Tag: miracles

Man in traditional robes calmly standing between a woman and a man who are arguing on a city street
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A Wisdom That Surprises

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“For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.” – Proverbs 2:6

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”— Romans 11:33

Think back to the last difficult situation you were faced with.  Or even the one approaching.  The uncomfortable conversation with a boss or employee.  The painful discussion you needed to have with your family member.  The awkward topic you decided to broach with your friend.  How much sleep did you lose over it?  How much worrying did you do?

How much prayer time did you devote to it?  And if you said to God, “I trust you to give me the right words and soften the other person’s heart,” did you then go back to worrying about it?

Or how about this: You prayed, you trusted and you saw God do something amazing.  Something you never expected.  A third option from the terrible two you had only seen available.

Asking for Wisdom

I’m working on this concept constantly these days.  Before going into situations that make me uncomfortable or ones where I might make a fool of myself (of which there seems to be many!) I’ve started praying for the Holy Spirit to give me wisdom.  And to help me to know when to keep my mouth shut.  

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” — James 1:5

James was spot on when he wrote this Holy inspired advice.  If you don’t know, ask God, who gives us wisdom.  He gives us that wisdom from His ever-flowing fount of His own wisdom.  A wisdom unmatched by any human being ever to have lived.  He gave Solomon his renowned wisdom simply because he asked for it.

“And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.” — 1 Kings 3:28

King Solomon’s subjects stood in amazement at his ability to resolve difficult situations.  His notable decision between two women claiming the same child revealed truth through an unexpected solution.  He decreed the baby would be cut in half and each piece given to each woman.  The real mother gave up her right to the child so the son would live.  She pleaded for his life.  Which told everyone to whom the child truly belonged.

Jesus’ Third Way

I’ve read that this type of resolution is called the “third way.”  I warn you if you look up that term you’ll find some wacky political ideas and unfortunate progressive Christian theories.  But hidden amongst those is Jesus’ “third way.”

What I mean by that is on at least four occasions Jesus was given an either/or question and he answered with a better, third option.  For example, in John 8, when the Pharisees presented the woman accused of adultery to Jesus, He was tasked with deciding to stone her or let her go.  It was a trap designed to reveal Jesus’ rejection of Moses’ law.  Instead, Jesus exposed their hypocrisy.  

“And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

It all ends with the men leaving in shame and Jesus forgiving the woman’s sin.  He tells her, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go and sin no more.”  

Jesus reveals His “third way” wisdom when asked about taxes to Caeser, the healing on the Sabbath, the man born blind and more.  His wisdom is shown in all its glory.  Options, which after hearing about them, seem so simple. Yet how often does God’s wisdom surprise us?

Weak vs Powerful Wisdom

We often quote Proverbs 3:7 – Do not be wise in your own eyes – yet we fall back on our own weak wisdom almost daily.  We forget to go to the fount and drink deeply.  We miss the opportunity to see God at work in miraculous ways.

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” — 1 Corinthians 1:25

Throughout the Bible and even in our own lives, we witness weak, apparently ineffectual people being used to further God’s kingdom.  David, the tiny son, chosen to lead a nation.  Peter, the brash and excitable fisherman, who God calls as His rock on which to build the church.  You and me – average people with average skills and influence who regularly make bad decisions – tasked to spread the Gospel.

How can this system ever be successful?  Because God is the engine.  His wisdom is the power source that lights up our conversations and opens hearts and minds.

That’s the Apostle Paul’s encouragement to the people of the Colossian church when he writes:

“…that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” — Colossians 2:2-3

Because of God’s wisdom, power and authority the Word of God comes alive and knits us together.  His wisdom resolves conflict, distress and pain in our relationships.  How can we not plug into that daily?

Trusting in Jesus is our third way wisdom.  In our churches, Bible studies, home groups, communities etc, putting our allegiance to Jesus first.  Loving each other despite our other differences and watching God work miraculously in each of us.

He Knows Better

Friends, my dad would constantly get stuck fretting over situations because he felt the need and burden to come up with the answers all by himself.  I once tried convincing him to go to marriage counseling.  He replied, “I know what the problem is already and your mom won’t go.”  To which I replied, “You only know the solutions your limited thinking can come up with.  Someone outside the situation with wisdom and experience will probably give you a better solution.”  

