Category: God

Be Still and Know

tlc4women4 Comments
http://worshippingchristian.org/images/blog/Stillness.jpg

Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God;

How often are you just quiet before the Lord? How often do you tune out he static of life to truly listen to what is going on within you?

New age calls it meditation, but followers of Christ call it meditation as well. The process is the similar because the principal of meditation doesn’t change.

Psalm 48:9 Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love.

The temple of God is not a place. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?

So what does it mean to meditate on the word? When I worked in a large city I had a masseuse who taught me to mediate because she said I was too tense. She said I had to get to a quiet place in my mind and the way to do that was to count back from 100 to 1 with each breath until I could do so without any other thoughts of things to do, thoughts of breathing or anything else that came to mind to distract me. Honestly, I was never able to do that. My mind would wander and I’d forget where I left off in the breathing. It’s impossible to not think about anything, so I changed my meditation time in to learning to be still before the Lord. Have you ever tried to still your mind? It’s very difficult. Yet, the bible says that God speaks to us in that still small voice. (1Kings19:12) The only way to hear a still small voice is to be as quiet as possible. When people whisper you have to be quiet and draw near to hear.

The noise of the world often drowns out the possibility of hearing from God. We have noise wherever we go. We have even created noise machines so as not to sleep in silence. The very thing we need to exist in peace, wisdom and love, we drown out in the chaos of life. Jesus often went away from the crowds to be still. You must often get to a quiet place in your life where you are still. In those moments of stillness are where revelation comes, where problems can be resolved, and where wisdom is imparted. In those quiet moments is where God speaks to the scared part of your heart, the wounded part of your heart, the healthy part of your heart, and the inquisitive part of your heart. Is it any wonder that the enemy of your soul surrounds you with noise? Televisions that are on all night, music in elevators, can you ever find a quiet place unless you make room for it? Some people I know actually feel edgy in quiet times. Simply they have not learned to be still. Quiet makes them nervous because they’ve never learned to dwell in the peace of stillness. Quiet can be scary because it forces you to face fears.

Noise is sent to distract us from the union between God and us. I’ve heard people say that they decided to shut the TV off for a set number of days and that boredom caused them to read the bible. Do you have a quiet place? Can you access it regularly? If not, I urge you to find one. Try to find a place where you are still. To find a place where you are able to hear God’s still small voice. It’s the direction and the peace you need. Sometimes my best prayer time with God is when I am quiet and I listen rather than speak.

Carrying Out Our Servant Assignment

tlc4womenLeave a comment
http://www.flickr.com/ photos/walterarce/ 4201260981/

1 Corinthians 3:1. But for right now, friends, I’m completely frustrated by your unspiritual dealings with each other and with God. You’re acting like infants in relation to Christ, 2. capable of nothing much more than nursing at the breast. Well, then, I’ll nurse you since you don’t seem capable of anything more. 3. As long as you grab for what makes you feel good or makes you look important, are you really much different than a babe at the breast, content only when everything’s going your way? 4. When one of you says, “I’m on Paul’s side,” and another says, “I’m for Apollos,” aren’t you being totally infantile? 5. Who do you think Paul is, anyway? Or Apollos, for that matter? Servants, both of us – servants who waited on you as you gradually learned to entrust your lives to our mutual Master. We each carried out our servant assignment. 6. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. 7. It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. 8. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. 9. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God’s field in which we are working. 10. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! 11. Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. 12. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. 13. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you’ll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won’t get by with a thing. 14. If your work passes inspection, fine; 15. if it doesn’t, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won’t be torn out; you’ll survive – but just barely. 16. You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? 17. No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred – and you, remember, are the temple. 18. Don’t fool yourself. Don’t think that you can be wise merely by being up-to-date with the times. 19. Be God’s fool – that’s the path to true wisdom. What the world calls smart, God calls stupid. It’s written in Scripture, He exposes the chicanery of the chic. 20. The Master sees through the smoke screens of the know-it-alls. 21. I don’t want to hear any of you bragging about yourself or anyone else. Everything is already yours as a gift – 22. Paul, Apollos, Peter, the world, life, death, the present, the future – all of it is yours, 23. and you are privileged to be in union with Christ, who is in union with God. -“The Message”

Hung Up On The Whys?

tlc4women1 Comment
http://www.sheknows.com/

Ever talk to a three year old? They will ask a simple question that then leads to about 50 more questions that start and end with one word – WHY? Gideon was a man in the bible who was called a mighty warrior. An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a time in his life where he and his people had nothing. They were bullied, stolen from and living an impoverished life. Here is the story.

Judges 6:1 Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. 2 Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. 3 Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. 4 They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. 5 They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. 6 Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.
7 When the Israelites cried to the Lord because of Midian, 8 he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 9 I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. 10 I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”
11 The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. 12 When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” 13 “But sir,” Gideon replied, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.”

I’m fascinated by this story because here is a man who has nothing. He’s trying to mill in a winepress in secret. He’s just trying to get some flour for a meal to feed his family and angel of the Lord appears to him. I don’t know about you, but I would be freaked out! My heart would be racing and I would be listening to hear what the angel was saying. Gideon however is fed up and he wants to know why these things are happening. Why has God been absent? Why hasn’t he done any miracles? Why has he abandoned us? Why has he put Israel into the hand of the Midians?

All of us can relate to Gideon. We get hung up on the whys of life instead of seeing the miracle that the time has finally come for God to send an answer to get us out of our situation. We want to know why we were there in the first place. Does it matter in the scheme of things? Does it matter why we were suffering or is it simply the fact that we get to get some relief? The fact of the matter is that the answer of why Gideon found himself in a mess can be found in the very first sentence of this story. Go back and read it. The reason our own messes have happened can be found in the very first sentence in the chapter of our very own story. Does it even matter now? The fact is there is a way out of the problem a solution has been sent!

