Category: Faith

Leave the Safe Nest of Silence

Published on by arecordofgraces

It is easy to let discouragement crowd our peace of mind.  I believe that comparison is a huge contributing factor leading to discouragement. For someone like me who is creative, comparison plagues me and I want to stop writing, stop sharing, stop creating due to feeling vulnerable. At times, I want to take off the creative cloak and hide it in a corner. Sharing a bit of yourself is scary no matter what it is- something you created with your hands..a meal, a card, a blog post, a testimony on Facebook or anywhere else. What if it wasn’t enough? What if I didn’t say the right words? The “what if’s” rob us of the willingness to extend kindness, a gift, hospitality. It can become quite comfortable staying in the safe nest of silence. But if we stop sharing, stop caring, the world gets darker. And we have enough of that already.

If you encouraged someone and you feel it fell on deaf ears, try again. Someone out there needs a good word.

If you helped someone and you feel it was unappreciated, try again. Someone out there still needs a helping hand.

If you loved someone and you just don’t feel the love in return, try again. Someone out there is hurting and needs a caring soul.

Putting yourself “out there” can seem all too much some days. But today, let’s put on the shield of faith and not fear.  Let’s leave the safe nest of silence to share encouragement. Let’s put to use our hands, our love, and our kindness.  Someone out there is in need.

Ephesians 6:10, “…be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.”

 

 

 

The Work of Spiritual Discernment

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Just like salvation through Christ cannot be passed down through another person, so it is with wisdom. It is a personal decision to seek Christ. It is a personal choice to seek knowledge and understanding. A solid spiritual life is not ‘just going to happen’ without any effort on the part of the believer.

Proverbs 2:3-5, “Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.”

I want to be a seeker of things that God cares for me to know about. I want to have the desire to search carefully and thoroughly for understanding as I would if I were mining for silver. Through crying out to God and digging through His word, spiritual discernment, understanding the heart of God, and knowledge of His faithfulness comes.

 

Our Own Courage

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“Every man has his own courage and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every person has their very own record of graces. Every page in our life’s story has sorrow and joy to different degrees. The same Author who wrote each of our stories has given us our very own time frame to heal, to rebuild, to see the hand of God through it all and the courage to keep turning the page to a new chapter, to a new season.

If you feel stuck on the same page in your life’s book, maybe you need more time than someone else. Your timeframe is yours and is precious time for God to be a loving Father, the guiding Shepherd. Give Him room on the pages of your heart to finish writing your testimony, to change the mourning into dancing, and to autograph it with His grace.

If you feel that you are not ‘moving on’ quick enough compared to what others in your situation are moving, maybe the quick route is not the path for you. Perhaps God wants to lead you to the still waters first to restore and refresh.

God gives every one of us the time and courage for our storyline to go from exhausted from sin, from bad decisions, from life’s blows to living encouraged. He extends enough time and courage to move from shattered to salvaged and useful for His glory. Every person has their short and long life-chapters and when we keep the focus that we all have the same Author who has His finger on the pulse and heartbeat of every individual, we can find through our life story our very own God-given courage written in red through Christ’s blood, signed and sealed by His grace.

Psalm 27:13-14, “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”

The Balance of Grace

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HOLD ON when you are sorting out your wounds and hopes.

HOLD ON when anxiety and worry knock on your door and tears can no longer be held back.

HOLD ON when the transition between grief and healing changes you and it feels like a new person is emerging.

HOLD ON because there are people who believe in you. There is good in this world because God is good. We will not always suffer. There is always dark and light to everyone’s story; the “balance of grace”, I read once. We can only hold on with both hands to one thing at a time. Either we will hold on to the branch of faith and hope and love and God and grace and all that entails and find mercy, healing, and life, or hold on to that which keeps us down in despair which will eventually silence our spirit.

What do we want? How do we want to live? What do we want our future to look like? All questions I ask myself when evaluating a troubling situation. It gives me a focal point. It gives me perspective on what I want to hold to and what I need to let go of.

Hebrews 10: 23, “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)”.

Embrace the Grace

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I will choose to listen to the wise who build and turn away from the critics who break.

I will choose to focus on faith in God and separate from those centered on faults and flaws.

I will choose to do the job God gave me and be untroubled about “keeping up” with anyone else.

I will choose to evaluate my worthiness by using God’s Word as my foundation and bypass the weighing measures of man.

I will choose to let go of the misconceptions, the broken trust, the self-imposed and others-imposed boundaries to embrace the grace. “Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” – Hebrews 12:1b

Proverbs 3:31, “Envy not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.”

Choose wisely.

Don’t Measure the Size of the Mountain

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 “Don’t measure the size of the mountain; talk to the One who can move it.” -Max Lucado

When we face a seemingly impossible task…

Before we get frustrated, be encouraged that God is not.

Before we lose our cool, be determined to breathe, pray, and wait.

Before we say or do something we might regret, be vocal with the One who knows all about it. He wants to hear from us. He is eager to help us. And He might actually have a purpose in mind, something great even… but we will not know unless we ask.

“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” Jeremiah 33:3

Eternal Purpose

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John 15:4, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.”

ABIDE IN ME…

BE ALIVE IN ME when you struggle with life’s meaning and the effort to get out of bed in the morning is too much.

BREATHE IN ME when trials have punched you in the gut and leave you gasping.

