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We are so geared to live in the moment.  That is quite convenient for the enemy of our soul.  If he can make us think that nothing is more important than us being able to do what feels right, he can derail us from doing what’s important for Eternity.

Do you have a “whatever” attitude when it comes to the things of God?  It is a spirit that tries to attach itself to all of us at one time or another.  We can shake that attitude off in prayer and ask God to help us establish spiritual disciplines in our lives that will help us.

For instance, if you have trouble praying and reading the Bible in the morning before starting your day, go to bed ten minutes earlier and set your alarm to get up for ten minutes earlier to pray and read. Start doing something and go from there, but by all means, start!

One of the things that keep Christians from prayer is trying to go from where we are to where we think we should be.  God is more patient with us than we are with ourselves.  If we are faithful with our daily devotions, then we will eventually draw closer to God and desire more,  As that happens He will then help us do more.  But if we never learn to consistently pray and read God’s word, then we will be weak and frustrated in our walk with God. We can sincerely ask God to help us in this area of devotion to Him. He will hear and He will answer. 

As we have our daily devotions, let’s go beyond the “me, mine and ours” kind of prayer. May we learn to pray big prayers, prayers with eternal significance.  This is an excerpt from author Mike Macintosh’s book, Falling in Love with Prayer. “The Apostle Paul said: “If we have food and clothing, we will be content with that” (1 Tim. 6:8). In our society, with its wealth and free-enterprise system, we can work to obtain nearly anything. If the material world has a draw for us then we can work hard and accumulate all kinds of toys and luxuries.  But in societies with more oppressive forms of rule and less abundance, acquiring “goodies” is not even an option.  Christians in that kind of situation are free to pray because they love God, not because they view prayer as a catalog to present to the “great Santa Claus” in the sky.

The bottom line is this: Prayer really does pay off for us personally, but it depends largely on what payoff we are expecting.  If we are expecting a new car, a new house, a new wardrobe and other such new “stuff”, we may not get that kind of payoff.  But if we are expecting joy and contentment, we can count on those things.”

Personally, I have found prayer to be liberating, exhilarating, and tremendously adventurous!  Believe me, I didn’t start out feeling that way.  As a young woman, I desired to pray more because I honored God and I knew I should pray.  Just duty, period.  As I began my prayer journey the enemy of my soul attacked me from all sides.  I was quite unaware of the spiritual ramifications of prayer at this point.  I thought of myself as a little nobody.  Not realizing that as a child of God, His indwelling spirit within me was making the devil tremble. 

Satan made prayer seem unattainable, dark, dreary and hard.  What a difference in the way I feel about prayer now that I have broke through that erronious picture the enemy had painted for me!

When a person discovers first hand what prayer can do for the well being of their own mind, body and spirit and they experience their prayers making a difference in the lives of others and where they will spend Eternity…well, that changes everything, including the way you see prayer! 

Talking to God is not the chore it used to seem to be, it is a wonderful, intimate, loving, powerful, adventerous and necessary!

We have this express privilege, as a child of God, to influence eternity.  Through prayer we can help our family, friends and those we haven’t even met.  Prayers reach around our home, neighborhood, city, nation and the world.  They work now and will continue to work in the future. 

Prayer is amazing because we are communicating with our amazing, awesome, living God! 

Invest in prayer…the dividends are out of this world! 

I love you all and pray that all who read this will find a new and lasting adventure in prayer, in Jesus name!!

Everyone likes to win prizes.  It may be winning the drawing for a car because you were one who consented to wear your seatbelt, when driving, consistently for a year (my mother won a car back in the 60’s for doing that).  Or maybe you won a prize for entering the best pie at the fair.  We like to be the one who wins the prize and will do most anything to get it!

As Christians we sometimes get confused.  We put Christian disciplines in our lives to get a blessing or ‘the prize’.  That may work for a while.  But for living the abundant life God wants us to have we need to get established in our mind and heart one essential fact; He is the prize. 

When we get Jesus we get it all!  Every need will be supplied.  Unless we believe it and live our lives with Jesus as the prize, we will become weary and give up.  I have heard people say, “I just can’t do it anymore, I have tried.  It doesn’t work for me.”  

Are you feeling this way?  If so do a heart check.  Are you doing things for God so He will give you something…a blessing of finance, a spouse, a child.  God loves to give good gifts to His children so I have no doubt that if what you desire is His will, He will give it to you.

I firmly believe that we have got to come to the place where we make up our minds that we will serve God faithfully for the rest of our lives whether we get what we what or not.  There is freedom in this.  We are then free from the bondage of always waiting for the prize to come.  We can enjoy God for who He is. 

Jesus tells us in His Word that we are complete in Him.  This is a great comfort and removes fear. If everything we know and love is stripped from us, we still have The Prize.  Will there be pain?  Most certainly!  But He will keep us safe and sane.  No man can take us out of His Might Hand. 

