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The Unfolding!
The Pagan Unfolding
It is a day like any other in the life of a married mother of four with a full time job. She leaves the older children at home to get themselves on the bus and drops the younger ones off a day care. Leola drives the few miles to work and begins her daily duties. She is a CAD Design Leader for a company fully capable of designing everything under the sun yet they cannot seem to get along with each other nor were they working to their full potential. Designers are an eclectic group of people with different needs and different wants. It is in this job Leola discovers her quest to help people improve their life skills. The Father had not called her yet but today she knows His hand was all over this job.
This was an exciting job for her because she was gifted to lead and gifted to design products too. She has a good eye because she is a visual person and she can easily see what she is looking at from all aspects. She is a visual person even today with a good mind for detail and an eclecltic imagination. Leola spots things long before most people plus she is gifted with Administration and leadership which is how all of these God given talents all work together to make her good at what God calls her to do. Leola was thriving in this role but she was well aware of those who would challenge her authority. She was more interested in those who were willing to learn and grow in all areas of their life and stayed away from those who didn’t. She saw every day how some would be dedicated yet struggled. There was always more going on then she saw but the only thing she could do is help with their work. Leola saw her future calling unfold right in front of her eyes.
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. And we urge you, brethren, to recognize those who labour among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. Be at peace among yourselves. (1 Thessalonians 5:11) We all have a job to do in the body of Christ, which encourages each of us to see getting done. If we watch closely we can see those who need our help and those who need our guidance to discover what it is God will have them do. We know the will of God because He lays it out for us in the Scriptures but our individual work from Him is different for each of us. It is a wonderful thing to discover it and begin walking in it. We will each go through a tremendous change in our soul so we can be the perfect person to do the perfect job given to us by God. From the time I discovered His work for me until now it has been more than a decade and more than a few horrible years of character adjustments. I want to labour among you and guide you to the calling God has for you! God did that for me and He will for you too.
The Godly Unfolding
Leola’s work every day, not only was leading, but guiding as well. She made it her personal mission to help those she worked with in all levels of their work. She was a fierce person to deal with when the designers were being verbally abused. She went to great lengths to stand for those who needed it, sometimes at her own expense. Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was a horrible day at the office. The world stood still along with all the work. Two months later her company closed its doors for lack of business and they all went their separate ways. Leola was convinced by this time that she had to learn how to help people in the workforce live better lives. There was just too much sadness and to many fights. This was the beginning of the pagan unfolding. Even when Leola is down she can be found encouraging and building people up that they would do the work God has ordained them to do. The pagan unfolding has become the Godly unfolding because He planned it this way.
There can be no doubt that God has His hand on those He has called and is going to call. Think about what He did for you while you were dead in your sin. It is hard to see when we are dead but when He brings us to life we can only come to one conclusion – He was unfolding us right before our eyes!
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Believe Him!
Hearing Him!
God has been speaking to Leola as she reads His Word and teaching her things she ought to know (Isaiah 43:19). To her surprise, God is not teaching her friends the same things. She was naïve in believing God teaches everyone the same truths. As she sits on her ‘have-to-have-it’ couch, staring out the window, she ponders what God is teaching her and why her friends do not agree. Why do they disagree? The Words are right there in black and white or are they grey? Is she hearing wrong? Is it the truth? She is not sure just yet! She talked to her friend about what little she knows but her friend vehemently disagrees with her. Leola is not sure what to think and she is hurt beyond measure! Her friend has been a Christian longer than her so she is confused about what to believe. Is God saying something different to her? She is afraid to talk to her about it again because she cannot defend this truth wholly but soon she will be able too.
Leola has discovered the Holy Spirit brings her to Scriptures that seem to be controversial with her friends. Why is He doing this? She is a relatively young Christian compared to her friends. Friends are important to her because she is an extrovert who gets her energy from friendship. No friends, no energy! Elohim was about to turn that concept upside down but first He is going to teach her about the benefits of controversy! Leola continued to fight for her friendships rather than the truths she was being taught BUT Elohim continued to teach her without fail and she believed Him but kept her mouth shut about what she was learning until the day she was challenged and the Spirit set her soul on fire to speak the truth whether her friend would hear it or not!
The Lord equips us to perform His will. He will bring you to truths designed to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up but it will be because He needs you to know it. We are being inundated today by watered down truths spoken to alleviate conviction of sin and make us feel comfortable in our current belief. Disciple of Jesus does not equal comfort! We feel uncomfortable letting God tell us what to do! We feel uncomfortable implementing the truth into our lives when no one around us is. We want to be clones of our Christian friends so we can feel accepted. Jesus says to those who believe, “If you abide in My Word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31-32) The truth shall make us free to believe Him over people. It shall make you free to do what He wants you to do and to be able to stand in what you are doing. It shall make you free to be His disciple not your pastors or your friends. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ means you believe Him!
