God is shaking our world. He is revealing the hidden things to His people and we cannot be okay with what He is revealing. These things – abortion, pornography, sex-trafficking, same-sex marriage, the legalization of illicit drugs, and blatant contempt for anything remotely associated with Christianity are no longer being done in the shadows and darkness. Things that until now have been kept silent and hidden in the shadows are now being proclaimed loud and proud by leaders of this country. We, the children of God, cannot be okay with what is going on. God’s people can no longer be silent and complicit in letting it all just keep continuing; we must allow our rage and anger to finally come forth and stand. Continue reading
Blog Post
A Train is Coming
Let’s say that you live in a fine house with your charming family. Let’s say that your house is adjacent to some train tracks. For many years, you and your charming family have been living life – working, playing, loving each other, enjoying the fruits of your hard work and the love of your family, friends, and neighbors. You’ve had some difficulties, but all-in-all life has been pretty good.
Now let’s say I hear there is trouble headed your way. A runaway train careening down the tracks at a hundred plus miles per hour is definitely going to derail and crash right through your content home and happy life.
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Choose Your Side
I woke up very early this morning with these words in my ears…
“No one can walk down the street on both sides of the road at the same time. All must pick one side or the other.”
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The Nun’s PrayerBook
“You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you,
all whose thoughts are fixed on you!” Isaiah 26:3
I was cleaning my bookshelves a while back and came across a book that I hadn’t given much thought to in many years; it is the Prayer Book of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Let me tell you how this little 80-page book blessed my life.
It was just after Thanksgiving time in 1995 while I was working as a pastoral assistant to a Catholic Pastor in Massachusetts. He was a great priest and a great friend. However, he was also great at volunteering me for projects! (I will admit that I really didn’t mind at all)
We traveled to Boston one afternoon to visit with the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy; what an amazing ministry they have. While taking a tour of their lovely chapel, we noticed that their prayer books were a torn and tattered mess that consisted of a folder of mismatched cards and papers. Continue reading
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Scarlet Letters
“You have been chosen by God himself—you are priests of the King, you are holy and pure, you are God’s very own—all this so that you may show to others how God called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.”
1 Peter 2:9 TLB
In Nathaniel Hawthorns’ classic, The Scarlet Letter, we read about a woman named Hester Prynne and of her sin of adultery that is exposed at the birth of her illegitimate child, Pearl. Her particular sin was self-evident by the child she carried in her arms, and it was made more evident by the scarlet letter “A” that she was forced to wear on her chest, a public display of her sin.
As the story continues we are introduced to Mr. Dimmsdale. Mr. Dimmsdale, the “sin-partner” to Hester Prynne, carried his own scarlet letter; one he branded onto his own chest. The deep torment of his sin eventually takes over his life causing such turmoil on his physical health that he is ultimately destroyed by his guilt.
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Stand Up Church
In this age of free and easy access to answers to our most inane questions and our deepest philosophical quandary’s, the internet, for all its faults and failings is on the forefront providing the answers. For thousands of years, lay people relied on the learned few to share their knowledge and provide us with the answers to our deepest questions. Then one day a few decades ago, the information that we relied on others to provide became readily available to all of us. Sacred texts were now available, holy texts, literary classics, rare – if ever seen manuscripts and scrolls were now ready to be accessed by anyone anywhere that wanted to see them.
It seemed as though all the answers to every question in the universe could now be found. Every question we could ever think to ask could now be answered. Today I can search and find the answer to anything I want to know. Whether I trust the “answer-er” or not, is a topic for another time.
There are several major internet search engines; Google and Bing are the two largest and most accessed. In 2018, there were 5.6 billion searches per day on Google[1] alone. That’s a bunch of people asking a bunch of questions! So it begs the question, what are they looking for. When it comes to faith, what are the big questions that are in need of an answer? I took a look at the results from my own little blog search results to see some of what folks were asking; the results are clear. This is just a brief list of the taken from this year’s statistics.
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I didn’t want to give up my sin
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Bitter truths about rapture
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Jesus and the Cross
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What is cherished sin?
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I believe God hates me
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The truth about rapture
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God are you real?
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Am I saved because of Jesus death
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The Rest of The Cross of Jesus Christ
”Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
Sin wearies the flesh; it causes sickness and death in our soul. Bit by bit our sinful behavior destroys all that is, or was, good within us. Sin begins to cause our hearts to harden. Left unchecked, it destroys our peace, causing guilt, sorrow and shame. Sin consumes the mind and thoughts – weakening and darkening the soul.