I have looked at my own experiences and also at the experiences of others who are Christians.  The ones who make changes in their lifestyles strictly for other people are miserable and eventually go back to the way they were or worse.  Granted, it’s good to have people around to help give you the boost needed to make positive changes. But your motivation should be to do the will of God. 

I remember when I went away to Bible College I made some lifestyle changes because they were the rules.  But I was aware of those rules before I went. That was one of the main reasons I chose to attend that specific place of learning.  I felt I wasn’t strong enough to make the changes I desired to make while being around the same people I had always lived around.  I went, made those changes, and have never turned back to my old ways. A friend of mine, on the other hand, made some of the same changes I did but for a different reason.  A single minister came through. He told her he would like to date her but she would need to make some changes first.  She took him up on it.  She married him but unfortunately the changes didn’t last.

 Philippians 6-7 (The Message)Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

The King James Version puts is like this: 6Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 7And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Sometimes that peace seems unattainable.  I remember a time in my life where I was desperate for peace in my mind.  I was a very young pastor’s wife and mother and I was plagued with thoughts of worry, about anything and everything…real or imagined. Doubt, foul language and blasphemies, things I despised and had never practiced bombarded my mind.  I struggled with all this for a couple of years, I just “knew” that God had left me because I was such a terrible person.  I felt like a line in the verse of an old hymn, “…a sinner far from Jesus perishing with cold…”  And just as the hymn doesn’t end that way, neither did my life.  “But the Blessed Savior heard me when I cried.  He put His arms around me as He brought me to the fold now I’m living on the Hallelujah side!” 

For prayer and meditation:  1 Cor. 13:4-7 (NLT) 

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

I’ve been meditating on this passage of scripture. I tend to spiritualize this somehow but not put it into practice in everyday relationships.  I must remind myself this concept applies to the way I treat family, friends, church family and people in general as I go through life.  In fact it even applies to my enemies!

There is a prevailing thought that love comes easy when really the words, love and easy, cannot cohabit.  There is nothing easy about true love.  We cannot love by emotions or trying harder. We’ve got to let God do a work in us…a continuing work, from the inside out…God’s Spirit doing the loving through us, overriding our human-ness.

I am praying for God to do this work in me, in you and in all of His children.  Desire is the key, He will do the rest…if we ask with a believing heart.  God is love and will take us on a “love journey” to teach us what it is to really love someone…Happy Travels!

Wow!  I just had another one of those Aha! moments.  (I say “another”, because I also had one of those moments last Wednesday night during Bible Study as the Pastor was teaching.  If you miss Bible Study night,you miss a lot!)

You know the feeling of Aha!…the dawning of truth, a revelation hits your mind when you are not expecting it.  It’s a sensation like when a curtain suddenly opens and a beautiful truth, like a breathtaking landscape, is laid out before you!

 This time it happened as I was listening to the Adult Bible lesson Sunday morning in church.  It was part of a series being taught on “Creation”.  At one point in the lesson Pastor brought out that God created everything, including the angels.  The scriptures about Lucifer, son of the morning, were read depicting how beautiful and powerful he was until…there’s that word “until”, it’s the point where something changes.  And something did change, and change drastically!

Lucifer let pride come in and take control, he was most the beautiful angel and had been granted a lot of power.  His beauty became his god and he decided he could be God.  God is not plural.  There is only one God.  So there was war in the heavenlies. One third of the angels fought alongside Lucifer.  Of course, God and His angels won and God cast Lucifer, and the angels who fought with him, out of heaven.  Lucifer is now commonly called the devil.

So, you wonder… what is the Aha! moment?  I was thinking…people seem more possessed than ever about being beautiful.  Just think about the fashion magazines, the botox movement, plastic surgery…are you getting that Aha! feeling yet?  There is more than marketing, money and coincidence behind it all.  There is a spirit pushing it.  The same spirit that Lucifer fathered in Heaven is the same spirit trying to push pride on all of us.  The world is embracing and flaunting this destructive lifestyle of bondage. The devil is trying to trap even our young children, with the media in the lead, through constant pressure from every side.

I pray God will keep us all from falling into this trap.  I am praying especially for children and teens.  There is so much freedom in Christ, I want this freedom for them.  God has not called us to bondage.  It is bondage to feel like you have to follow the latest fashion fad, have flawless skin and be skinny to be accepted.  Because the great majority of people can’t live up to that, it fosters low self-esteem (which is simply pride turned inside-out…my definition) and a feeling of being left out if you do not look like the latest idol. (Last time I checked we weren’t supposed to look at or follow idols…!)

Let’s shake ourselves and take a look, not at ourselves but at the great, awesome God we serve!  Freedom is when we find our worth in Jesus Christ.  Then we are totally free from the bondage of this world and nothing can shake us. 

True freedom, by the way, is not doing everything we want to do.  It is not having to follow what this flesh begs to do but being able instead, to follow the Spirit of God!