But like so many of us, he just couldn’t get past being wise in his own eyes.  And his married life continued to be a source of pain until the day he died.  We do the same when we come up with our plan then maybe ask God to make sure it works.  To pray that God fixes our difficult person the way we want them fixed.

Let’s make a commitment to trust that God is so much wiser than us.  To pray for wisdom be given to us from His great fount.  And sit back and watch His miracles and mysteries unfold.

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” — Revelation 7:12

Did you miss a 30 Days of Reverence post? Click here to see all of the ways we can revere our God and Savior!

Want more of God’s wisdom? Check out my series, 31 Days of God’s Wisdom today!

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Day 21 Breathe (MCM)

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The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:5-7
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Psalm 150:6

What are you most worried about right now?  What miracle are you waiting for?  What frustrates you today that just won’t go away?  Just breathe and praise the Lord.

A pastor I’ve heard a couple times starts out each sermon telling the congregation to first take a deep, deep breath.  And slowly let it out.  Re-focus on the Lord we came to hear about and worship.  That’s the key – we may briefly take a deep breath but who or what do you turn back to?  The same worry or fear?  It reminds me of the old cartoons I used to watch as a kid.  A mouse trying to run away from a cat but stays in one place with his feet moving a hundred miles and hour.  

You may have heard that if you say the Hebrew name of God out loud it’s like taking a breath in and blowing it out.  Try it – Yah…weh.  God is pretty clever.  It’s almost as though He wants to be an integral part of our lives.  To be our very breath.  He is the only God that lives inside His believers!  

So, take that deep breath today.  Say His name out loud.  Praise Him that He is the Lord who provides.  The Lord who reminds us He can guard our hearts from stress and thoughts that destroy.  Release your burdens and don’t take them back.  Praise God!

Click here to listen to today’s song: Breathe by Maverick City Music

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Day 20 Nothing Left To Prove

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Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. John 21: 25
The Lord is gracious and merciful,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 The Lord is good to all,
    and his mercy is over all that he has made. Psalm 145: 8-9

If the New Testament verse sounds familiar today it’s because John 20 (yesterday) says something similar about the purpose of the Book of John – so people will believe.  Today’s verse is slightly different.  I love how the apostle John makes a point to say the number of miracles was so numerous the world couldn’t contain all the books written.  Imagine how many books there are in the world!  

Jesus kept proving over and over to the people He encountered and those that heard of Him that there was something different about this man.  As modern day believers we need to grasp that the books in the Bible are just a glimpse of the God of the Universe.  They are a taste to show us a few of the million reasons why we should believe and trust in Him.

The Bible is book about one being – God in three persons.  Over centuries, He had prophets, kings, and disciples write the biography of Him.  There is no other religion that follows a god who wants the people to know them like the God of Abraham, Moses and Isaac.  No other god who refuses to let us go.  Who sent, in effect, himself to be humbled and suffer and die for His people.

His mercy to all people is revealed as bountiful.  He is giving us plenty of time to turn to Him and acknowledge all the miracles He has performed in the past and even today.  So that we can live in love with Him for all eternity.  How many more reasons do you still need to trust in Him?

Click here to listen to today’s song: Nothing Left To Prove

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Day 19 Stand In Faith

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Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.  John 20 30-31
This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:10-11

Yesterday, I shared about my illness and the brief but wonderous healing I experienced.  I’ll be honest, when I started feeling all the same symptoms come back, I prayed like David so often did in the Psalms asking, “Why?”  I didn’t and still don’t fully understand why He allowed me to feel so good for a time.  Don’t get me wrong, I definitely appreciated it.  But let’s be honest, we humans so easily can feel like God is punishing us when we go through trials.

Then I turned to the truth.  The truth that God loves us and it pains Him to see us suffer the trials of this world.  I also know it’s through those trials we can choose to hold on tighter to Him or turn away.  

I look at this decision this way – to where would I turn?  Worldly addictions that only make life worse?  Or to a God who performs miracles?  I prefer to stand in faith that my season of healing may be around the corner.  If not soon, then I know it will be true one day.  