Choosing Him!
Leola was in agony because her friend did not want to have anything to do with her again but she was at peace with it. During, her sometimes heated discussion with her friend, God supplied her with information she didn’t know before to solidify this new truth. She was surprised by her reaction to her friends exit from her life – peace along with grief. Now she was beginning to learn what being a disciple of Jesus Christ meant. The next time she walked into her church building she saw life in there differently. She had lost a friend and wondered how many more she would lose before the Lord took her to be with Him. Leola has walked away from Christians who were using her to forward their own ministry but this was her first loss of a good friend over the truth. Someone she cared about! Someone she admired! This loss threw Leola into another training session with Jesus about peace in the controversy over God’s truth. He taught her the difference between fighting for His truth and her own. Today, Leola knows the difference and accepts it whole heartedly. She is making new friends who enjoy and support her in everything she is doing for the Body of Christ. She believes Him in everything He teaches her!
Abiding in the Words of Jesus is not easy and it can be controversial even inside the Body of Christ. You will lose friends who want to live a comfortable Christian life. You will lose friends you thought had a zeal for the truth. You will be questioned about what you believe. Take heed of what you hear because you DO want to hear more. If you choose your friends over Jesus, what you know will be taken away and you will get your wish to be like them. Jesus wants to reveal the truth to you, should you not know it? Believe the Words of our Saviour!
This week’s meditation verses: Mark 4:24; Luke 8:18; John 8:31-32; Isaiah 43:19
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Who am I?
The Question!
Leola is still pondering what she learned from the play last week about rising out of her sin. She knows she can change but she is not at all sure what to change first. Obedience is coming little by little and not easily. She begins her reading in Matthew 16 this morning sitting on her ‘have-to-have-it’ couch with the sun shining directly on her. Leola admires the sun and looks down at the Word. The first Words that jump out at her is the wicked and adulteress generation seeks a sign (v4). She raises her head to look out the window and ponders this in her own life. Is she seeking a sign from Jesus for her own use? She doesn’t know the answer to this question! Is her faith contingent on miracles or signs rather than who Jesus is? Is this who she is, a Pharisee? Maybe, but she doesn’t know the answer to this question either!
Reading on she comes across a ‘Jesus question’ she cannot skip over, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” (v13) She doesn’t know because she never asks! She wants to know who Jesus is but can it be done? If she knows who He is what significance will the answer have in her life? Leola has never much liked herself because she has always been told she is unlikeable. She never thought much about who she is because her life won’t make much of an impact anyway! Perhaps, she thinks, the real measuring stick IS Jesus and compared to Him she is nothing. Jesus is now pointing this out to her but only putting a small longing in her heart she cannot define. Forty-five years of thinking she is nothing has impacted Leola’s life so much so Jesus will have to do a mighty work to change it around! Leola depended on what others said to define who she is and she didn’t like who they told her she was. She never once thought it could be any other way. What others defined her as must be the truth, right, because they can see her better than she can see herself? As a result she only ever asked the question, “Who do people say I am?” but never, until now, will she ask, “Who am I?” and expect to learn the answer!
Many of us go through an identity crisis with or without Jesus. The spectacular advantage of following Jesus is His way of teaching us ‘who we are’ with Him in our life compared to who we were without Him. He created both of us and He knows how to bridge the gap. The difference can be staggering in some cases yet minor in others. If this is true than how do we respond to this revelation? We must be trained by Elohim to put less emphasis on who others say we are and more on who He says we are. He has gifted us differently than anyone else therefore we are created to walk in those gifts for His purpose. I cannot tell you enough about how different we are from others therefore we cannot compare ourselves to anyone we can only compare ourselves to Jesus. Who we are is who He says we are! To discern who we are we must ask, “Who do we say He is?” The answer to that question forms who we are!
Over the years Jesus has changed me so significantly I think it is noticeable yet many people have missed it. I wonder why? The face I wear in public to show everyone ‘life is great’ but behind it the cracks are numerous. My family sees the changes because they are close to me but the only person who sees every change is Elohim. He knows me better than anyone else, He sees me! Him and I are the only ones who know the extent of the transformation in me and we are the only ones who know who I am. Never will I allow another to define who I am. Others define who we are based on their history not ours. They see us through the vision of their own life and what they want from us! The whole answer cannot come from any other person, it can only come from Jesus!
