I Can't Do Anything but...Pray

Verse of the Week:

Pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17

I Can't Do Anything but...Pray

Any of these sound familiar?

Everything in my life is falling apart.

When I try to fix it, it gets worse.

There is nothing I can do to make it better.

Everything is hopeless and I don't see a silver lining.
     
I cannot change people.

I cannot go in the past and change mistakes I made.
     
I cannot look in the future and figure out how to make it better.

I am watching my loved ones suffer and there is nothing I can do to help them.

A storm has entered my life and I am drowning.

I cannot do it alone.
      
I can do nothing but....

Pray....

 Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

Prayer allows you to surrender the situation to God. Prayer allows you to trust in God.  Prayer can move mountains. Prayer allows God to take the broken pieces and turn it into a masterpiece.

There are some situations in your life when you really cannot do anything but pray.

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. (Colossians 4:2)

Pray with thanksgiving, and watch God take charge.

Christ-like Love in the Family

Verse of the Week:

1 John 4:11 "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."

Christ-like Love in the Family 

Brian and I had the wonderful opportunity to dedicate our sweet baby boy, Brayden, to the Lord this past Sunday.  What pure joy it was to let people know that Brayden has and always will be in God's hands.  From the time he was conceived to now and forever, he was given to God by Brian and I, and I thank God each day for the opportunity to be his caretaker and teach him about our Savior. He was never mine and always God's.  What a huge job it is to teach Brayden about Jesus.  Most parents find the job overwhelming, but with Christ's help, it is possible to raise a child to love Jesus so much.  Once their children enter the world, many parents make their children number one in their lives.  Their children become the most important aspect of their lives, and parents strive to do all they can to raise them the best way possible.  While I know most parents intentions are good and pure, I feel that they create the possibility of hurting their families when they put their children first.   Who should be first?  I have always believed it should be in this order.
1. Love Christ 
2. Love your Spouse
3. Love your Children

Loving Christ is number one.  Christ is the glue to keeping families together.  If Christ is out of the picture, then the world's ideas take the place of His ideas. Christ himself said that the most important command is to love the Lord. Luke 10:27 says, 'He answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" '  By loving and focusing on our relationship with Christ, it allows us act and do things the way Christ would want us to act.  We start to love our family with Christ-like love which is unselfish, patient, kind, forgiving, holding no grudges, not prideful, or easily angered (1 Corinthians 13:4-5).  When we pray and seek Christ first on how to deal with our children and spouse, it allows us to already start focusing on Him and seeking to do things and see things from His perspective as oppose to the world's perspective.  By allowing Christ to work in our lives, He allows us to grow in Him, and He molds us into the person He desires us to be, a reflection of Himself.  Focusing on our relationship with Christ allows our children to see a Christ-like example in their home.

1. Love Christ

Many couples tend to put their spouses last when children come into the picture.  They get caught up in taking care of their children, disciplining them, driving them to their activities, helping them with their homework, etc. that they neglect their spouse.  Here is something important. Children see God's love through how their parents love each other.  Actions speak louder than words. If you and your spouse have allowed anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, lack of self control, selfishness to enter your marriage, you are teaching your children that all of those things are permissible in whatever relationships they have  or will have whether it is with friends, spouses, or co-workers!  If we truly understand God's Grace and love and if Christ truly lives inside of us, there cannot be room in our spirit to hate our spouse. 1 John 4:19-20 says,  ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen,cannot love God, whom they have not seen. God's love is amazing.***  Your children see Christ's love through how you love them and each other. You children have never seen God; so how are they going to learn of God's love?  1 John 4:11-12 says,   ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.  Your children learn of God's love through your marriage. You and your spouse's marriage is a reflection of Christ's marriage to the church or Christians.   22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. 24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her; (Ephesians 5:22-25)

2. Love your Spouse

Last but not least, love your children. Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)  Discipline your children because you love them; encourage your children because you love them (1 Thessalonians 5:11), love Christ because you love them, love your spouse because you love them.  Love with the love of Christ. 

3. Love your Children

*** To learn more about Christ's love, read my blog entries called, "Going Crazy with the Law", "The Heart of God," or "Forgiveness."

*I will not be submitting a blog next week.  Feel free to look for a new blog entry in two more weeks! 

Trust God: Sounds easy, right?

Verse of the Week:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust God: Sounds easy, right?

Decisions, decisions, so many decisions.  What job should I apply for?  Should I even get a new job? How are we going to make it financially?  How am I going to find that person to marry?  Should I take my loved one off of life support or not?  Should I home school my children?  Should I put my child in a new school?  Should I separate or possibly divorce this person?  How am I going to pay for all of these bills?  What house should we buy?  Should we move to a new town/city or stay where we are?  Should we have children?   My child is struggling with drugs, what should I do to help him/her?  Life can be so tough.  We have so many decisions that we have to make that are very important and life changing, and oftentimes, we feel completely lost.  What should I do?  We pull out our hair, analyze every possible alternative, and spend sleepless nights trying to figure out what we should do.  Here is the thing, sometimes God wants us to just STOP and trust in Him.

