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.
If you are like me, you have numerous projects that you began but never completed. I used to crochet, back before arthritis made it too difficult, and I would start one project for one grandchild and another for another one and eventually, maybe, finish one. I had yarn for my first five grandchildren, but I only completed the blankets for three of them. I ended up giving the yarn away to a friend from church who loves to crochet so I knew that she would actually use it. I have started projects with coloring pages, projects to organize my books, and others that just never got done. I’m more than a little in awe that God always finishes what He starts.
Whereas I tend to get distracted by the next thing to do on my list, God always has His eye on all of His “projects” and He continues to work diligently to bring them to completion. God started a good work in me fifty years ago on February 28th, and He is still working hard to help me to be the person He created me to be.
The ultimate goal is eternity with Him, and our Sovereign Lord has prepared the way for us to escape death by saving us from it, daily. He continues to work with us to keep us out of the abyss and headed in the right direction. I don’t know about you, but I am so thankful that God hasn’t given up on me and never will. That’s how dedicated He is to His creation and to His purpose to establish a lasting relationship with each of us!
Have a blessed day and I hope that you will be aware of God’s working in your life today and every day.
I am sure that if you are like me, you spend a lot of time talking to God, telling Him your problems and challenges and then waiting for an answer from Him. Sometimes, in fact a lot of times, I get impatient waiting for the answer and try to help God out. He doesn’t need my help. He just needs me to believe and to wait.
This verse says WHEN they call on Him, not if we call on Him. The expectation from God is that we will call on Him and His reply is that He will answer. He will be with us and will rescue us. I think the honor part comes in when others see that we trusted in God and He answered. All glory goes to the Father!
It is important that before we go before the throne of God with our petitions, we know what His will is. So, how do we do that? We have to immerse ourselves in His Word in order to discover what His will is. We have to have a relationship with Him in which we talk to Him daily and wait for Him to speak to us. Instead of a one-sided wish list that we present rapidly just before we get on with the busyness of our day, we need to take time to just sit in His presence and hear Him clearly. God wants a relationship with each of us, not a bunch of whiners who treat Him as though He is the genie in a bottle who will grant all of our wishes. We need to be aware of how our prayers will affect others and know that God is not just hearing our petitions but also those of millions of others (hopefully) and He has to take into account everyone all at the same time. My finite mind cannot even conceive of such power but God has it whether I can understand it or not, and He answers prayers according to His will. That thought brings me back to the first part of this paragraph. We discover God’s will be spending time with Him and with His Word.
May your prayers be answered according to God’s will and may you rest in faith and contentment knowing that God is working out things that are best for you and for the rest of His Creation.
I am and always have been a person who seeks the approval of others. I want people to like me, to appreciate what I have done and to notice that I am helping. I don’t think that I am alone in this desire, but I do know that this need to work towards acceptance isn’t necessary with my relationship with God.
I have read these verses, memorized them, taken notes from numerous sermons about them. But they are now settling into my heart. I spent years trying to please my mother, but there was nothing I could do to make her happy with me. I just was never good enough. I had straight A’s on my report card, but my mom brought up the fact that I had gotten a C on a test recently. I was just not good enough. I knew from a young age that my mother cried when she had me, stated repeatedly that she never wanted me and even refused to name me. (My dad names me, ironically, for my mother.) In spite of a less than welcoming childhood and all kinds of physical problems, I grew and matured and at the age of twenty-one, I became a Christian. I didn’t have to do anything special for God to love me. I just had to be me…a sinner saved by grace. There was and is absolutely nothing I can do to make myself more acceptable to God. He loves me just the way I am. That has been a freeing truth in my life. I still like to please people, but if I don’t, I’m not totally devastated. I just keep trying to please God instead by serving others. Not because He requires it, but because He doesn’t require anything of me except for me to believe and accept Him as my Lord and Savior. I have been changed from the inside out and it’s freeing to know that I can’t earn grace!
May you, too, find the freedom that comes only from accepting God’s free gift of salvation. And may your day be blessed with finding others to tell about His love, mercy and grace!
Jesus is a gentleman. He is not the morality police who storms into your life and demands subservience. He is the King of King and the Lord of Lords who humbly asks to come into your life so that He can restore the relationship between you and His Father. Just open the door!
May your day be blessed with Jesus constantly opening your eyes to new truths from His Word!
One of my favorite holiday movies that I have watched since I was very young is “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Clarence, the angel, is my favorite character as he guides George Bailey into accepting the fact that he is important to others in his life. I just want to say that I haven’t needed an angel to know that I have a wonderful life. I have found the Lord and He has found me, and together we have made my life wonderful.
I was lost in sin and darkness, hopelessly facing a future that was scary and intimidating. Once the Lord came into my life, no matter what I have faced, I have felt loved and cared for. The challenges have been plentiful, but the Lord has always been up to the task of helping me through them. I am an overcomer because of my relationship with the King of Glory!
There’s a lot of “shaking” going on in this old world, but God is the mountain in my life that won’t allow me to be shaken along with everything else. With my eyes fixed on Him, I stand firmly and wait for the shaking to cease.