The Whole Answer
Still sitting in the window, the sun making her red hair appear gold, Leola closes her eyes to ask Jesus the most significant question of her life, “Do You see me?” She waits but there is no answer! The answer to this question, many years later, will significantly change her life but for now there is another teaching for her! She lowers her head to read on. But who do you say that I am? (v15) A good question she is not sure she can answer! Again she looks out the window to ponder this question. Who is Jesus and how important is knowing who He is? The questions Jesus asks His disciples make them first think and then answer, if they can. They always elicit the truth from their soul but this time the answer came from the Spirit because they couldn’t possibly know the answer without Him. Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (v16) When the Spirit revealed who Jesus is to Peter and he confesses it with his mouth Jesus, in turn, tells Peter who he was. Leola knows Peter does become the rock but not without rolling of a cliff a time or two first (Read Acts). She prays, “Lord, You are the Son of the Living God! Please tell me who I am?” Leola’s own voice said within her, “Find Me and you will find you, for in Me is you!” After ten years of studying Scripture to find out who Jesus is Leola can testify, indeed she is finally discovering the new Leola Elohim has created just for her! Bridging the gap has been a process she could only do with guidance of the Holy Spirit. Instead of looking at herself through the eyes of people she now sees herself through the eyes of the Father. The significance of having this information for Leola leads her to actually like herself! A first in her life!
Others vision of us can cause untold damage to our soul but who we are can be changed! Not liking ourselves leaves us susceptible to false teachers who prey on our insecurities, the devil who plants lies about who we are and consequently a rebellion against Elohim. Who we are does not depend on our work, our family, our spouse or anything else outside of Jesus. It is extremely important for us to know who He is because within Him is the truth of us! Who do YOU say He is? Do not delay in discovering who Jesus is because He IS the whole answer to the question ‘Who am I?’
This week’s meditation verses: Matthew 16
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The Real Measuring Stick!
He Has Risen
Leola is very excited about this Sunday’s performance at church. They have been talking about it for months and practicing too. She knew the significance of this weekend but the promise of it was still lost to her. The daily Bible readings have done something to her yet she couldn’t use words to describe it to anyone. She was just living day-to-day trying to measure up to some standard she knew nothing about. She knew she didn’t worship God enough, didn’t tell the truth enough, coveted someone’s stuff, lied, stole, and other sins she can’t control. The Scriptures remind her constantly about her total lack of strength to avoid these sins. Her character needs a lot of work because she tries to not sin but she sins all the more. She is a wretched body of sin!
She sits, not in her own seat, but near the front between two women with children. Leola longed for her children and her husband to come to church with her but she knew her example would not be the cause of them coming. She knew she was lacking in all the things God saw righteous – everything! The lights went out and the sanctuary went silent. One light appear shining on the cross at the back of the platform. There was a man on it with what looked like blood all over him, Jesus! The commentator appeared on stage to announce the play, “He has Risen, We have Risen!” Leola started crying and never stopped during the whole play. Her heart ached to rise from the dead!
Our state of ‘risenness’ is measured, not by what we aren’t doing, but by what we are doing. There are many promises in the Scriptures Elohim will complete but we spend more time concentrating on the negative words in the Scriptures, such as the ten commandments, which leave us open to the devil to move us right into that sin. We know the more we try to concentrate on avoiding sin the more sin springs to life. (Romans 7:7-9) We need to measure the good in us rather than the bad that the good springs to life. The real measuring stick for us is Jesus and the good He did on the cross for us.
We Have Risen
The play ended and Leola went through what looked like a box of tissue beside her on the seat. The whole time she was watching the play she felt alone in the sanctuary. Someone handed her the tissue but she doesn’t know who she just began using it. “Jesus rose from the dead even after He took on everyone’s sin therefore we need to rise out of our sin too! The Scriptures make us aware of sin but we do not have to be sin. When we take on our sin we are making the cross of no affect,” the commentator said.
Leola left the play with a new perspective. She had been spending too much time measuring herself to the sin listed in the Scripture rather than the promises of God to encourage her. She looked inside her Bible to see what she had underlined and found the verses she underlined were the verses about sin especially the sin she deemed herself guilty. She needs a new Bible because she has learned the lesson well. When she purchased the new Bible the first thing she did was go to Romans 4:13-25 to underline and colour in the words. She went to the front of her Bible to add these verses to the front in red. She wants to spend the rest of her life remembering this point – He has risen therefore we have risen! The writers of the Words of God wrote these Words to encourage her not discourage her. They want her to measure herself to the cross, the real measuring stick. This Easter weekend will be the weekend she changes the way she measures herself with her new measuring stick – the CROSS!
When we measure ourselves to sin we will see the devil in us but if we measure ourselves to Jesus we will see Jesus in us. Let us begin this Easter to measure ourselves with a new measuring stick!
This weeks meditation verses: Romans 4:23-24
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Piece of Purpose!