Jesus himself said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me." (John 14:1)  Think about it:  Do you want to trust in yourself, a person who has messed up over and over, who is unreliable, who is a human who makes mistakes; or do you want to trust in the one who has made the universe, who knows each star by name, who knows the number of hairs on your head, who knows exactly what you are thinking, who aligns the planets in such a way that they rotate around the sun perfectly, who is perfect in every way, and who loves you more than anyone else ever could love you?  MMMMM....doesn't seem like a hard decision, right?  Yet, I know that so many times I have prayed to God telling him that I trust in Him, and then right after I pray to Him, I go right back to worrying about the situation and fret over what decision to make.  

Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." Brian and I have some difficult decisions coming in the next few months and even years, and we have a choice.  Trust in God or lean on our own understanding and have a panic attack!  We can sit here and keep analyzing and figuring out what to do with upcoming situations that we can do nothing about since decisions on those situations cannot be made for another few months, or we can trust in God who can take situations and completely do something neither one of us thought of and amaze us with His awesomeness.  Right after verse 5 in Proverbs 3 it says, In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. (Proverbs 3:6).  Look to Him in the decision making, acknowledge him and seek his direction all while trusting in Him.  He says that He will direct your path!  I trust that when the decision has to be made even at the very last millisecond, God will help us to know what to do.  We are not alone, and He is there every step of the way.  

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions....What do I do? STOP! Trust in Jesus and rest in His arms.

***Many thanks to our dear sweet Brother and Sisters in Christ for reminding me of this!  Brian and I love you guys!

Studying the Scriptures

Verse of the Week:

I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them.  For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people.
Romans 16:17-18

Studying the Scriptures

I remember being so excited about the Women's Spring Banquet that was coming up.  The speaker was supposed to be good, and I was open and ready to learn whatever God revealed to me.  I arrived with my pen and Bible and was all ready to go.  As I was signing in, one of the ladies in the sign up booth smiled at me and said, "Oh, how sweet, you brought your Bible." I remember responding to her comment and smiling, while at the same time, it seemed strange that she would notice that I had my Bible with me.  After all, it was a Christian banquet and the speaker was to talk about the Bible.  As I sat down at my table, I started looking around at the other tables to see if other women had bought their Bibles. Not a Bible in sight; maybe their Bibles were hidden in their purses or maybe most women were going to read their Bible electronically with their i phones or tablets, etc.  After all, I was still living in the dark ages when it comes to technology.  I still liked the feel of the book in my hands rather than reading it electronically.


Back to the story.  As the banquet continued, I grew excited when the speaker came up and started to give her message.  As she got into her message and started quoting scripture, I noticed that as I checked the scripture in my Bible that she was misusing portions of the scripture.   Sadly enough, some of the scripture had nothing to do with her message.  I came away disappointed about the message because I felt that some parts were not scripturally based.  But more importantly, I was sad because hardly anyone else was checking the scriptures on their phone or in their Bible to see if what she was saying was accurate.  I felt like I was in a room full of misguided people who were taking information to heart that simply was not correct. They assumed that what she was saying was Bibically based and therefore took it as the solid truth.

It grieves me that people go to church in today's world, and many of them never open their Bible.  They depend on their pastors and teachers to share with them all the information they need to know about the Lord whether the information is truthful or not.  The scriptures are clear that we need to be aware of teachers who might be giving us false information. Romans 16:17-18 says,  ^"I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them.  For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people." Paul warns the Romans to be aware of teachings that were contrary to what they had learned.  How do we learn what God truly says?  By reading and studying the scriptures for ourselves, and by checking the scriptures in the word that teachers might be using in their messages and sermons. Even the Bereans, who listened to Paul preach, checked the scriptures to make sure that Paul was preaching the word.  "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." (Acts 17:11)

We sometimes forget that humans are not perfect, and therefore teachers of the Word do mess up at times when they preach.  We need to be careful to not put pastors, Sunday school teachers, and leaders on a pedestal and expect them to share ideas from the Bible perfectly. 

What could happen if we fail to study the scriptures ourselves? Here is an example...

Adolf Hitler claimed to be a Christian and grew up Catholic.  However, when he came to power, his goal was to eliminate the Jews.  Prior to World War II, Hitler tried to "Nazify" Christianity by suppressing the old Testament teachings. He had pastors and teachers sign agreements to only teach what he wanted them to teach, and had schools that taught children exactly what he wanted them to learn.  People were deceived by Hitler's teachings. As a result, 6 million Jews were killed in World War II. ***

Are you studying and checking the scriptures?

For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. Romans 16:18

***Source: Hitler, God, The Bible- by Ray Comfort