My friend, the Lord has plans for you.  Most likely you will have to cross a few alligator infested waters in faith.  Those trials will be your testimony to give others hope.  In fact, just the other day a friend of mine woke up with her shoulder mysteriously in so much pain she could barely bear it.  After a trip to urgent care and pain medication, she was able to make it through the weekend.  She said to me a few days later, “I thought of you.  I don’t know how you have gotten through what you’ve been through for so long.”  I smiled and said, “It’s all the Lord.”  Nothing is impossible for Him.

Click here to listen to today’s song: Stand In Faith

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Day 15 Fear of God

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Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour…And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1 Peter 5:8-& 10
He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.  Isaiah 33:6

The fear of God.  I’m not sure if there’s a more misused and misunderstood statement in the Bible by unbelievers.  The Websters dictionary first lists this definition of fear: “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.”  And you could certainly say there were people in the Bible who stood in that type of fear of God.  The armies who faced Joshua were fearful of his god who gave him miraculous victories.  The soldiers who came to arrest Jesus were said to have drawn back and fell to the ground in fear when He revealed himself to them (John 17:6).  

But that type of fear doesn’t always bring what the dictionary describes further: : “profound reverence and awe especially toward God.”  That’s the type of fear the Israelites felt after they saw the power God brought against Pharoah.  Exodus 14:31 says, “they believed in the Lord and his servant Moses.”  It’s the same fear or awe of God which Rahab the prostitute experienced when she heard of the power of God against Joshua’s enemies. It’s why she helped Joshua’s spies.  She believed, just like 11 of the first 12 apostles.  

It seems hard to believe that anyone who witnesses the power and awe of God would just remain fearful and not reverential.  Yet Judas did just that.  

Today the power of God is seen as “mother nature” or a “big bang.”  God’s miraculous healing is called chance or science.  Blessings are considered accidents or coincidences.  And people fear a god who would put His will upon them, taking away their independence.

Satan is pleased when we sit in ignorance or fear rather than awe.  That’s because awe and submission bring people into the promised land of salvation and out of the hands of the devil. 

Friend, God is the Lord of Hosts, the leader of all spiritual armies.  He is the creator of all things seen and unseen.  He is the giver of all good things.  He is fighting battles on our behalf right now and in a blink of an eye the world could change.  We may not win every battle we go through here on earth but He will win the war. That’s a God we should hold in reverence.

Click here to listen to today’s song: Fear of God

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Day 12 Rattle!

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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 2 Corinthians 5:17-18
This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’  Ezekiel 37:5-6

Sometime last year I began a new morning routine.  I had heard a great podcast from White Horse Inn about how each morning we are faced with the return of our old self like a mummy at the foot of our bed rising up. Each day we need to call on the Holy Spirit to help us kill off that old self and instead dress our minds, hearts and bodies with the new self which Christ has bestowed upon us.  

So, each morning before my feet hit the floor, before I pick up my phone, I lay in bed picturing that old me that seems to so easily want to rear its ugly head.  I pray to my Father to do the seemingly impossible – bring the new me to life.  To guide me in the fruits of the Spirit in order to serve Him to the fullest.  It’s His resurrection power that brings that new me to life.

I have to laugh when unbelievers (and some believers) say the truths in the Bible are lies because the miracles and events defy logic and “laws of nature.”  Folks, He created the cosmos.  He brought us and every living thing seen and unseen into existence.  That sounds like a being that can do absolutely anything.  Heal blind men with spit and dirt, darken the sun, make a woman from a rib, and yes, resurrect the dead.

The LORD God can bring the worst sinner back to life, back into sync with His plan.  I know, I’ve got quite a few sins in my own past.  And that’s exactly where I want to keep them.  I want to live refreshed, renewed, reborn. 

Click here to listen: Rattle!

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Day 8 Honey In The Rock

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Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? Matthew 6:26-27
By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas; Psalm 65:5

There’s been a few times in my 36 years of marriage when we experienced serious financial loss.  The first time it was devastating.  I felt lost and unsure of our future.  It was hard not blaming and feeling angry.  I wasn’t a woman of faith at the time so I turned inward to chastise myself over and over and then outward condemning anyone associated with the loss.  I dwelt over it, turning the situation around in my head during endless, sleepless nights.  Each time I drove past the business project in which we had invested the scab was re-opened and for days I would feel those same feelings all over again.