That’s walking in the Spirit. That’s true freedom!

I thank the Lord for my Aha! moments!  Have you had one lately?  If so share it and encourage someone in the Lord. 

Check out Romans 8…it’s a great read!

Waking up early this morning in our hotel room, and not wanting to disturb my husband, I lay awake praising the Lord.  I was telling Him how Awesome, Mighty and Wonderful He is!  I begin to feel His Glorious Presence in my heart and soul… 

Now to those who have never experienced this you may feel a yawn coming on and say, “So what?”  But to those of us who have been “in His Presence” you thrill at the thought of it.  Not only of visiting Him now and then but learning to live in His Presence.

Abraham was visited by the Presence of the Lord in a voice.  He left family, houses and lands to obey Him.

Moses had his visit from a burning bush and it changed his life forever.

Songs are written about this Presence and its effect on us.  Sweet Hour of Prayer, an old hymn, says, “…and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known. 

The scripture says, “O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.”  (Psalm 34:8)

How long has it been since you have rested in His goodness?  Stop right now and take a ‘worship break’.  Don’t let the busyness and worry of this world steal your time with God!

The Presence of God in our lives is worth living…and dying for!

I understand that if you were given a choice to receive one million dollars in one month or a penny doubled every day for 30 days, the penny would be the better choice. At the end of one month you would have over five million dollars!

If we all would take that same concept and apply it to spiritual things how much more content we would all be!  If we would start by doing one thing, like being thankful, for instance.  In the midst of every day thank God for what is good and there are always good things to be thankful for.  Knowing God is number one on the list! 

I am learning to do just that and though I sometimes forget, I always come back to it because I know it’s a principal from the word of God and and God’s principals ALWAYS work.  There is a brother in Christ who has been through some really tough times.  This statement he made recently in an email, jumped out at me:  “You can find beauty in every single day of your life. I can’t explain it all; however, I do know that there is something that God does very special for people who are thankful…”

Sometimes I am in a grumbly mood, though I still feel grumbly I will turn my thoughts from grumbly to good and make myself speak thankful, good words…eventually my feelings follow.  That’s a pretty amazing concept to me really, but when you consider the Amazing God we serve, well, what more can I say?!

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.  Philippians 4:8

My husband and I have had the privilege to travel many places in the USA and the world.  As we worship and speak in many different churches I have noticed from time to time I hear a theme.  I may hear one sermon in Australia, another in the Philippines, then yet another in a conference in the US.  The preachers are different, the countries are different, even the sermons are different but one message will come out clear and strong.  God is speaking to His Church.  His Spirit knows no bounderies of space and time.  We are all one body and He speaks to the hearts of ministers across the globe and they deliver His message to His people.

God also gives us personal messages.  It happens to me over and over again…growing in the Lord is a lifetime journey for the child of God.  I will be reading God’s Word, hearing a sermon, reading an article, or I may be having a conversation with someone and I begin to realize I am hearing Him speak something specific to my heart.   Lately it’s been the subject of words.  My words count, I cannot speak idly.  I must speak Life into the lives of others.  I believe the older we grow, the more we experience life, our influence widens; we affect more people.  So I am asking the Lord to help me in this area. 

Just as a soldier in an earthly army, or a doctor in the medical field is constantly learning, Christians are always learning from The Teacher.  His Word, the Bible, being our standard to test what we hear in our spirit.  Don’t let yourself get in a rut, that’s boring. 

Walking with Jesus, the living Christ, is definitely an aventure.  This journey takes us from the mountain top to the valley and through the everyday walking in the plains. But dull and boring?…NEVER!  If we will spend time in His Presence along the way, He is joy unspeakable and full of glory…ALWAYS!

 So what are you hearing The Spirit say to you? 

The driver education teacher I had in High School gave me some great tips on driving.  I was having trouble driving straight.  I was watching the lines on the right and left, trying to stay in the middle of my lane.  The teacher told me to just look straight ahead, where I wanted to go and my hands would automatically steer the car to follow in that path. I tried it and it worked beautifully!

This little tip seems very simple but became invaluable; especially later when living on the mission field in Manila, Philippines.  The traffic there is bad…you cannot imagine, you have to experience it.  The vehicle next to me would literally be a couple of inches from my van.  The only way I kept from having an accident was heeding the advice of keeping my eyes where I wanted to go, not looking to the right or left.  There were often drop offs, and again, I would concentrate on keeping my eyes where I needed to go and my vehicle would follow.

The same is true with my body .  The things I look on I seem to eventually become…my eyes look, my mind thinks, my body follows.

God of Heaven and Earth and Master of my heart, Help me keep my eyes on you.  Then as I read Your Word, meditate on your goodness, praise and worship you, my body will follow with actions that please you.  Since I am human and will make mistakes, those actions will include getting up when I mess up.  I love you and trust you.  In Jesus Almighty Name, Amen!                                  

Psalm 101:3
I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: