says about this life that He gives us.

Ephesians 3:20-21 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

We are born again, but our transformation is not just a one-time thing.  There’s so much more coming as we continue this walk with Him.

2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Eventually, this season, Bella’s gifts will stop coming. She will have received all that people have chosen to give her and she’ll settle into a life of enjoying the good things she has now, but with God, there is no end to what He is pouring out on the lives of His children. There is no end to His season of giving.  It’s more than we could ever imagine.

1 Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

So as the world packs the Christmas decorations, throws away the used wrapping paper, and forsakes the holiday food for the new year’s diets, please remember to keep looking for and expecting the gifts and plans that God has for you.  Be thankful for what He has already done, but don’t get comfortable there.  There is always more!

Connecting When It's Not Easy

 

In a recent church service, we could feel the tangible presence of God.  The sense of peace that swept over the congregation was heavy and sweet. The Holy Spirit moved among us and ministered to all who had a heart that was listening for His words.  I wrote on the church’s Facebook page I wished every day was a Sunday.  That time together with each other and with Jesus was deeply meaningful.

Then I realized how easy it is to praise with the praisers and worship with the worshippers.  Prayer comes more effortlessly when you are praying with others who agree with the word of God.  There’s nothing wrong with the feeling that God is more accessible when we are together, but there is something wrong if that is the only time we connect with Him.

If you search the internet, you’ll find prayer notebooks, Bible study guides, and spiritual journals to help you in your time of personal devotions. There are ideas using colored pencils and illustrating the verses you are reading. There are suggestions for background praise music to set the atmosphere for your meeting with God. The websites that talk about these things paint a lovely picture of you surrounded by your Bible and your spiritual tools, sipping on coffee or tea, looking out the window at a beautiful view of God’s creation while you spend time with the Lord.  There’s nothing wrong with that either, but if they took all those tools away from us, could we still connect with God? 

In some countries today, there are Christians that don’t even have a Bible or have only a few pages they value as the most precious possession they own.  The persecution in those places means they don’t have easy access to worship music or podcasts or sermon videos - all the things that so easily are available to us. If we were in that situation, could we still bring praise to God? Could we get in His presence without all the tools that we enjoy?  Could we connect with Him if they threw us into jail because of our faith?

Because of our freedoms, the worst persecution we’ve ever faced is usually no more traumatic than someone calling us a holy roller or a Jesus freak.  Our pastor has been talking about being disciples; being the “disciplined ones” who follow God wholeheartedly.  Considering all these thoughts, I’ve been examining myself more and more to see if I’m prepared to stay in fellowship with God when it’s not easy anymore.  I pray that kind of persecution never comes, but the setup for it is already in our culture.  I’m asking that you give this topic some thought as well.  In difficult times, we need that connection more than we need our next breath.

Kingdom Work

 

I had a dream of a man who was building a brick structure.  He created a low wall of brick and mortar that barely reached his knees and was not very long.  All the while, behind him, there was another man working on the structure, but the first man never looked back to notice the second.  

It came time for the first man to die.  He looked down at the short wall that he had built and lamented that he wished he could have done so much more.  He thought of all the years he had wasted before he worked diligently on the project.  As he entered heaven’s gates, the man who had been laboring behind him ran ahead of him and was there to greet him. It was Jesus.  As the man looked into that beautiful face, Jesus said, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!”  

The man protested. “All I did was build this one little short wall.  I wish I could have done so much more for you.”

Jesus put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Turn around, son.”  As the man looked back at the place where he had been working, he saw a magnificent cathedral rising into the heavens.

We aren’t doing the work of the kingdom on our own.  The Holy Spirit Himself is working behind the scenes, adding to everything we do.  Our brothers and sisters are doing their little part- building their little sections of the structure alongside us.  The same Jesus who multiplied five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand people is multiplying our work far beyond what we can see.

We may serve in such anonymous ways behind the scenes that we don’t see the people that received salvation because we prepared the environment where they heard the word of God and responded.  That person’s life may, in turn, touch the lives of hundreds of others, turning them to God, and it’s all because we taught their child in the nursery so they could attend a service, or worked on the media team that brought that live video into their home or did any of a dozen other tasks that created an atmosphere that brought about an encounter with God.

