I am a Christian, a retired teacher, a mother and a grandmother. I love to read and I love the Lord Jesus Christ! Unless otherwise specified ,all visual illustrations are from the YOU VERSION APP of the Bible.
As a new Christian, when I read this verse, I was overjoyed with the thought that whatever I asked for, God would make it happen. Five decades later, I know that the verse is true but my heart had not yet been trained for what it really means. First of all, delight means extreme satisfaction or pleasure. Do you feel extreme pleasure in the presence of God? The second part of that sentence in the verse says God will give you the desires of your heart. The thing is, as I have grown closer to God, my desires have changed. The physical wants that I thought I one time I just had to obtain have been replaced with spiritual needs that I yearn for. My greatest desire is to be close to God and to hear His voice as I go through my day. Along with that is the desire to see loved ones in a relationship with our Father in Heaven. Does that mean that I have stopped wanting nice things? No, but they are no longer a priority.
The other important word in the verse is commit. It means to devote yourself to a person or a thing. Are you devoted to God? Is He the most important person in your life? When the path we want to take is devoted wholly to the will of God, that is when He acts on our behalf and brings our prayers to fruition.
God is not a genie in a bottle that we say the magic words, He appears and takes care of all of our problems, answering all of our prayers just the way we ask them. God is the God of the Universe, making decisions that are right for all of mankind, not just for me or for you.
I’m praying today for a good visit with the retina eye specialist. A few months ago, I was diagnosed with dry macular degeneration. My sister has been undergoing treatment for the wet kind for several years, going every 4-6 weeks to get shots in her eyes. Having accompanied her to those visits, I am not excited about the whole process. Nevertheless, I continue to believe that nothing will happen today that God and I can’t handle together. I don’t know what the doctor will say, but I already know what God has said to me. He speaks softly to my heart and tells me He is close by and that it will all be okay. And it will, because He is my Father and will never leave me.
As you ponder the verse above, please consider how close you are to the Living God and how close you allow Him to be to you. What are your expectations of God for your life? More importantly, what are His expectations for you?
Have a wonderful and blessed day, devoted to God and committed to Him. May your paths be straight and your way brilliantly lit so that you do not stray from His will.
The story of Jenna Mason continues in the second book of the trilogy, and although it can be read as a standalone, my recommendation is to read the books in order. Jenna is a talented graphic novelist who has been running away from her past for over a decade, hiding from the truth and keeping the truth hidden from her teen son Josh. Josh wants to know why they constantly moved and who his father is, but Jenna doesn’t want to share a painful past with him. In hiding her past, she unwittingly endangers Josh and herself as she gets involved in a dangerous cat and mouse game with a predator determined to destroy her. In this book, Jenna has to face her past with courage and to depend on people other than herself for help, especially when Josh is targeted and disappears. The suspense increased tremendously once Jenna is injured and Josh gets away from her. I really enjoyed the way that Jenna has matured as a character, realizing that she cannot do everything alone and that she can’t hide from the truth forever. She even asks for help from Josh’s father Tyler, an unexpected source of strength and resources. I enjoyed the relationship that is developing in this book between Jenna and her friend Keely and between Jenna and her boyfriend Kavan. Kavan is a saint in my book because of his unwavering loyalty to Jenna and his patience with her as she has to find herself before she has anything to offer others. Jenna’s desperation to hide the truth is a central theme in the book, and I found myself giving her advice just to face the past and get things out in the open so she can live her life and so can Josh. I was totally engaged in the story, feeling so bad when Josh had difficulty communicating after an injury. His aphasia was heart-breaking and the frustrations that he faced because of his disability were well-portrayed by the author. The characters were realistic, with real struggles and decisions to make that were life-changing for all. The plot was layered with the revelations made by each character, especially Jenna and her past identity, Lily. I particularly enjoyed the interactions between Jenna and her sister Olivia, a relationship that had been broken but never totally severed or forgotten. The depth of this book and its characters will remain with me for a long time. It is a domestic drama with a lot of suspense and plenty of love and acceptance flowing between the characters as they discover truth for the first time. Disclaimer Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising.”
I would rate this book a PG-13 due to content.Author’s bio and photo from her website at http://www.kerrylonsdale.com
This book will be available next Tuesday, May 10, 2022, but you can preorder it NOW! Purchase links:
There are storms all around each of us daily, the storms of life and change and just surviving sometimes. How we react to those storms tells the world a lot about us as a person.
I have had two huge storms circling around me for months. The first was our grandson’s enlistment in the USN and leaving for boot camp. As my husband and I visited with him weekly, the fact that he would depart at the end of April was always at the back of my mind. Then, it happened. Our last lunch. Our final outing with Isaac, and the next day, he left. I have a deep ache in my heart because I miss him, but his leaving moved me closer to my Father in Heaven, the One who knows how deep the pain is and also how change is a part of life.
The other storm is raging around me as the sister who has lived near me for the last two plus decades prepares to move away. Her daughter, my niece, says that she will come to Virginia to get me for visits, but I know it won’t, but I know it won’t be the same. I’m just praying that different will be better. She leaves the end of this month, another departure of someone I’m close to. Again, I run to my shelter, the Lord who never leaves me no matter what changes the storms may bring.
I am hurrying to my shelter each day, many times a day, actually as the grief of separation overwhelms me. I am trusting God to take care of each of them, both Isaac and Ann, in their new places in life. I already know that He has me hidden in His hand, holding me close. When tears threaten to fall, He is comforting me with the promise that He will always be there for me and I will indeed see my loved ones again. I’m sad for those who don’t have this hope, the shelter on whom I depend so much when the storm is raging all around me.
He protects me from the worst of the storm, saves me from its power that could upend my life and grants me the safety and security of being in His presence, calming down my storm-tossed emotions.
My prayer for each of my readers is to know the safety and refuge that comes from being with the Lord. He is dependable and always ready to hold out His hand to help and comfort. His Word is a shelter, too, a tower and shield against all of the depressing thoughts that could come if it were not for His presence. Seek His love, His comfort and His presence and you will find it. He is just there, next to you, waiting for you to call upon Him.
Love those who may be the most unlovable because they need to know the power of love the most.
Have a blessed and glorious Sabbath Day! Remember to look for those who need you to show them love and don’t be afraid to reach out. Be the hands of the Lord today! Live, laugh, love!
Throughout life, we each take a path that we think will lead to future happiness and success. For me, it was to go to college and become a teacher. I never expected to get married and have children, but that was part of God’s plan for my life. Each of us has choices and our choices make a difference in our own life as well as in the lives of others.
This has really been brought home to me recently because I have been at my sister’s house this week helping her pack up to move to a different state. She is a year older than I am, and she is not in particularly good health. Because she has macular degeneration and is slowly losing her vision, she cannot really live alone for many more years. For that reason, when my niece and her family decided to move, they also chose to move her mom with them. That is a very kind gesture that shows the love she has for her mom. However, my sister has had little choice in the matter. A house was purchased next door to them for my sister to live in. The fact that she is leaving all that she has ever known is not a factor in this decision at all. There have been spontaneous outbursts of tears and more than a few arguments (all caused by stress, I’m sure) between my sister and her daughter since I have been here. My heart goes out to my sister and I long to comfort her, but the best I can say is that she knows she can’t take care of herself and that in the long run, this was an unselfish and caring thing for her daughter to do for her. Nevertheless, it is not a path that she would have chosen, but it is done now and she leaves the state she has lived in for almost all of her life and moves to a new one.
I would like to share this Scripture with my sister but she refuses to listen to anything I have to say about God. Her current reason (she has had many excuses over the years) is that a friend of hers was recently diagnosed with cancer and how can a good God give people who are good such an awful disease? She expanded on that philosophy ad nauseum the other night when we were resting from a long day of packing. She says she knows that I believe in God but she just can’t believe in a God who does such horrible things to people. I tried to tell her that God didn’t do it, sin and evil in the world did. But she tuned me out and said she doesn’t believe in sin and evil. Are you kidding me?!? How can anyone not believe in the evil that is rampant in the world, threatening to overtake us at any time? And if it were not for God’s love, mercy and grace, we would all be destroyed. I spoke for a few minutes before I was interrupted, but she just would not hear me. My heart is broken for her because of her move, her leaving all behind here but mostly because she doesn’t have the hope that lives in my heart. Yes, bad things happen to good people. But God is still on His throne and still in control. I sincerely believe that He has everyone’s best interests at heart and that God’s heart is hurting when people suffer, from cancer or from heartbreak, but especially from unbelief and turning away from Him.
God literally showed me the truth of this Scripture back in the 1980’s. My husband was a fairly new officer in the USAF (having left his enlisted position in the USN) and we had been stationed in a very small town in Arkansas for four years. Preparing to move overseas, we were all excited about going to Japan. Alas! The military carefully scrutinizes medical records of all family members before they send you overseas and they decided that my health was too bad to go to a military base without an appropriate military medical facility. So, our things were all packed in crates and awaiting our final orders to Japan, but those orders had been canceled. My husband talked to the scheduler about where he could go and they came up with Iceland. Again, I could not be approved to go there, but I could be on base as the caregiver of our children and they would take care of me medically if needed. Harry asked me where I wanted to be while we waited for base housing to be available and I told him South Carolina since I had lived there for eight years at various times during our military moves. He went to Iceland, the children and I found a small apartment in South Carolina near our church and settled in to wait for our stay in Iceland. It never happened! Once my husband arrived, he was told that the wait for base housing was at least two years, a remote tour was one, so he opted to stay there for one year alone while the children and I lived in South Carolina. I was beside myself with anxiety and grief, but I did what I do whenever I’m caught in a situation that I can’t control. I prayed. I knew that God had me there for a reason, so I asked him to reveal the reason to me and let me be calm and nurturing for the children. Not long after my prayer, the Christian school in which I had taught each time we were in SC called and asked if I would be willing to step in for the teacher for grades 6-7 since Harriet had been diagnosed with cancer and was dying. The students knew me and needed a familiar face at this time of grief for them. My youngest son was only two, so I prayed about it and asked the principal if I could come in for only half a day and if they could accommodate Steven in their daycare. Both worked out, and I was there in SC for a classroom filled with students whom I had known since they were in my third grade class. They were disoriented and confused about why God would take away their beloved teacher, so I spent a lot of time comforting them and reading Scriptures like those above. God had me there for a reason even if I did not understand it when I got there, and even if I had other plans that just didn’t come together.
God always has a plan and it’s always better than the one that I have. That’s what my experience with faith has taught me. I wish I could impart that knowledge to my sister. Instead, I’m packing boxes for the last day and going home this afternoon to prepare to teach Children’s Church tomorrow. God has a plan and I will continue to intercede for my sister as she goes on this totally unexpected and new path. I hope that some of you will join me in prayer for her.
Thank you for your prayers and have a blessed day, yielding your will to God’s and thus being on the path that He has prepared for you.
What does it mean to be redeemed? I am old enough to remember when my grandmother and mother saved S & H green stamps. They got them from the grocery story after each purchase and had little booklets that they kept them in. When they had enough little booklets for what they were saving for, they would go to the S & H redemption center and turn them in for an item on their wish list, like a new toaster. I used to enjoy sticking those little stamps in the books for my Nanny. They didn’t taste good but I felt like a was contributing to a new thing that would appear in the household soon. You gave the stamps and you got a prize, something worth much more than a booklet of stamps.
Jesus says that He has redeemed us. What does that mean? Like the book of stamps, Jesus has patiently put us together into something that has value and can be traded for something of greater value. What is the value? Eternal life with God! What was traded? Jesus’s own life at the cross. We did not do anything to earn salvation. We are saved by His grace and mercy alone.
There are about twelve different definitions for redeemed in the Merriam Webster online dictionary. The ones that have to do with our redemption are: freed from the consequences of sin, to release from blame or debt and to buy back. We have reaped the benefits of Jesus freeing us from eternal separation from God because He has released us from our debt to sin and has purchased us back for God with His own shed blood. Think about that for a moment. Jesus did it all for each of us because of His great love for us!
Image from Pinterest.com
This verse is a beautiful word picture of what Jesus has done for us. But notice that we have a part to play, too. We have to choose to return to Him, confessing that He has done exactly what He said and that He is our Lord and Savior. There is absolutely nothing that we can do to be in right standing before God unless we have Jesus as our intermediary. He paid the full price for each of us and in His sacrificial death, He swept away all of our sins. Believe, confess, repent and live for Him. The steps to salvation are not hard but they do require reflection, an honest appraisal of life as we have been living and a desire to turn onto a new path with the Lord.
My prayer for each of you today is a renewed fervor to serve the Lord who redeemed you and to make each day count for Him.
May you be blessed with the knowledge of His sacrifice and His cleansing that makes you white as snow. May each of you truly return to Him and be redeemed!
Growing up, I used to hear an old saying in my house a lot. “Your actions are speaking so loud that I can’ t hear what you’re saying.” Well, the grammar was poor (should be loudly), but the sentiment of the sentence is spot on and even Biblical in a way. We can’t just go around saying the Good News; we have to live it in front of others.
Do you remember a game I played as a child called “Follow the Leader”? Whatever the leader did, we were supposed to do and you were out of the game if you failed to follow. The Christian life with Jesus is not a game, but we are all definitely called to follow our leader and do whatever He would do and nothing that He would not do. The movement a couple of decades ago called WWJD (What would Jesus do) is based on a Scripture verse that encourages believers to imitate Christ.
Just as our children imitate us as they are growing up and learning the ways of the world, we are told to be like children and to imitate Christ. What did Jesus do? He loved…always loved. He rebuked sin and stood firmly for righteousness, but He personified love even in His stern rebukes of the rampant sins of the day. He empathized with those who were hurting and who needed a touch from Him to be made whole. He loved! Can we do any less? When we see someone in need, are we content to say, “I’ll pray for you” or do we get into the trenches with that person and try to meet their needs, just as Jesus did? I’m talking to myself as much as to you. Oftentimes, more often than not, I am not as bothered by the plight of people as I should be, so I just give them an over my shoulder as I walk away blessing and prayer and continue on my way. How many lives could we touch for Jesus if we took the time to really look at others and their needs and to meet the ones that we are able to? To me, that is walking in love. You walk, you see someone in need, you help fulfill the need and then you walk on and find the next person in need. I think that it is in meeting the needs of those we encounter on a daily basis that we show them the heart of Jesus. Once we have met the physical needs, these people will be much more willing to hear our words about the sacrifice that Jesus made for them.