Fast forward many years when my husband’s business and another investment came under dramatic assault due to Covid restrictions and fear.  We saw all that we had built potentially crumbling beneath us.  This loss was potentially greater, effecting our retirement and even our home.  This time, however was different.  

I frequently found myself at peace.  Sure, I’d get scared.  I’d worry about the stress my husband was under.  This time I had someone to tell me there was a purpose to the plan.  To tell me He would give us the manna and the honey because He is the Lord who provides.

We have two choices to make when difficulties attack our lives.  We can turn to our emotions and fears or we can turn to Jesus.  When we allow our fears to take over, we get angry, we blame, we get depressed.  For people like me I wear myself out alternately beating myself up (you shouldn’t have taken that vacation last year!  That money could help us now!) or obsessing over how to fix an unfixable problem.  For some they withdraw from the world all together feeling hopeless.

When I finally learned, and most of all believed, that God is who we turn to satisfy and squash our fears I experienced freedom.  He is a miracle worker.  He can bring water from a stone.  Turn water into wine.  No matter what we face in the coming years we need to remember to seek God for all we need.  Pray, praise and trust then repeat.

I’m having some issues with the webpage provider correctly linking the songs from the button below. So try clicking here: Honey In The Rock.

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Enjoying The Gifted Life Part Two

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Did you miss part one? Go to Enjoy Life: From Meaningless to Meaningful

I heard a pastor recently talking about our wants and needs related to our prayer life.  How we try to manipulate God into approving our behaviors.  We mask our sinful desires by praying for prosperity yet have no plans to serve the kingdom with gifts, or we do so meagerly.  We pray for the right house to purchase and won’t open our homes to our church needs.  A better car, a good vacation, a husband or wife, a job, or even children.  And all along we don’t ever plan to surrender all those over for God’s holy work.  Or we make a deal with God to get what we want knowing full well we won’t uphold our side of the bargain.  

" And he (Jesus) said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Luke 12:15

False “needs” and empty prayers.  They lead to greed and coveting.  It all comes down to not trusting in God for our provisions.  And not being good stewards of what we have been gifted.  We tell God over and over what He needs to do for us.  If He doesn’t perform that particular miracle then darn it, we are going to make it happen for our ourself.  Or worse, reject God.

"Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.  Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few.  For a dream comes with much business, and a fool's voice with many words. " Ecclesiastes 5:1-3

Let your words be few, King Solomon warns us.  With few words yes, but with listening ears.  The Bible tells us to come before the Lord with our requests.  However, night after night, morning after morning we roll out our list of wants and needs.  Do we ever ask God if those are what He wants for us?  Imagine a relationship here on earth like that.  Your friend is constantly complaining about what she or he doesn’t have and what they want.  And they never, ever stop talking (sounds like a toddler!). Our prayer life and quiet times with the Lord are supposed to be a two-way street!  Not a drive-through ordering system.

In prayer, it is better to have a heart without words, than words without a heart. 

 John Bunyan

A few weeks ago I read an account by Christian teacher Kay Arthur about the night, at 29 years of age, that she was truly saved.  “I’d been at a party.  The only thing I remember about that night was that a man named Jim looked at me and said, “Why don’t you quit telling God what you want and tell Him that Jesus Christ is all you need?”  His words irritated me.  “Jesus Christ is not all I need,” she replied.  My reply was curt.  “I need a husband, I need a…” and one by one I enumerated my needs.  I turned my heel and went home.”  

Her family was very religious but the Bible had not been a central part of her life.  She went to church but no one had ever asked her if she had been saved.  She hadn’t realized going to church and being a “good Christian” weren’t the keys to salvation.  She knew her sins were obvious and she was in deep spiritual and emotional pain.  The next day after that party, she couldn’t face going to work and called in sick.  She found herself at the edge of her bed crying out to God for a healing of peace.  She discovered the God who provides, the God who heals. She gave her wants and needs completely over to Him to purge and refine.