CONTINUE IN ME when the pain of rejection steals your joy.

LIVE IN ME when you lose your sense of purpose.

PERSIST IN ME when you feel like giving up.

REMAIN IN ME when you want to hurry though I say, “Wait”.

REST IN ME when the noise, and the hurt, and the worry start to invade your peace of mind.

We have an eternal purpose through Christ. Don’t give up.

 

On the Hunt

Published on by arecordofgraces

I am still looking for those “stray gifts” I have mentioned in a few posts. I wonder each morning what I will see, what will grab my attention. I feel that if God brings my focus to something specific, He is asking me, “Do you see?” I answer with a resounding “Yes” when I physically stop to observe.

I live in a city where everyone always seems to be in a hurry. Confession: I think it is hilarious when someone passes me (speeding, of course) and ends up at the same red light as I do. Is that mean? Not very grace-full, is it?  I always feel ‘pushed around’ when driving around town. I am a rule follower by nature and I have never received a speeding ticket. I think I might cry if I did! I did get a ticket for running a red light once. In my defense, I was behind a big truck and didn’t see the traffic light change until too late. The ticket came in the mail, so I was able to grieve at home in peace instead of in front of a police officer on the side of the road. I have become more aware of my need for these stray gifts in my day. They remind me to slow down. Just because everyone else seems to be going at a frantic pace, that doesn’t mean I have to be.  The unexpected gifts bring perspective. They bring focus to the important, to the beautiful. And I am sure it lowers my blood pressure. Quite sure.

I enjoy being on the hunt for these gifts. It can be anything from flowers, the sky any time of the day, rain puddles (rain is rare around here), to just enjoying some alone time. There is no specific guideline as to what qualifies as a stray gift. God knows just what we need; an answer to prayer, emotional relief from certain problems,  lost keys that now are found, a note in the mail from a long lost friend, an old photo which brings back good memories. To see, to know, to consider, to understand that God’s hand was in this is quite powerful and has the ability to change how we see. It matters to Him that we notice.

Anytime we consider God’s hand and His heart, we carve in the dirt and the muck of this world a pathway to greater faith.

Here is this week’s captured stray gifts.

Top Row (left to right): Roses that hide in the shade;  Stray gifts found in climbing potted houseplants. I had no idea it would climb like this. My dad has one that is stretching all the way around his room. He keeps it away from his bed so it doesn’t decide to choke him in the middle of the night. He is quite serious about this. ((Can plants do that???); Finding gold in my front yard

Middle Row: Morning Glory blooms are finally here! This is the very first bloom of the year on these vines; Again with the Morning Glories..they are seriously popping up everywhere. These are wrapping around the red rose barrel; Filtered sunlight through trees.

Bottom Row:  Stray gifts in blue skies and sunsets; not because they just “happened” to be there, but because I happened to wander outside to look.

Replace With Grace

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Broken. Unworthy. Weak. Shattered. Incapable. Ruined.

…All name tags either someone else gave to me or that I gave myself. Either way, at one point or another they had become an identity. Different losses in my life have made confidence fragile… in God, in others, and in myself. Through time and spiritual growth, some of the ink on these name tags have faded and I don’t pick them up off the table so much anymore.

As I grow in the Lord, I realize more and more the Bible is full of the broken, the weak, the seemingly incapable. Yet God defined them as righteous. Justified. Purified. Profitable for His glory. If He so then through grace changed the description of so many in the Bible, why wouldn’t He replace mine?

I need to change the conversation.

If this has been you, today..this week, together let’s change the conversation- the lies which Satan replays in our minds and hearts to distract the children of God from fulfilling His purpose. Let’s lay down the false narrative for good. Just one to begin with. Exchange it for one that God wrote with His own redeeming blood:

Beautiful. Loved. Confident. Restored. Useful. Saved.

2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

It Doesn’t Take A Professional

Published on by arecordofgraces

“Do you realize what you’ve done?”, I asked my son Jonathan. His History class had just ended and we were on our way home talking about the class lesson. He shared with me that the students had been studying about religious persecution of the Jews throughout history; jealousy of the Jews because they could read and write, envy because they were financially successful. Some throughout history blame the Jews for Christ’s crucifixion even though the Romans were the ones who nailed and speared Him through. The class had been discussing who was actually to blame for Christ’s death. “We are all responsible for His death on the cross”, Jonathan spoke up. “Since Christ died for all sinners, all are responsible.”

“You just shared the Gospel with the whole class!”, I said.  The look on his face was priceless. He was amazed. He was simply taking part in the discussion sharing what he knew to be true through the Scriptures.

It doesn’t take a “professional soul winner” to share the Gospel.

It doesn’t take a seasoned “door knocker” or  Gospel tract distributor to give a testimony.

There were about sixteen others in the class that day who heard the Gospel in a few sentences. And within seconds, seeds were either planted or watered in veterans, teenagers, young adults, and a professor.

I call it the ‘Dandelion Effect’. I think of it when I share posts on my Facebook page and here on the blog. I compare it to blowing the seeds of a dandelion which the wind carries off in all directions and lands only who-knows-where. Anything and anywhere we share of the Gospel, of Christ’s love and forgiveness, is like God’s breath blowing the seeds to only-He-knows-where.

It was just a comment in class, but praise God, He can and will give the increase.

I. Corinthians 3:6-8, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.”