The Puzzle
Waiting is not an easy thing to do. All of her life she has gone and done what needs to be done. Leola didn’t do anything without purpose. As a single parent her purpose was to provide for her sons so she went to school. As a married woman her goal was also to provide for her husband and children. Leola is an action person who always believed there was a purpose for everything even before she called herself a Christian. Now she knows God, she is pondering her Christian purpose. Can it be the same as her secular purpose? Does God even have a purpose for her?
An inner city agency has requested volunteers from her congregation to help with their goal in serving the community. Leola’s heart is burning within her! Leola has always been a worker bee! Work that needs to be done; it gets done. In groups she will take the lead when there is clearly no leader. These are traits she has utilized all of her life. She hasn’t done too much volunteer work but her heart is aching to do something so she goes to volunteer night at the agency to see if there is anything she can do. As much as she loves her own kids she is uncomfortable with other people’s kids. What is God calling her to do? What does she want to do? Should she work with kids just because the help is so desperately needed? Leola is anxious to do something, anything!
Are you wondering around going from one volunteer agency to another trying to find your purpose? Do you know God has a purpose for all of us BUT it is not the same as someone else’s? Just because an agency is desperate for volunteers is God calling us to fill the spot? We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28) Just because God says we are to remember the widow and the orphan does not mean that we are called to serve them as our vocation! Jumping into something, we are not called to do, will result in failure and frustration. If we do not have the courage to quit it will lead us into a very discouraging life. Elohim wants us to know we will do something for Him but it will be according to His purpose and we are to wait for Him to lead us into that purpose!
The Piece
Her anxiety and need to do something resulted in her taking a volunteer position working with tween girls. Leola was well out of her element and she knew it. She struggled every week to do what was required of her. She hated every minute of it except the teaching portion! The leader of the agency visited her on one of those frustrating afternoons after class to check her progress. Leola told her about her struggle with the girls but how much she loved teaching. There were four weeks left to the class so she gathered up her courage to resign. Leola knew she is gifted by God to ‘teach’ but who did she want to teach? She definitely knew who she didn’t want to teach!
Leola was puzzled about what God would do in her life! Watching the news one night God revealed to her who she was going to teach. It was the same old, same old night! Feed the family, do the dishes, do the homework, do the prep work for tomorrow all while listen to the background noise except on this night the noise was funneled straight into her ears. She walked into the living room where her husband was watching TV and asked him to turn it up. There she saw a scene that broke her heart and made her instantly break into tears. Women, dead, by the hands of their abuser. A statistic flashed onto the screen so staggering it threw Leola headlong into a heart break she still feels today for the women who have and are being abused. The God Leola was beginning to love has implanted a passion in her for the welfare of women! Another piece to the puzzle of purpose revealed!
What functional gift has God given you?(if you don’t know – take a Spiritual Gifts Assessment on the internet) For what people group has God implanted a passion in your heart to serve? The answer to these questions will determine what God is asking you to do? We cannot fail if we follow Elohim to what He has dropped into our heart! Piece by piece He reveals to us what purpose He has called us too! God will take one piece of His purpose for us and work it together for the good until His whole purpose for us is revealed!
This week’s meditation verses: Romans 8:28 and Jeremiah 29:11
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With God as Your Teacher…
A look through the large picture window in Leola’s living room tells her it is a gloomy rainy day with no hope of sunshine. It’s a cold gloomy day inside Leola’s heart too. She has been true to her words to read the Bible every day although it has done nothing to defrost her frozen in time heart. She had hoped for something different but her thoughts were getting worse. She sits staring at the drops of water outside hitting her window and rolling down to the ledge wishing she was one of those drops with no feelings and no expectations. She is feeling crushed by her feelings of hopelessness. There is no hope for tomorrow to be different and no hope for the future to get better. The Bible to this point has not told her what to do about the condemnation of sin she is under. If this is what understanding is Leola wants none of it!
She doesn’t know how to fix herself! She has never watched a Christian fix themselves before. Her lack of hope invades her mind constantly. The past three years of reading the Bible and going to church have done nothing to help her as a matter of fact she is beginning to believes Scripture and church are making it worse. She has read through the Bible once, gone to multiple Bible studies and hooked up with many Christians over the years but none have admitted to trials or conviction of sin. She knows of no one who is worse off than her! She now believes her public plastic face will be the only face she will wear. Her hidden grief is almost intolerable!
We go to church and we discuss our problems with people but do we truly understand it is God who is supposed to teach us His ways not man. Sometimes it is easier to turn to man. I am completely guilty of this concept. We either do one of two things as growing Christians – we go to people or we ask our own soul! It is very peculiar that we do those things because we have known they are not successful yet we continue. Man wants what he wants and he goes the way he wants to go and our soul knows no better. We have no escape outside of obedience to God yet we try to make a way. We rely on man and his miracle pills when we expect them to fix us.