Are you constantly making a list of all the things you expect God to do for you?  Yet don’t plan on obeying and serving Him?  Are you usurping His authority over your life and building up all your stuff to fill yet another room or another storage unit rather than re-gifting your blessings to His Kingdom?  King Solomon starkly tells us this is all so meaningless.  In his study of this life, he ends chapter 5 reminding us everything we have is of God — gifts from heaven to be used and enjoyed accordingly.

“Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart."  Ecclesiastes 5:19-20

The apostle Paul carries this theme of God as our great provider throughout the epistles.  Setting our sights not on stuff but on the Lord.  More importantly, setting our hearts to the heavens.

“I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Philippians 4:12-13

Is it time to do your own room-by-room inventory? An inventory of your prayer life?  An inventory of the room of your heart?  Maybe it’s time to give, give, give.  And to quietly listen for His Word so He can set you on the path to enjoyment.  For when you do, our Lord and Savior has promised us, “for with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

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Knitted by God

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"I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43:6-7

I’ve been thinking alot about babies lately — not because I want another (I’m way past that time!). Yes, the talk of Jesus coming to earth as a baby has been in my mind’s forefront but also my two-year old grandson and six-week old granddaughter had been staying with us for Christmas. Having had two daughters of my own I still find myself fascinated with pregnancy, childbirth, and the ever-changing process of growing up. 

Even while I was pregnant years ago, I thought the concept of having a human being inside me was very odd and alien-like. The miracle of life seemed just that, a miracle. While too many people in our societies want to pretend that a life growing inside a woman is not … a life, I remain in awe of how a tiny swimming seed can push its way into a tiny egg and an explosion of life begins. What a wondrous miracle God came up with to continue His creation!

For you formed my inward parts;
    you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
    my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Psalm 139:13-15

While scientists pride themselves on the basic “how’s” of the creation of life they can never fully answer the “why’s.” Why does the tiny sperm swim up to the egg? Why does it find the egg and push its way through? Why do the cells begin to split? Why do the cells stop making new features of whatever creature they are creating? 

My pondering led me to a different question about this glorious, God-given miracle we call human life. When does the mystery of consciousness begin? Any small amount of research will unveil the biases of scientists working in this arena. The idea of God’s creation of consciousness is seen as “make believe” (as written over and over by Dr. Ralph Lewis in his 5 part series in Psychology Today). Yet, even after studying this topic for many years, evolutionary biologists and psychologist can only make conjectures based on theories of animals that lived thousands if not millions of years ago. They reject the one, most simple answer – God’s miraculous work in us.

I did find an article on when the journey to consciousness may begin in babies. Again, however, it is based on the idea of what scientists presume must be in place physically before a human is deemed able to have consciousness.

But when does the magical journey of consciousness begin? Consciousness requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components, nerve cells. Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation. Roughly two months later synchrony of the electroencephalographic (EEG) rhythm across both cortical hemispheres signals the onset of global neuronal integration. Thus, many of the circuit elements necessary for consciousness are in place by the third trimester. 

Christof Koch, When Does Consciousness Arise in Human Babies? Scientific America

Friends, our glorious God, the creator of all things seen and UNSEEN has given humans the gift of consciousness. That, in turn, gifts us with creativity, planning, memory, higher emotions, and more. We can no more truly guess when this gift has been delivered to us than we can know when our souls have entered into our cells. Of course, many evolutionary biologists and atheists don’t believe we have souls either. 

If we look at life simply as a compilation of mechanical-like parts joined together (somehow for some reason) to create a two-legged creature that can speak, then we ignore all the beautiful intricacies of our human existence. The nuances of love, of sadness, of joy, of peace, of fear, and of reverence. 

Our Christian faith is not ignorant of the “how” we are knitted together. We can accept all the biological facts of our human bodies. We just have the key to why it all works. A God to whom we give all glory for being the greatest scientist and creator for all time.

All glory and honor and praise to God. Amen.

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The Healing Power of Forgiveness

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Lessons from Cherith

21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Matthew 18:21

He’d been a drug addict and alcoholic for at least the 35 years I knew him.  In fact, this lost uncle was my husband’s main reason for why he never touched drugs in his college days.  My husband saw the path of destruction his uncle created throughout their family.  This uncle, my mother-in-law’s youngest sibling, took the road so many addicts follow.  They demand help, make others feel guilty for not rescuing them, promise to do better then start the cycle over and over again.