We will be astonished in heaven to see how many people that we never met have been brought into the kingdom because of something we have done that we considered to be of no consequence.

Just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean you should do nothing.  We all have different callings and gifts that God has given us to use to build His kingdom.  We need every brick. 

1 Peter 2:4-5 says, “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, 5 you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

We are building and we are being built. Align yourself with the purpose of God to take your place in that spiritual house; it’s where you belong.

Connections

 

I don’t know why some people dream all the time and others never do.  All I know is that my mind is a virtual movie theater every night.  While most of those dreams fly out of my head as soon as the alarm goes off in the morning, I always look for meaning in those dreams that stay with me long after the day is underway.

My most recent dream involved a house on my uncle’s farm.  It’s a little place - just a little over 700 square feet because my grandparents built it as a place to spend their retirement years.  It sits on a little knoll overlooking the family farm, and it’s blessed with a gorgeous view.

In the dream, I was in the house with a couple of other women.  Looking out the window, I could see some men in the front yard and a few others in the backyard.  It was a beautiful sunny day, but the breeze coming off the mountain made it feel comfortable and cool.  Suddenly, from nowhere, there was a stream of water that lifted the little house from its foundation and floated it across the property over to an adjoining piece of land that belongs to my cousin’s widow.  

I felt no fear for my life as the house moved across the grass toward that plot of land.  The day was still calm and pleasant, and the house was smoothly gliding to where it would come to rest. All I could think about was that now we were going to have to get the house towed back to its original site and how much trouble it was going to be to get someone to come in and reconnect the water lines, the electric lines, and the septic tank.  That’s where the dream ended.

I’m not trained in dream interpretation, though I have read about it several times because of the many dreams that flood my brain, but when I meditated on this “movie in my mind” the next day, God showed me what it meant for me and for all of us.

The circumstances that moved the house weren’t big, scary, frightening things - just a gentle movement that somehow still had the power to move it from its connection to the foundation.  If we aren’t careful, even the daily events of our lives that are pleasant, or at least neutral, can move our attention away from God just as easily as a major tragedy that rocks our entire world.  Maybe those day-to-day events are even more likely to distract our attention because we aren’t guarding our hearts in situations that don’t seem threatening on the surface.

The connections that I worried about in the dream were symbols of three things that we lose when we allow distractions from our focus on God.  The first was the water lines.  Just as natural water is vital to our lives, the water of the Word of God is necessary to our spiritual lives so we can be both nourished and cleansed.  The electric lines represent the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, which guides and teaches us as well as making possible miracles in our lives and the lives of others.  

How am I going to spiritualize a septic tank?  This represents discarding any “stinking thinking” that we have about ourselves and others - all the negative attitudes, lies of the enemy, sin, and worldly “junk” that our minds have picked up in the course of our lives.  Through repentance and renewing our minds, we can discard all that waste in prayer.

1 Corinthians 3:11 says, “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

That foundation provides all that we need if we don’t allow the circumstances of our lives to break us away from it.

2 Peter 1:3 puts it this way. “....as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue...”

Why would we build on anything less, and why would we ever want those connections to be severed?

Unclaimed Property

 

I saw an online news article last week about the unclaimed property office in the state treasurer's office in West Virginia, where our family used to live.  It said that there were millions of dollars in abandoned bank accounts, in insurance proceeds, etc. that the office was trying to return to the rightful owners.

So, hoping that there was something there for our family, I went to their database and entered the names of all of my immediate family members.  It turns out that my husband's name was listed as having some unclaimed property.  I called to make sure it really was his and that it didn't belong to someone with the same name. They matched his name with a former address and sent us the forms to claim the property.

Foolishly, I forgot to ask how much was coming to him so it could be $4, or $40, or $400.  Time will tell, but it made me wonder what unclaimed property the body of Christ has stored up in the heavenlies, waiting for us to realize what belongs to us.

I'm not just talking about the material wealth that God gives us to steward and use to build His kingdom.  The riches of God go far beyond money.  

To claim those things, there are steps that must be followed. 

First, you have to be a citizen of the place where the property is stored.  If you are born again, you are a citizen of heaven, even if you aren't living there.

Next, you have to realize that there is a record of what belongs to you.  In our case, it was a database, but your heavenly property is documented in the Word of God.