We are God’s children and as such we must learn from the Spirit what to do and how to do it. He says to us “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.” (Psalm 32:8) We can count on Elohim to instruct us and to counsel us. He has counselled us to be convicted of our sin and then He instructs us in the way we should go to escape the sin. This is not an easy task but we can do it! We must do it!
At the end of one of her mind numbing days, talking about her problems with any old person, she retires to her have-to-have-it couch with her promise to read the Scriptures. Tonight, she is going to let gravity choose her reading because this is the way she rolls. She doesn’t actually care about what she is about to read because her grief has made her apathetic. She opens the Bible and drops it on her lap but doesn’t begin to read. Leola sighs and stares. It is still raining out so she listens to the sound of it hitting her front window while consorting with it. If it isn’t raining, it is raining! Each rainy day is running into the next and her grief is beginning to overwhelm her to the point of giving up. Being in Heaven will be much better than being here.
She finally looks down to see what gravity has done for her. At this point in her walk she doesn’t realize that gravity was created by God for His glory and He will use it for His glory too. Psalm, why does gravity always bring her to the Psalms? She chose Psalm 32 for her reading. As she read the tears ran down her face like the rain on her window. This God she didn’t understand and didn’t really know had written about her grief over her sin long before she was even born. She read the Psalm three times stopping each time on verse 8 to soak it in. Her grief over her life did not stop that day but God revealed Himself to her as her teacher. She would submit to Him more and more each day being instructed how to change her life one minute at a time instead of expecting a miracle. With God as her Teacher she would learn her lessons well!
We are more than capable of overcoming sin if we allow Elohim to instruct us in the way we should go. Let the Spirit counsel you within your conviction then allow Him to instruct you in the way out of sin! With God as your Teacher you will learn each lesson well!
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The Escape is Obedience!
The Excuse!
She is walking through the parking lot excited about a new prospect she has ahead of her. Leola Lurned squeezes her coat tighter as much a result of the cold as out of an uneasiness about attending church for the first time in ten years. This is her mother’s church, her grandmother’s church, and her family church. It is a traditional religious institution or so she thought. In the time she attended before she doesn’t remember ever walking out of a sermon with anything that would make her a better Christian. She was a ‘knob shaker’ extraordinaire during the time she graced the building with her presence, but it is different today. Today, she is expecting something different, something life changing and she will not be disappointed!
Growing up Leola never saw religion in her house even though Sunday best was a requirement. She came from a ‘knob shaking’ family! She wondered no more about where she got her ideas and habits about God. The door to the church was easy to open and enter though what was to come would be harder. The hall was filled with familiar but unknown faces, some smiling, some frowning, some talking and some listening. The noise was an indicator she was on time. Leola wandered the halls from memory to the sanctuary to find a seat. True to her word of last week she had been reading the Scriptures daily without understanding. He lack of understanding gave her reason to look for a legitimate escape from that daunting task. She found a seat in the back row praying under her breath it doesn’t belong to a bitter old man who has a need to sit in the same seat every week. Sitting down Leola drags her brain for just one iota of information she understood from Scripture this week.
How many times did we have to drive before we understood how to do it well? How many times did we cook a meal before we understood spices? How long have we worked at our job before we understood it enough to be competent? Obedience to a manual or a recipe was the key to understanding each of those topics. How do we think we can understand Scripture if we don’t obey Them? In our walk with God whether we are baby Christians or seasoned Christians we look for excused to avoid putting time into knowing Elohim. I remember when the Father first called me I actually had no idea I was supposed to read the Bible. No one told me ‘to know God is to know Scripture’ and if they did my ears were not hearing. It wasn’t until I learned of the familial relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist was a zeal for His Words put into my heart.
Up until that point the only obedience I could be accused of is confessing my sins to each other (James 5:16). I had no understanding of Scripture or His commandments and no understanding how to escape my sin either. I was fooling myself in thinking shaking the doorknob once a week was going to give me the skills I needed to improve my life. My lack of understanding was no longer valid after that and neither is yours. We do not have an excuse for a lack of understanding of the Scripture because it is outright disobedience to the Lord. We think if we read the Word over and over we will eventually understand it but according to the Word Itself our understanding comes from the obedience of the Words we are reading. One day we will stand before Jesus and NO excuse will be valid. Ignorance is not bliss in God’s economy because the escape is obedience. We must make it a priority to understand His Words through the obedience of the Words. We have the escape now let us take it!
The Escape!