In my visits to my husband’s hometown, we’d have infrequent contact with his uncle.  But we would hear of his begging his own mother for money and complaining of how “lucky” and “privileged” everyone else in the family were because they weren’t always so down on their luck.  To be fair, this man bore the brunt of being the youngest child of an alcoholic philanderer.  As for my in-laws, they gave money, moral support, food, and more for much of his life.  But after a number of run-ins with the law and intolerable behavior toward my husband’s grandmother, the uncle found himself eventually with backs turned.  Enough was enough.

22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Matthew 18:22

Let’s face it, we are only human.  We get our feelings hurt.  We often seek to protect ourselves from harmful relationships.  We don’t want to be taken advantage of and have our kindness thrown back at us with vitriol.  Like many of Jesus’ expectations of us the concept of forgiveness is not so easy for us sinful humans.  We get to the end of our rope.  We have no more tears to shed.  

I remember when my loving, caring mother-in-law said to me one day a few years ago, “I’m done.  I’m tired of being blamed for his problems.  I’m tired of being taken for granted that we will always help.  I’m angry how he treats our mother.”  And really, could anyone fault her?  But the thing is, I knew deep down she didn’t mean any of it.  I knew if her brother came again with hat in hand she would help.  Because she knew that Jesus would do the same for her.

25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Mark 11:28

We can be thankful we haven’t been assigned the task of God’s prophets to administer final judgements like Elijah had to (although one day two of us will be called to do just that). In the Old Testament, we see time after time the people turning their backs on God after so many warnings. And he sent his prophets to speak truth and judgement. His final truth-speaker was His Son, Jesus. But this prophet came to tell us when we seek forgiveness and to forgive we receive eternal forgiveness from God, even when we mess up over and over. You see, Jesus doesn’t just want the one who needs forgiveness healed, he wants us, the forgiver to be healed.  Because when we place our own lives under God’s microscope, we each have a heck of a lot that needs forgiving.  We each are blessed with the incredible gift of coming with our own hat in hand to the Lord and asking, “One more time, please Lord.  Forgive me.” And He does.  

I’ve been fortunate to witness the healing power of forgiveness in a few people’s lives.  My friend Andrea will forever be changed simply by forgiving a family member for past hurts and asking for forgiveness for how she has hurt others.  My own relationship with my parents has required me to forgive them.  And although the situation can still be painful, I now have the healing strength which forgiveness affords to help me pray for them each day.

31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:31-32

I started this message about a man so broken from addiction.  A man who most would say was without hope, without the peace from God.  But God is a miracle worker as we all know.  So, after another stint in prison about a year ago, my husband’s uncle finally said, “Enough is enough.”  He turned to God for forgiveness and healing.  When he got the news that his oldest sister was now riddled with cancer he came immediately to be by her side.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have the same opportunity to watch such a beautiful miracle unfold before my eyes.  To see God’s hands work like no other.  To experience the full promise of God’s grace and love descend upon a room.  We met in the lobby of the hospital, just the uncle and I.  His mind and eyes were clear. He looked so healthy!  His demeanor was clearly different.  I took him up to his sister’s room and we sat and chatted.  I felt like I should leave the room and give them some alone time when suddenly he took her by the hand and with tears streaming down his face he asked for forgiveness.  He asked to be forgiven for the destruction he caused, the pain, and for all the lost years that could’ve been different.

My mother-in-law thanked him immediately.  She said, “I needed to hear this.  It hurt so much when you blamed me for your troubles.”  And they wept.  For the next two weeks I witnessed this man stand guard outside her room, praying and participating in her last days.  I listened as he asked the rest of the family for forgiveness.  And saw them weep from the healing love of God.  I watched as he helped lift his sister’s lifeless body onto the gurney for her final road toward home.  He was in pain but was healed.  He was washed in sorrow but cleansed from forgiveness.  And he knew he was loved.

Who do you need to forgive right now?

Who do you need to ask for forgiveness?  

It’s time for healing.

PS: Happy Birthday to my amazing, handsome, loving, forgiving husband 🙂