With it comes fear and dread that our scandalous behaviors will eventually be exposed; knowing full well what will be left in its wake are shattered families and devastated innocent childhoods. Uncovered and exposed, the sins in our lives lead to death – perhaps not physical our death, though that is entirely possible, but certainly spiritual death. Most of all, unrepentant sin in our lives can shut down a relationship with God our Father.
Many years ago, I met a blessed Christian woman, Tanya, whose life mission was to minister to men on death row in some of the toughest prisons in our country. She asked me to take a look at the “mug-shots” of these men taken when they were arrested. She asked me concentrate on their eyes. I was troubled at the lack of light reflecting back from those eyes. It seemed as if death had already taken place, any light that may have been in them had been long ago extinguished, snuffed out by the magnitude of their sin.
Matthew 6:22-23 (Voice) tells us that “The eye is the lamp of the body. You draw light into your body through your eyes, and light shines out to the world through your eyes. So if your eye is well and shows you what is true, then your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is clouded or evil, then your body will be filled with evil and dark clouds. And the darkness that takes over the body of a child of God who has gone astray—that is the deepest, darkest darkness there is.” Continue reading
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The Widow’s Mite
“Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.
Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” Mark 12:41-44
I was widowed in early 2006. Some months had passed and circumstances had gone from bad to worse in the business and financial area of my life. The business that I had started with my late husband had all but dried up… the money that I was earning from another job had also disappeared when that job ended. I was a thousand miles from any family, alone and down to the last of my dollars.
It was Sunday morning while I was driving to Church that I felt such a burden on my heart because I was not able to give anything in the Church offering that morning. My checkbook had just $12.83 remaining after paying my other bills that month. Yet my car insurance bill had showed up in the mail and they wanted somewhere around $30.00. I had no idea where that money was going to come from. Things didn’t look good. I was without resources, business prospects or family to rely on… I was sad, alone and desperate. Continue reading
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God, Are You Real?
Can God do this? Can God fix this? Can God move mountains? Can God do the seemingly impossible when all around you say that it is impossible?
The answer is YES!
Recently someone I know reached out to friends and family asking for “divine intervention and good intentions” in a very private matter. I messaged that I would keep them and the family in my prayers. The reply from my friend was “no divine intervention will help”. This hurt my heart as I know that somewhere deep inside, this person knows the truth. Yet somehow over the years a conscious choice to deny the truth of God’s realness, goodness and grace was made.
Some may think that life altering crises happen only to people that have made the conscious choice to ignore or reject God. Oh if that were only true. Time and time again, we see historical evidence recorded throughout the Word of God of the days, weeks, months, years even generations of chaos, calamity and turmoil that erupted in and around the lives of God’s children – divorce, death, adultery, sickness, prison, torture, disgrace, scandal, ridicule, demons, treachery and betrayal – to name a few. In each of these instances, God shows us that there are times the road to the miraculous travels through the ugly, wicked and evil – and it does so because of FAITH – faith that is sure and certain and confident.
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” Hebrews 11:1-2 NIV
It is easy to go through life’s disappointments, failures, fears and uncertainties and lose whatever faith in God you might have. Once you begin to question His reason for the pain and turmoil in your life, you can very easily come to the conclusion that God’s really doesn’t care about you or your crises. And if He doesn’t care about you, then He is not a loving God and if He isn’t a loving God, then why would you spend your time believing in some fairy tale. Sound about right? Continue reading
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The War on Inaction Has Begun
Seven days ago, we had the privilege of attending “The Send” in Orlando Florida. It’s purpose -”The Send is a stadium gathering and national campaign to catalyze every believer into a lifestyle of Christ-like action.”
The intent was to bring together a gathering of 60,000 believers from all ages and walks of life to make a commitment to do whatever it would take to see the re-evangelization of America, and the nations of the world, and the finishing of the Great Commission. By some estimates there were only 59,000 believers, other estimates were upwards of 72,000 and on the day of the event with many more tens of thousands tuning in from around the globe as the entire 12-hour event was live streamed.
This 12 hour day with the sun shining brightly brought the thermometer to 92 degrees… in an open stadium in Florida. Needless to say, it was warm. But that didn’t matter. The entire infield of the stadium was filled, along with the stands… Video From The Send Instagram Link. Believers of every age attended this event; from the youngest in strollers with their parents, to others in wheelchairs, to others in the senior years of their lives. It was clear to me that morning as we waited for the doors to open that we Christians are hungry. We Christ followers are hungry for a mighty move of God; we are hungry for a fresh anointing from Heaven on our lives. We are hungry to know what He wants from us. We want Heavenly direction, we want purpose and clarity. Continue reading
Saved Because of His Mercy 