Leola is pulled from her thought when the Pastor begins to speak into the microphone perfectly placed on the pulpit to his tall stature. He begins with a prayer so soft at first she can barely comprehend the words then the sound rises above her pounding heart to her ears. He is speaking directly to her and it makes her uncomfortable. He asks God to bless us with complete understanding of the Words God has given Him to speak on this day. Would God so touch us that we would feel it down to our core? Would He give us the power to obey Him thereby getting understanding of the Scriptures. How did the Pastor know? How did he know Leola’s silent struggle to sustain her resolve to read Scripture? How did he know she was looking for an excuse to quit?
Leola stared wide eyed at the Pastor! There was a sensation in her she had never felt before. Before she could get over the last shock, he threw out another one. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do His commandments. (Psalm 111:10) His bold knowledge of her struggle continued to make her feel awkward. He knew she was looking for excuses and Leola’s cheeks beamed bright red with embarrassment at the prospect of him knowing such a deep secret. She wanted to leave but her sudden fear of gossip kept her planted in that seat. She continued to listen with great distress believing he would soon publicly call her out. When she thought she was going to explode she heard the Pastors words, “God knows you so deeply, even you will be amazed at His understanding of your struggles!” He glanced at her with such love in his eyes she knew that new sensation was Jesus! Her resolve returned out of love for the Man! She knew she needed to continue in her promise to read the Scriptures every day excited to allow the Spirit to talk to her about obedience. She understood one thing this Sunday morning, her excuses are not escapes; obedience is the escape!
Our own understanding of the Scriptures will not come until we obey the Scriptures and we cannot obey the Scriptures if we never read them. Therefore in all of your getting in life, get understanding!
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A Pill isn’t a Miracle it’s a Pill!
The Pill
Leola Lurned is comfortably lounging on her have-to-have-it sofa gazing out the window into nothing but feeling fully aware nothing is where she is right now and nobody is who she is. A squirrel catches her eye jumping from branch to branch with an agility and freedom one only can wish for. A perfectly timed commotion is exploding on Television beckoning her attention. Loud chaotic music with a flashy background announces a dangerously handsome man onto the screen. He is lovingly unfolding a miracle happening in the lives of millions of women, he summons Leola to want it. A ‘miracle’ contained in a little white pill, taken three times a day, will give her energy like never before. She will climb to the mountain top and back down again without even breaking a sweat. Momentarily encouraged by this she looks down at the well-rounded stomach she has been developing for months and says, “Now that WOULD really be a miracle from God!” She places her order without another thought. Leola needs that pill to change her life!
She waits weeks expectantly for the miracle pills to arrive. She dreams about the mountain she will climb and how wonderful it will be to have the freedom she so desires. Finally, the miracles arrives. She is giddy at the prospect of beginning so she downs the first one as soon as the foil’s off the bottle. Days go by, following every direction to the letter, without improvement. She quotes in her mind the words of all the pill popping guru’s “It takes 30 days for them to work!” Those days are followed by weeks and then months with simply no change. She becomes withdrawn and anxious. Her resentment of being deceived again is leading her into a deeper depression than ever before. Her darkened bedroom is her comfort right now.
Have we become so complacent about miracles we would honestly believe a life changing miracle from God would come in pill form? The ‘Miracle Pill’ is designed by the devil to make you think it has the power to heal but in fact it is a placebo! There is NO shortcut to a mind well healed only the painful, long narrow road. We want to believe the miracle pill can take us down this road in a chauffeur driven Cadillac but it is the miracle of Scripture taking us down this road in a rusty old Pinto, low in gas and leaking oil (2 Timothy 3:16).
The ‘miracle pill’ is a pseudonym for “the easy way out!” Our life skills are NEVER developed easily yet we keep expecting they will. Life itself is not easy, let alone the skills to live a righteous life. We will have weight problems, muscle problems, people problems, illness, anxiety and a multitude of other issues. Life causes mind altering catastrophes resulting in mind altering consequences resulting in a mind altering experience. Pills cannot take this fact away. Our life skills will not improve until we do the work to improve them. There is no miracle pill just the power of Scripture!
Wide is the road leading to destruction but narrow is the road leading to life! (Matthew 7:13-14) If you consider all the books in the world today how many of them will lead you to a miraculous healing like the Scriptures contained in the Holy Bible! We can read all the self-help books and listen to all the guru’s but we will still not find healing as thorough as the healing from God through His Words. We can talk all day about the benefits of reading Scripture, but until you take the time to read them, the benefits will escape you. Stop asking humans questions and start asking God the questions! Stop guessing what God wants from you and start desiring the truth from God. The narrow road is narrow because it takes guts to walk it, day in and day out, but the reward is freedom. Isn’t freedom what we are truly looking for? Freedom from food, freedom from drugs, freedom from pain, freedom from emotional pain, freedom from anxiety or depression. Are we not willing to work for freedom? If you were kidnapped and locked in a small room would you not do everything you can to get free? You would think about it constantly and act on those thoughts every chance you had. Well, my lovely, you have been kidnapped by the devil and locked in that room, but you have given up trying to get out! You shake the door knob once a week without escape. You return to your comfortable seat in the corner with your knees curled up to your chest for another week brooding about the darkness until you can shake the doorknob again next week!
The Escape
In Leola’s deepest depressed state she hears a voice as clear as day, “Put your trust in Me!” Her mind went straight to the Bible on the table in her living room. She slowly extracts herself from her comfortable bed with legs weak from inactivity to reach for Him! Sermons have taught her how important Scripture is to a Christian but she had no evidence of it working in her life. Her Bible has become a piece of furniture to dust. Her walk with God had been relegated to a weekly sermon having little effect on her. She sat on her have-to-have-it sofa and let gravity open the Bible. Gravity reading the Bible has been her typical ten minutes of Bible reading in the past, why change now. Psalm 119 opened and she began reading the power given to people by the Words of God. The miracle of Scripture appeared to her on that very page. More than murdering the man with the pills she wanted to be free from the devils oppressive words to her. She wanted out of the locked room and she knew it was going to take more than a pill. Her hard won realization ‘a pill is not a miracle it’s a pill’ began her journey toward freedom. Shaking the doorknob once a week was not going to be enough, she needs to shake it every day no matter how hard it gets because freedom is at the end of the long narrow road! Her vow to herself to shake the knob every day for the rest of her life ultimately led her to encounter the miracle of those Words every single one of those days!
The miracles from God, to assure our freedom, cannot be found in a pill. Man makes pills, God makes miracles using His Words!
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The Hope of Change
Do you still make mistakes you thought you’d be done with by now? Are you still getting angry at the dumbest things when you feel you shouldn’t? Do you think things are so far gone there is no hope of change? I love Paul’s writings because he understands our dilemma here on Earth so much more than we ourselves do. One of the biggest problems I see today is emotional overload followed by inappropriate actions. We get offended so easily and react so violently. As a woman I have ‘been there and done that’ so many times it is embarrassing to even think about but there is hope for me to change and for you too. In Ephesians 4 Paul brings to our attention three valid truths to believe there is a hope of impending change.
- We all have the same Spirit. (4:1-6)
- The Saints are gifted by God (4:7-16)
- A new you is created by God (4:17-32)
Same Spirit
I know on the outset this doesn’t look like it could give me hope but it will. As I look around at other Christians who can control their emotions and never seem to lack holiness I know they are that way because the Holy Spirit drew them to His way. In the whole of the Scriptures we see the Spirit at work drawing people into holiness. We watch as people have uncontrolled emotions and the havoc they reign over people while others have controlled emotions and God uses them tremendously.
Women and men are not different in this area we just struggle with different emotions. Each of us lose control and act out differently. The same Spirit is in each of us showing us all how to have true righteousness and holiness (V24). So, when you look around feeling forlorn about your lack of change you will see differently. See the hope residing in the people who have been changed and develop your own hope of change.
The Gifts of God
Sometimes we think these gifts of God are for those running a church but they are not! Read V11-13 again to see the truth. These are the gifts God supplied to us for you personally! They are specific to the Saints because they are used for equipping us and edifying us until the day we are capable of doing our ministry on our own with Jesus. I can testify this day will come because I am at a time in my walk with Jesus I need no one to teach me about Scripture except Jesus. When Paul became a minister to the Gentiles he was not taught by humans but Jesus Himself (Galatians 1:12). I do not rely on others to teach me but I still rely on my brethren to edify me. I use my gifts to edify and you should use yours for the same. When I edify someone, using what God has given me, I too feel edified especially if you grow from it. If you have indeed heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus (v21), He will bring people gifted as apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers into your life, when you need them most, to equip you and edify you to develop a hope of change.
Created by God
Put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness (V24). The new you Paul is talking about was also created by God according to His plan. How marvelous is that? This has the most hope attached to it because when He starts a good work He always completes it (Philippians 1:6). I know for sure my wavering emotions seemingly out of control sometimes will be brought into submission by the new me following the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This is a truth everyone should know. We struggle with our emotions on a daily basis with no end in sight but I am at the end of some of my emotional outbursts so I can see the future end to the rest knowing this. The new me is completely different than the old me! She still has some issues with the old me popping up in specific areas but she knows in time those issues will be dealt with. We become who God has created us to be by putting off, concerning our former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt (v22). This new me created according to God certainly gives us hope of change.
