Monthly Archives: August 2014

When today’s struggles open wounds in our hearts, it is very easy for the enemy to pull us towards negativity and propel us into an unhealthy emotional and spiritual place. During these dark times, our thoughts and minds easily turn away from trusting God, and our positive plans and intentions seem to fall by the wayside. Yet even when we consciously give up on God and attempt to run away from Him because of our sadness, self-pity, anger, disappointment, or…..

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In the book of Hebrews, our earthly faith journey is compared to an athlete running a race.  Believers are told to throw aside every unnecessary weight or burden and turn away from the shortcoming(sin) which cleverly clings to and entangles us. When we hold on to  these encumbrances, they will interfere and sabotage our ability to keep moving forward spiritually, emotionally, and physically.  Holding on to burdens of hurt, anger, fear, unforgiveness, and negativity gives the Enemy an opening to trip us up, by ultimately generating unbelief in…..

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God gave the prophet Jeremiah a mission of proclaiming the truth to Israel in order to bring them back to God. But when Jeremiah gave God’s message to Israel, he was rejected, ill-treated, and abused. During the longevity of Jeremiah’s suffering, he lost hope, and moved into despair and a distrust of God’s faithfulness to fulfill His promise to bless the prophet. Sometimes, like Jeremiah, we feel trapped by our circumstances, with no way out.  These negative feelings attach to our thoughts and…..

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Courage gives us the ability to face danger, difficuly, uncertainty, or pain without being overcome by fear. Fear is detrimental to our spiritual growth because it will either paralyze us, or cause us to rush forward and take the wrong path on our journey of Faith. In the hidden place of our hearts, we all have things we are waiting and believing God to work out and complete.  Sometimes we have determination to stay on our chosen course of action: trusting, waiting and holding on to…..

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This week, while at the beach, there was a thunderstorm. I said to my eight year old  granddaughter, Emily, “God is in a spiritual battle fighting for good, humility for His children, and truth to be known”. She replied, “Nana, I thought a thunderstorm was just hot and cold air coming together.” I explained,” science and spirit are not opposed to each other, and the spiritual and physical world are both real, but different. In the physical world  hot and cold air are coming together, but in the spiritual world there are…..

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To encourage the struggling believers in Rome, Paul advises , ” [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings”. Very few of us have learned to experience this level of spirituality as a way of life. To be told to rejoice in troubles sounds a bit ludicrous, and doesn’t make sense in the natural, only in our spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ will this truth be comprehended. Nonetheless,  God desires to give each of us His unmerited grace, so…..

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Hope is a vital factor and a stepping stone in developing living faith. Hope tells us, our expectations in God are going to somehow work out- possibly. On the contrary, faith knows and believes God is going to keep His word, and work things out for us-no doubts! When we begin to hopefully, anticipate God is going to help us, our spiritual enemy, Satan, works hard to defeat this hope. As we learn to overcome the enemy’s negative lies and…..

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Loving God, ourselves, and others is the vital ingredient that keeps us feeling alive and pushing forward in our walk of faith. It is the power of  God’s loving Spirit within us that makes our words, faith and actions meaningful and not in vain. The Bible tells us we can say wonderful things, do wonderful things, and have faith, but done without love, it is all in vain. In other words God is concerned about our hearts’ motivation, and longs for us to be motivated by His love.  We all know we cannot do this…..

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Naturally, none of us wants to suffer! But we would have to agree that while we live in this imperfect world, there will be seasons of suffering. God has such enormous love for us, but sometimes when we struggle in life’s circumstances, this is hard to believe. Whether our suffering is a result of a bad choice we’ve made or from circumstances completely out of our hands, it is God’s plan to use the pain suffering brings, not to destroy…..

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