Then, you must make sure that the listed property is yours by establishing your identity. You must talk to the person in charge of determining that those things belong to you.  In prayer and the Word, you can learn who you are in Christ - your true identity.

The next step is filing a claim.  For us it was filling out a form and again, proving identity by sending a copy of a driver's license and a social security card.  For the Christian, it's claiming the promises of God by reminding Him of His Word and accepting by faith what He has declared is yours.

The last event is receiving what has always been yours - when faith becomes sight.  That's when you enjoy the blessing that God has given you and when you use it to bless others, whether it's a monetary or a spiritual blessing.

While I was on the website, I found the name of another family member who has some kind of property available to them. I took the time to make a phone call so they can claim what is theirs.  In the Kingdom of God, our job is to tell our brothers and sisters where to find what belongs to them and how to obtain it.  

The Bible says, "For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us."  2 Corinthians 1:20

1 Peter 1: 2-4 gives us more detail about these promises. "Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."

The promises wer given to us to provide everything we need for our physical and spiritual well-being so that we could be partakers of the very nature of God.  Riches like that are worth identifying, claiming, and sharing.

No Walls

 

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may have noticed that you haven’t been able to be a regular reader for a while, because I’ve not been a regular writer.  I used to have a firm commitment to writing a blog post every Sunday night, but here we are at eight months into the year and I’ve only written a handful of posts.

This year, I have found myself in a dry season in my relationship with God.  It’s not the first dry season I have ever had, but I should have learned from the past ones how to deal with it correctly. I went through the motions a little, but that’s all it felt like - just a ritualistic, wooden attempt that I finally just stopped doing.  It was like a brick wall between God and me that made it basically impossible for me to hear His voice and feel His presence.  I didn’t hear those lessons from God in the everyday happenings in my life like I used to hear, so there was nothing to write.  I didn’t understand what had even happened, and I felt powerless to change it.

So I parked my life right there.  I accepted the wall instead of fighting to knock it down.  I went on with the daily routines of my new life in retirement, kept going to church, and just pretended that everything was fine.  However, there wasn’t a day that went by that the wall didn’t enter my thoughts.  God created us for intimacy with Himself. He designed us to hear His voice, and nothing else in this world can compare to that.  

I guess I was ashamed to admit that I had an issue, so I suffered in silence.  Then, on one recent Sunday morning, my pastor was ministering to the congregation at the end of a service as he gave the altar call.  He said that God showed him a wall that reached up very high, covered in claw marks.  I immediately recognized that wall.  It had been in my face for quite some time. Those claw marks were mine as I fought against it at first, but then I had grown tired and just sat down in defeat.

I didn’t go to the altar that morning. I told myself that because I couldn’t figure out what was causing me to see this wall up in my face every day, that I couldn’t knock it down, but I went home and even though my prayers seemed dry and cold, I asked God to show me the building blocks of this obstacle.  He brought things to my mind one at a time over a period of days, and I wrote them in my journal.

In my case, it was a very long list of things that had piled up gradually. There were many little stresses and changes  - some of them even good - that had taken my time and attention from God until I no longer felt close.  There were some major life changes and some frustrations and offenses, and I let the enemy use them to build a wall that stifled my intimacy with God. 

Once I could see the elements that made up the wall, I could deal with them through prayer and some wise counsel.  I found that as soon as I addressed the problems, my hunger for the Word of God and prayer returned as if the wall never existed. God had never hidden Himself during this time and as soon as I demolished the wall with God’s help, we were communicating face to face once again.

Are you feeling disconnected from God?  Is your prayer life routine and stale?  Are you avoiding the Word of God?  Do you see the same wall I was facing every day?  If so, please be wiser than I was and confront it today.  Ask God to help you understand and dismantle the thing that’s keeping you divided. 

James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.......”

John 15:15 says, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”

It is God’s desire to be near to us and to treat us as friends and children.  As I reestablish that intimacy with Him, I hope that I’ll be giving you more to read as He communicates to me the way He always has been faithful to do. All I have to do is immediately kick any brick away that threatens to build that wall again.

The Key to Winning the Race

Recently my son purchased a used game system to play with our four-year-old granddaughter, Bella.  One game they’ve shared is a racing game.  At first, she had limited ability to navigate using the steering wheel, but she’s progressively doing better.