Growth is Change
This whole chapter speaks of growth. Growth is change regardless of whether we grow in corruption or grow in righteousness. Paul says in Ephesians 4 to put on the new man because that new man is endowed with the Holy Spirit who is our change agent. Since there is one in the same Spirit in us he is asking us to check our former conduct at the proverbial door. God is fully capable of removing our emotions but what’s the sense of living if you have no emotions. What’s expected of us is to learn control so the main purpose of our emotions is to edify the body then we will bring hope of change to them as well.
I know facing the facts of our uncontrolled emotions is frustrating and maddening. Every time we lose control we degrade ourselves even more and the skills we thought we had we diminish. We look at change as unsuccessful and slow. But I can assure you, if you keep at it, one day you will wake up and be faced with great change that even you didn’t notice. The Holy Spirit is so thorough at His work we won’t even notice the small changes until they all add up to the big change. As long as we have the Holy Spirit living in us we can be assured of the hope that comes from change.
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‘Fear Not’ What is Happening
Do you believe it? Do you know, for certain, the Lord is with you? We can see there is a lot of very weird stuff going on today and it is all leading to one thing – the return of our Lord Jesus. He is in control of the world as we know it today as well as yesterday and tomorrow. If we know this why are so many of us still fearful? We say in our mind, He is in charge, but in our heart we still fear what is too come. We need to get on the side of God and be joyful that He is coming but how? We need to know and meditate on His Words of truth.
There are two very powerful mediations for us. We can go into the Old Testament Psalms to see how the songs tell us to meditate on Him, His Word, His work, His precepts, His statutes and His majesty. Reading these verses is not enough; you need to know Him to be able to know His truth for the future. What if you’re a new Christian (welcome to the family) or a seasoned Christian that doesn’t spend time in the Scriptures (to your shame)? We can go to the New Testament for all the Words God gave Paul to speak to us but I want to get back to the Old Testament again to make my point because the New Testament quotes this book more than any other. Isaiah is a prophet of God who prophesied to the people while they were in conflict with the countries around them including each other (Israel and Judah). Fear consistently gripped the people just as it has gripped Christians today. We are in conflict today, not with the people around us, but with principalities so we need to prepare ourselves by meditating on the Words of God with the intent of taking action. Isaiah 41:8-10 gives us two strong precepts to meditate on in our time of fear: we are chosen and He is with us!
Fear Not, For You are Chosen!
You are here at this moment in time because you have been chosen to be here, even if you do not know why! Our ignorance of the truth doesn’t make the truth any less the truth! Based on this fact the fear we have about ‘the times’ is unfounded. Do we think the Father doesn’t know the times? Do we think He has put us in someone else’s time slot? You, like everyone else alive today who has fear, have been chosen for this time (Ephesians 2:10). Whether we believe it or not, we must take the stance that God has not made an error in placing us here today. We have been chosen by God for this time for His reasons. We need to replace the lie we are a mistake with the truth.
The Truth: You have been taken from the ends of the Earth, and called from its farthest regions by God. He is saying to you, “You are my servant! I have chosen you and have not cast you away.” No matter what you think. Now go about doing good while seeking out that reason rather than questioning your existence!
Fear Not, For He is With You!
We look around us and think we have to be the only one, everyone else is going crazy. I am sure Isaiah thought the same thing about the conflicted children of Israel. People think the craziest stuff and you are the only one who believes what the Words of God speak. Unfortunately, we begin to question the truth God has taught us. People are trying to convince us things not Biblical and preach things not supported by the Scriptures. If we spend more time questioning what we believe than we are on the right track for it is not about what others believe. They will stand before Jesus to give account for their own life while we will give account for ours. Our great God is with us and will teach us but we need to believe this. There are more of us, we just need to have faith that Jesus will reveal them to us when we need them most. We need to replace the lie we are alone with the truth.
The Truth: He is with you and He is YOUR God. He will strengthen you and help you. He will uphold you with His righteous right hand. Now go about doing good while God alone teaches you the truth!
Fear Not, For You Can be Prepared!
Settle in your heart not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things and give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all even if they don’t acknowledge it.
Seek out God first of all and then seek out people who challenge your current knowledge with more truth. Be sure to read every verse I have quoted or linked in this post so you know for sure that even I am in the truth. Seek out the truth for yourself and do not believe peoples truths over Biblical truths. Test every spirit knowing God will teach you what truth is. AND above all walk in the joy of the Lord so others will see your good works and give glory to God (1 Peter 2).
Hard times are coming for those who believe the true God and want to walk in HIS ways alone. Know the times that you will not be thrown to and fro by every freaky doctrine out there. The best defense against fear is truth. Use the truth that you know to learn more truth until all of your fear of the unknown is gone. Each time you are debilitated by fear and use the Words of God to quell it you will come out the other side stronger and able to fight the next attack of fear. Soon enough you will ‘fear not’ for you will know for certain the Lord is with