Don’t get hung up on the whys! Instead look for solutions that will get you out of your troubles. Cry out to God for the answer. Many times when we say things like, “Why does this always happen to me?” The answer is simple, “Because I haven’t learned the lesson in life that I need to about this situation.” We are not victims. Sometimes we cause things to happen, sometimes others in our lives cause things to happen but we always have a free will choice on what to do next. We can dig our heels in and get hung up on the whys or we can actually be that mighty warrior and get through this situation in our life!

It’s Easter!

tlc4womenLeave a comment

Luke 24:1. At the crack of dawn on Sunday, the women came to the tomb carrying the burial spices they had prepared. 2. They found the entrance stone rolled back from the tomb, 3. so they walked in. But once inside, they couldn’t find the body of the Master Jesus. 4. They were puzzled, wondering what to make of this. Then, out of nowhere it seemed, two men, light cascading over them, stood there. 5. The women were awestruck and bowed down in worship. The men said, “Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery? 6. He is not here, but raised up. Remember how he told you when you were still back in Galilee 7. that he had to be handed over to sinners, be killed on a cross, and in three days rise up?” 8. Then they remembered Jesus’ words. 9. They left the tomb and broke the news of all this to the Eleven and the rest. 10. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them kept telling these things to the apostles, 11. but the apostles didn’t believe a word of it, thought they were making it all up. 12. But Peter jumped to his feet and ran to the tomb. He stooped to look in and saw a few grave clothes, that’s all. He walked away puzzled, shaking his head. -“The Message”

Aren’t you glad we are not puzzled anymore? Praise you lord for the freedom you restored us to. May we never take your sacrifice for granted.

A Dinner Invitation

tlc4womenLeave a comment
http://www.flickr.com/photos/justsew/1748647445/

Psalms 15
1. God, who gets invited to dinner at your place? How do we get on your guest list?
2. “Walk straight, act right, tell the truth.
3. “Don’t hurt your friend, don’t blame your neighbor;
4. despise the despicable. “Keep your word even when it costs you,
5. make an honest living, never take a bribe. “You’ll never get blacklisted if you live like this.”

A Hand-Crafted World

tlc4womenLeave a comment
http://www.flickr.com/ photos/mariix/ 234033956/

Psalm 8:1. God, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name.
2. Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you; toddlers shout the songs That drown out enemy talk, and silence atheist babble.
3. I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
4. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, Why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way?
5. Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods, bright with Eden’s dawn light.
6. You put us in charge of your handcrafted world, repeated to us your Genesis-charge,
7. Made us lords of sheep and cattle, even animals out in the wild,
8. Birds flying and fish swimming, whales singing in the ocean deeps.
9. God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.

Do You Ever…

tlc4women1 Comment

look at your life with such amazing gratitude to God for what he’s brought you through and what he’s done for you? Today was one of those days for me. It made me look ahead in anticipation to what’s next!

Bought With A Price

tlc4women1 Comment
http://www.idyllwildpines.com/ IPC%20Pages Calendar.html

Dear Pastor Susan,
My girlfriend and I live together and when we asked to serve at our church, we were told that we couldn’t until we got married. With the economy the way that it is we can’t really afford to do that. What is the policy at your church and why do churches say they need help then turn it down when it’s offered?

Thank God for bible believing churches! We believe the same as your church. You got to get this part of your life settled, then you move into position. Since you’re a believer, I won’t throw scripture at you but here is the best way I can explain it.

You see, Jesus came and bought you with a price. He laid his life on the line for you. He still gave you the choice to follow him or not but you chose to follow him. That carries with it a certain responsibility. It means that when God says if you love me keep my commandments you agreed to those terms. So since you know his commandments and you took the deal you can’t then say that you receive the gift of salvation but refuse to follow the lead of the Father. The two conflict, as well they should. I know that you said it’s not doable right now to get married due to the economy but I’m unclear why. Marriage is a license at city hall and your Pastor conducting a covenant ceremony.

You don’t get to rent a woman and she doesn’t get to rent you. You don’t get to rent Jesus for just a part of your life. In all cases it’s all or nothing. Don’t be deceived by the message that says it’s all good and you can repent for it later. God put these boundaries in place to save you from heartache and the pain it causes. 2 Corinthians 6 (okay, maybe just a scripture!) says we should not take the grace of God in vain. Yes, you are right the church always needs help but it’s working through a process of perfection (meaning maturity).

I’m really glad to respond to this right now. We are learning all about this in our bible study and I’ll write more about that in a future post. In the meantime, we are praying for you and all of those who find themselves in your shoes. I hope you will do the right thing!

15 Minutes

tlc4women5 Comments
http://www.twoheartsdesign.com/ imagesclipart/ heartsandmore

This morning started out like any other. I was getting ready for work, my husband was taking the kids to school. At 7:45 a.m., Lulu was outside, the house was all to myself and I saw an opportunity to change the bed sheets. Only I took one look at my bed and decided that I was so tired, I wanted to just go back to bed. So I did. I laid down and covered up and just had one of those random thoughts about nothing moments.

In a short amount of time and without a thought in my head, I began to sing a Spanish song, Estar Contigo. The chorus says, “to be with You is the best decision I could’ve ever made. Your blessings could stop if you remained by my side. I would be complete as long as I can be with You.” All I can explain was that it was just a random shout directly from my heart to the heart of God. Then the peace of God washed over me and I felt a connection. There were no words spoken between us. Just being together was overwhelming and right.

I got up and finished getting ready. My morning completely changed in the span of 15 minutes. That’s all it took. Prayer doesn’t always have to have words. Sometimes, being together is enough. My day went so beautifully after that. Get quiet and let your heart speak.