I love the word picture from this Scripture! A well-watered garden is exactly what I want to be and I go daily to the spring of life found in God’s Word in order to receive the water that I need for that day. It is in Him that I have found the wonderful life that I craved but dared not hope for in my youth. Now I am old and I can look back and see the battles that I have fought and won, with God’s help.
Have a blessed day and remember that you, too, have a wonderful life in the Lord! He is sufficient and always will be.
Everyone who has ever been in a difficult or dangerous situation wants to be rescued from it, not left in it. But what does rescue look like?
The Bible promises that God will rescue His people from their troubles. Does that mean that our Sovereign Lord makes all of our troubles go away? I’m sorry to have to say that it does not. Sometimes rescue means that we plod through the troubles, but in my experience, it is me who changes, not the troubles. I see them in a different light, in the light of who God is and how He is with me and the troubles that are still there become smaller and almost non-existent. That is a kind of rescue that is not expected but for me it has always been welcome. It’s also impossible to say when and how God will show up to rescue us. He turns up in the most creative ways possible, sometimes in the form of a stranger who offers a helping hand and sometimes in the form of a Bible verse that the Holy Spirit brings to our minds to comfort us and to get us thinking on the right track. God promises to rescue, that is true. But our part is to be ready to be rescued in a way that may not be exactly what we thought it would be and to accept that rescue for what it is. The alternative is to wallow in our problems, throw a pity party and hope that someone will join us in that miry mess. I have found in my long life that many times the troubles I need to be rescued from are due to my own poor choices. Yet, in spite of me, God shows us and rescues me, sending help just when I’m ready to give up. God is always on time, just not always on our timetable that we like to set for Him.
God will always bear our burdens but we have to give them to Him. He doesn’t reach down and grab them from us. Sometimes, in my own stubbornness, I have been absolutely determined to bear my own burdens, thinking that my own ingenuity and cleverness will get me out of the mess that I created and too proud to ask God for help. However, once I have decided that I cannot do it on my own, that I need His help and turn the burden over to Him, then He can take it away, lighten the load and show me how to carry a much lighter burden instead. God is ready to daily take on whatever troubles us, but we need to ask Him to do so instead of being self-sufficient. After all, our Creator knows what is best for us, if we would just acknowledge His wisdom and move on in His way rather than following our own path.
I pray that everyone will have a wonderful day, blessed in the knowledge of how very much God loves each of us and wants to take our burdens away and rescue us from our troubles.
Do you remember as a child trying to get your parents’ attention when you thought you were doing some great noteworthy feat? I’m not sure I recall my own childhood, but I do remember my children crying out impatiently, “Look at me, mommy! Look what I can do!” With my attention divided between three children, I could not always look on command and I’m sure sometimes I disappointed one of them during their daring attempts to defy gravity.
The times have not changed, nor have the children’s need for attention. Nowadays, though, it is the grandchildren clamoring for my time. “Look, Nanna! Look at me!” They do cartwheels, ride bikes, jump off sofas and build towers, all with my attention riveted on them for as long as I can manage before another child’s cry diverts me.
As children of the Living God, we also clamor for attention. Speaking personally, I know that I am constantly crying out to our Father to look at me and notice what I am doing. Or, conversely, I petulantly accuse Him of not paying attention and allowing bad things to come along in my life and disrupt its flow. Like a demanding child, I want all of God’s attention all of the time. Today’s Scripture verse addresses this conundrum.
God is omnipresent, everywhere at once, watching everyone. I am struck with awe that the Creator of the Universe watches the wicked and the good. So, I pondered that thought this morning. Why would God want to watch the wicked? Because, my friends, He created them, too. They may be making wrong choices, but He loves them and desires them to straighten up and go on the right path, to choose Jesus as their Savior and to enter into a relationship with Him. We don’t need to cry out to God to watch what we are doing because He is always watching. He sees me when I lose my temper and yell at my husband for something thoughtless I think he has done. He sees me when I grumble and complain about small things that have no real importance and won’t matter later. He even sees me when I quickly send up a prayer for His help and then choose to do my own thing. Because He is always watching, God is always aware of what is going on in my life. There is no “Hide and Seek” game with our Lord. We can’t hide from Him one minute and then demand that He pay attention to us and answer our prayers the next. It boggles my mind that God can watch the entire Universe, with all of its diverse people making all kinds of choices every second, and still have time to listen to prayers, calm fears and heal. God is always watching, always waiting for when we truly need Him and in reverence call on Him to come to our aid.
I’m so thankful that God is always watching and even more so that He watches over the wicked, too. For I was once a sinner and now I am saved by His grace. I pray that many more over whom He is watching will seek Him and His free gift of salvation before it is too late for them.
Be blessed today and remember that God right there, watching and waiting to bless you!
I just got a chance to read this post and I am re-blogging it because it is so important and often overlooked. Before I met the Lord, I went through life seeking affirmation from things, events, and other people. Never getting what I needed, I turned to perfectionism, thinking that if everything were perfect, I would be more acceptable to others. What I have found is that Jesus accepted me “Just As I Am” and loves me, oftentimes in spite of me. Thank you for this post that spoke so clearly to my heart! Let this blog bless you as it blessed me. Please go to the original blog and follow it!
Vickie's Book Nook and Meditation Corner 