One of my best friends is from Japan. She has friends in Toyoko as well as family in the "safer" area in the south of Japan. Because I know and love her, I am more compelled to pray and care for all the suffering and endangered Japanese right now.
I marvel in just the tiny bit I know about how God pre-planned for this "disaster" which doesn't diminish in any way the severity of the situation. Good friends of ours arrived in Japan just shortly before the earthquake hit. They had huge difficulty reaching their destination. They slept with 500 other people in an airport in Japan on the floor the other night. BUT God placed are two wonderfully gifted and caring Christians right there right this week to specifically care for the Japanese in their path.
My heart is touched for the Japanese people not because I saw the TV news and pictures or because I saw the newspaper. My heart is touched because I know and love my Japanese friend.
It's the relationships in life that move our hearts!
God is in the heart restoration business in my heart and He works heart restoration in all who come to Him by faith in His Son Jesus!
Monday, March 14, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
What we do in private deeply affects what happens in public. The man who is faithful to his wife while exercising bigotry toward his neighbor is no better than the adulterer who crusades for social justice. What God requires is morality with a capital M, both personal and social. God calls for an ethic that is consistent. No matter how you look at it, nobody can have their ethical cake and eat it, too... without getting moral indigestion.
-- Joni Eareckson Tada
It is a HEART MATTER! What we hide WILL start slithering out from our heart "secrets"! God calls us to live from pure hearts, and He's the only One who is able to work heart purity from the inside out. We just don't have it or "get it" on our own! We are broken and need God to work His eternal "FIX" in our hearts!
-- Joni Eareckson Tada
It is a HEART MATTER! What we hide WILL start slithering out from our heart "secrets"! God calls us to live from pure hearts, and He's the only One who is able to work heart purity from the inside out. We just don't have it or "get it" on our own! We are broken and need God to work His eternal "FIX" in our hearts!
Monday, March 7, 2011
Peaceful Heart
Last night I couldn't sleep. O, I slept for awhile and then I'd wake. It was all because of stuff I was worrying about. I tried praying. I got up for awhile at 4 AM and read. I went back to bed and prayed again and finally slept for an hour or so.
The bottom line is that my worrying was the same problem Peter had. Peter wanted to walk on the water. He saw Jesus walking on the water, and he wanted to walk on the water too. Jesus told him to come ahead. Peter jumped out of the boat. BUT he ran into a problem. He was just fine as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus, but then he took his eyes off Jesus and started looking at the waves. That was a bad decision and choice! Then Peter started to sink.... He got scared and asked Jesus to help him.
That was me last night. I was concentrating on the "waves." Those darn "waves" were keeping me awake and then waking me up again. What I finally had to do was the same thing Peter did: I had to call out to Jesus to help me. I had to put my eyes back on Jesus and then my heart had peace. The "waves" are still there but my eyes are on Jesus. I'm leaving the "waves" to Him. He gives me heart peace as long as I keep my eyes on Him!
The bottom line is that my worrying was the same problem Peter had. Peter wanted to walk on the water. He saw Jesus walking on the water, and he wanted to walk on the water too. Jesus told him to come ahead. Peter jumped out of the boat. BUT he ran into a problem. He was just fine as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus, but then he took his eyes off Jesus and started looking at the waves. That was a bad decision and choice! Then Peter started to sink.... He got scared and asked Jesus to help him.
That was me last night. I was concentrating on the "waves." Those darn "waves" were keeping me awake and then waking me up again. What I finally had to do was the same thing Peter did: I had to call out to Jesus to help me. I had to put my eyes back on Jesus and then my heart had peace. The "waves" are still there but my eyes are on Jesus. I'm leaving the "waves" to Him. He gives me heart peace as long as I keep my eyes on Him!
Monday, February 14, 2011
Broken, needs fixed!
Life isn't the way God meant it to be but it is what it is - broken!
It's what we do with the broken pieces that makes the difference! The best plan is to give them to God and let Him put the broken pieces back together again!
Jesus promises to make all things new - that includes broken bodies, broken plans, broken hearts and all the other broken things of life!
It's what we do with the broken pieces that makes the difference! The best plan is to give them to God and let Him put the broken pieces back together again!