Our actions then need to match our words. If we say we love Jesus, then we need to imitate Him, follow His example and be lovers of His people, the lost sheep who are perishing without the hope that only He can give. Telling people that I’m a Christian has not brought a single person to the foot of the cross, but showing people what actually following Jesus means is evangelism in action.
Have a blessed day and may you be aware that as you follow Jesus, others are looking to see if you are really imitating Him and walking in love.
There’s a really important word in this verse, “whatever.” It doesn’t say some of the things you do or say or most of the things you do or say. It says “whatever.” The last few years that I taught high school, this was a popular word for the teens to say when you asked them to do something they didn’t like and they knew that they were going to end up having to do it anyway. Their tongue-in-cheek response was always, “Whatever.” What they were really meaning was “not if I can help it.” But the “whatever in this verse means everything that you can possibly think of doing or saying, remember that you are doing it as a representative of Jesus Christ. That means our attitude has to be right so that our actions will follow. As I go into town today to help out my sister, this verse is perfect for me. I usually get along with my sister, but we are like oil and water. I am a Christian and she is a self-proclaimed agnostic. I have three children, she has one and she only acknowledges one of mine. (Because he is very liberal just as she is.) I’m a Bible—believing conservative and she is not. You get the idea. But I’m going to help her and I’m determined to do my best to fulfill that job, doing it as a service to the Lord, as if I am His hands reaching out to Her. I pray that my words will be words of life and encouragement, just as His would.
May your day be blessed with opportunities to show Jesus to the world around you and may you shine forth His light as a good representative of our Lord!
I am a person who thrives on routine, the same thing day in and day out. In situations where others might be bored or craving something new, I want the old and familiar. That is just me and it’s also why I’m having a hard time right now.
For the last ten months, my husband and I knew that our oldest grandson had made the decision to forego college and join the military. Recruited by the U.S. Navy, he has been a member of the delayed entry program for all of this time, waiting for his specific specialty to have an opening in a school for him after boot camp. Well, the day is almost here for his departure and this Nanna is just not ready for this change. Harry and I have driven over an hour one way every week in order to take Isaac to his meetings with his recruiter and to take him out to lunch so he gets out of the house for a few hours. His parents both work, so we took on that pleasurable responsibility. In fact, when I found myself in Maryland taking care of the grandchildren there, Harry and I prayed about it and opted to be separated from each other so he could continue to spend time with Isaac. Today is the day we say farewell because tomorrow he reports to leave for Great Lakes Boot Camp. My heart is heavy, not because I don’t want him to succeed or because I don’t believe he can, but because I will miss him so. I have all these photos of him as a small, trusting child and pictures in my mind of when he spent weekends with us when he was younger. There is something so vulnerable about him, a neediness to be accepted. So my heart is heavy because I just want him to find his place in this world and find a journey and peace that only God can give. So, change. I just don’t like it, but I know it’s part of life.
Also this week, tomorrow in fact, I am going to my sister’s house. She lives about an hour away and because of health problems, she has to move to be with her daughter in North Carolina. My sister and I don’t see eye to eye on many things, but she has been a constant in my life since I came to Virginia to live almost twenty-three years ago. In fact, she is one of the reasons that I looked for and found a new teaching job her in Virginia, because I wanted to establish roots near family. Anyway, I am going to town to help her sort and pack her books. We both share a love of reading and she has thousands of books (literally) to go through. Because of her limited vision, she can’t do a lot of the sorting and because of her physical limitations, she can’t pack. But I’m convinced that I can help, so I volunteered. What I did not consider is the emotional toll on me of helping my sister to pack to move away. Change. Again, I don’t like it, but it’s part of life.
This morning, after less than stellar sleep last night, I arose seeking the Lord as I generally do. Of course, He met me at the place where I needed Him and pointed me to scripture verses to comfort and lead me through this new part of my life. I’m sharing them with you so that you, too, can take comfort in a God who is merciful enough to provide just what we need just when we need it.
So, I’m off to have a blessed day, taking our grandson to lunch and praying for his success and God’s blessing on His new life. He is looking forward to this new chapter and as the Scripture says, I plan to trust God and be faithful to Him, knowing that Isaac is in the palm of His hands.
Have a blessed day, filled with peace and the knowledge that although all around us may change, God does not change and is always there.