One evening, I was in the kitchen fixing dinner and overheard her say, “Look, Daddy!  I’m staying on the road”.  Her daddy’s quick reply was, “That’s the key to winning the race, baby”.  

I don’t know if he realized just how right he was.

No matter how fast you travel, if you don’t stay on the road, you won’t reach your intended destination - both in the natural and in the spiritual.

In a natural race, injury or exhaustion can sideline runners. In our spiritual race, something can also sideline us.

Hebrews 12:1 says, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

This verse mentions weight and sin as the two factors which keep us from racing successfully.  The New Living Translation says “strip off every weight that slows us down”.  There are a lot of weighty things going on in my life and probably in yours as well.  Some are good and needed things, like caring for family members or making a living. Others are tough challenges, like dealing with illnesses or broken relationships.  There are other weights that we don’t think of as that significant, yet we devote so much time to them it becomes an impediment to our spiritual growth. These are things like hobbies or entertainments that are harmless in themselves, but grow to become enormous time wasters which interfere with our focus.

How do we then run the race as we should?  The writer of Hebrews continues in verse 2 of chapter 12. 

“Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

We stay on that track by remembering the One who paved the way for us to even begin to run on this road and focus on the same thing He did - the joy that is set before us if we are willing and obedient and can say as Paul did in 2 Timothy 4:7:

“ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Remedy

 

Bella, my four-year-old granddaughter, loves to play a game she calls “Hotel Doctor”.  She sits at my desk acting as receptionist and asks me very detailed questions as I check in to her hotel.  Then she escorts me to the couch and tells me to wait for the doctor. 

I think this game came from her love of staying in hotels on vacation and hours spent in doctors’ offices and waiting rooms because of her mother’s many medical issues.

Finally, the time comes when Dr. Bella shows up with her medical kit.  After checking my blood pressure and temperature, her immediate diagnosis is that I need heart surgery - performed with a pair of scissors and some tweezers.  The scenario never changes.

Though it’s just a childish game, Bella is closer to the truth than she knows.  The remedy for all of humanity’s woes is a change of heart or the mending of a broken heart.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?  However, Ezekiel 36:26 gives us the same hope that Bella offers in her childish play.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

All we have to do is to check in to the Great Physician’s hotel.....

A Special Offer on "Over the Circumstances"

Mother's Day is around the corner! If you purchase a copy of "Over the Circumstances" from me (not Amazon or another seller) I will enter your name in a drawing for a free second copy to give as a gift. The drawing will be on April 30 to give me time to get your free book in the mail in case it will be a Mother's Day gift.

To purchase, just put your name in the comments and we'll work out details. I can take cash, credit or debit card, PayPal, or Google Pay. I can meet you in person if you are local, or ship the book for free.

Also, anyone who buys a book between now and June 11 will be entered again for a drawing for the same deal to prepare you for Father's Day.

I Want to Listen to Myself

 

My granddaughter, Bella, just celebrated her fourth birthday.  She's had quite a stressful year with several changes of residence and separation from her parents for a couple of weeks while her mother had heart surgery.  While still being a responsible grandmother and expecting good behavior from her, I also give her some grace because of all the emotions I know she is trying to process.

One day in the car, we were talking about how she needed to listen to her parents and her Papaw and me when we ask her or tell her to do something.   Her response to my mini-lecture was, "I want to listen to myself"! 

Well, of course, she does!  The sin nature we all share tells us that we are in charge, which is something else she has asserted from time to time.  We all want what we want.  We think that our plans and desires for our lives should supersede everything else.   

So much drama gets added to Bella's life because of those little battles of the will that she engages in with us.  Likewise, so much stress is added to our lives when we struggle with our Father God.  

Sometimes I have tried to talk to her about how much easier her life would be if she would just do what she is told to do or if she stopped doing something when we direct her to stop.  I tell her how so many good and fun things could be added to her life if she would just simply listen.  Then I realized that I was preaching to myself.  How many more good things could God open in my life if I was truly obedient in all things?  

I must really be a difficult student in this life, because the lessons I learn through Bella's young life are a curriculum that God really needs to review with me frequently.   I'm so glad that He doesn't throw up His hands in despair, but continues to be a patient, loving Teacher.

Deuteronomy 28:1-2 puts it this way.  "And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.  And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God."