Jesus promises to make all things new - that includes broken bodies, broken plans, broken hearts and all the other broken things of life!
Friday, February 11, 2011
A Heart for Hugs!
Do you like hugs? Almost everybody does - even tho' what feels like a hug might not look exactly like a squeeze around the ribs. Hugs come in other forms, you know - God's hugs especially! God's hugs sometimes come in the form of a needed parking spot or a narrowly missed traffic mishap or even ALMOST burned toast among a million other forms of a hug from God. Then again God's hugs may be huge "rib squeezing" hugs like peace in the midst of pain or blessing like Psalm 23 describes as oil poured on our head and then dripping down onto shoulders and arms and down to drip from our fingertips (blessing beyond measure!)
My mother used to pray about EVERYTHING - to the point it often embarrassed me! She prayed for parking places, phone calls, skinned knees and a million other things. She also rose early every day as a lifetime habit to pray in the quiet of the dawn through her "prayer notebook" where she listed prayer requests by the page. She even has a collection of these prayer journals (if she hasn't burned them) because she has filled many, many notebooks with the stuff of life for many people and over which she faithfully prayed. Not so much anymore as her mind has become more and more scattered in this her 90th year tho' she still sits with her prayer notebook on her knee.
Here's what I don't get: Why does God give me the parking spot I need and allow a tree to fall on the house of my friend at 5 PM on the same day my friend's husband died at 5 AM? (Believe it or not, my friend's response that day was, "O, I'm so glad Curt wasn't here when the tree fell. I'm so glad he had already slipped away from his terrible pain to a better place to live forever in the presence of the God he loved." What a woman!)
Just don't get confused by parking spots and falling trees and death and all the other stuff of life. The truth is: "The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He takes great delight in you. He will quiet you with His love. He rejoices over you with singing!" (Zephaniah 3:17)
The fact that God gives you a "custom-designed-just-for-you" blessing one day and the stomach flu the next DOES NOT mean He loves you the first day and not so much the next. God's song is still playing strong and true when you park your car or pull your toast from the oven and when you have the stomach flu or a tree on your house or a husband gone to heaven.
God's song over us dances unseen (and often unheard) all around us and invites us to find Him. He wants us to hear His song!
AND God wants us to do more than listen to Him sing. He wants us to hear His song with our hearts so we can follow Him in singing and hugging all the people He brings along our path every day! He wants us to live in tune with Him and to reach out with a heart-generated-hug and song to others living in silence and solitude longing for a song and a hug!
My mother used to pray about EVERYTHING - to the point it often embarrassed me! She prayed for parking places, phone calls, skinned knees and a million other things. She also rose early every day as a lifetime habit to pray in the quiet of the dawn through her "prayer notebook" where she listed prayer requests by the page. She even has a collection of these prayer journals (if she hasn't burned them) because she has filled many, many notebooks with the stuff of life for many people and over which she faithfully prayed. Not so much anymore as her mind has become more and more scattered in this her 90th year tho' she still sits with her prayer notebook on her knee.
Here's what I don't get: Why does God give me the parking spot I need and allow a tree to fall on the house of my friend at 5 PM on the same day my friend's husband died at 5 AM? (Believe it or not, my friend's response that day was, "O, I'm so glad Curt wasn't here when the tree fell. I'm so glad he had already slipped away from his terrible pain to a better place to live forever in the presence of the God he loved." What a woman!)
Just don't get confused by parking spots and falling trees and death and all the other stuff of life. The truth is: "The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He takes great delight in you. He will quiet you with His love. He rejoices over you with singing!" (Zephaniah 3:17)
The fact that God gives you a "custom-designed-just-for-you" blessing one day and the stomach flu the next DOES NOT mean He loves you the first day and not so much the next. God's song is still playing strong and true when you park your car or pull your toast from the oven and when you have the stomach flu or a tree on your house or a husband gone to heaven.
God's song over us dances unseen (and often unheard) all around us and invites us to find Him. He wants us to hear His song!
AND God wants us to do more than listen to Him sing. He wants us to hear His song with our hearts so we can follow Him in singing and hugging all the people He brings along our path every day! He wants us to live in tune with Him and to reach out with a heart-generated-hug and song to others living in silence and solitude longing for a song and a hug!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
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