Liebster Blog Award

And a big shout out to Kim from  http://unwalled.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/liebster-award/

for nominating me for the Liebster Blog award. If you have never checked out her blog Unwalled please give her a read!

For those who may not know, the Liebster Award is an award given to blogs that have less than 200 followers as a way to show encouragement and appreciation to fellow bloggers, as well as to spread the word about new blogs. 

The conditions of accepting the award are as follows:

A) You paste the award picture into your blog.- This picture is at the top of the blog. Prettyish huh?

B) When you receive the award, you must post 11 random facts about yourself.- Those of you who have been reading me for a while have already heard about all my strange musical instruments and know how many kids I have and all the normal 11 things about myself that would make this part of the post boring; So I’m going to take a different tack with this one. I am going to share 11 Scriptures which have special meaning to me.

Here we go.

1. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [his] purpose. Romans 8:28   This is one of my life verses. I have walked through my share of good and bad. But God turns everything! everything! everything! into a blessing if we do not forget to love Him through the good and bad times!

2. You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Isaiah 26:3 Peace through every moment in life is possible if we only just keep our eyes turned on Jesus. Turn your eyes on Jesus look full in His wonderful face and the things of Earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace

3. Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. John 14:6 Maybe these next two verses should have been numbers 1 and two but I am just laying these out in random order. I am so thankful that Jesus settled this issue for me all those years ago. When I came to the realization that practicing witchcraft was getting me no closer to the living God this verse cleared the way for me to repent and come to a right faith!

4. Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” John 3:3 The next question asked of Jesus was “How is this possible?” With man it’s not but with God it is and I am so glad that Jesus showed me I could be born again spiritually and have a fresh start on life.

5. But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. I John 3:8 Having come from a rather potent sin background myself I was well acquainted with the devil and his demons. I actually called them angels. I talked with them took advice from them, channeled their power. I am so glad Jesus destroyed those works in me!

6.  If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. John 15:7 I love this verse because it reminds me that not all of god’s promises are unconditional. Answered prayer doesn’t come without a constant seeking of God and His will for me and for those I pray for.

7. A psalm of David. The LORD is my light and my salvation— so why should I be afraid? The LORD is my fortress, protecting me from danger, so why should I tremble? When evil people come to devour me, when my enemies and foes attack me, they will stumble and fall. Psalm 27:1,2  I love this verse because it reminds me that even when things look lost and my ship appears to be going down, I am truly unassailable as long as I stay in the place of His grace.

8. ⁵¹ But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! ⁵² It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. ⁵³ For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. ⁵⁴ Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:

“Death is swallowed up in victory. ⁵⁵ O death, where is your victory?     O death, where is your sting?”

⁵⁶ For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. ⁵⁷ But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. I Cor. 15:51-57 Do I really need to explain why I like this one?

9.  For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the Christians who have died  will rise from their graves.  Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. I Thess. 4:16,17 This is one of the weirdest truths in the Christian faith. It makes me smile to think that Star Trek wasn’t that far off with the whole “Beam me up Scotty!” thing!

10. The LORD appeared to us in the past,  saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. Jer. 31:3 I know this was directed toward Israel, but I am grafted in…adopted. His love is for me as well and for that I can never say “Thank you!” enough.

11. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, [which is] new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and [I will write upon him] my new name. Rev. 3:12 I just think this verse is great incentive to let the Lord liberate me from every evil thing!

I hope these inspired you! I am way over my word allotment for the day so I shall finish this tomorrow! 🙂  

A Sunday Song

🙂

Prayer… 8 P.M. Every Night Pt. 2

I reblogged this a few days ago and am just following up with all of y’all. How is it going? What has God shown you in the last few days?

https://jelillie.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/4310/

How To Pray: 5 Secrets To Powerful Prayer

My friend TE at “Of Dust and Kings” allowed me to reblog this for all my readers! Thanks TE.

How To Pray: 5 Secrets To Powerful Prayer.

Pray! Give! Go! Pt. 1

“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen. ” Ma. 28:18-20 KJV

     Every year our church holds an annual missions convention. It’s as much a part of our calendar as Christmas and Easter; But as I sense Jesus’ return drawing near, these conventions have taken on a new urgency in my heart.

     I live in a part of our country where something like 2% of the population believes that Jesus is the only way to Heaven. If the rapture should take place tonight 98% of New England would most likely be left behind.

     This year as Missions Convention rolls along I am keenly aware that I have a job to do and I am running out of time to do it in! Our Pastor has asked us to look at the mission in three areas: PRAY, GIVE, AND GO.

     I feel so overwhelmed as I look at the task ahead. Sometimes I sit in staff meeting and look at the job and just about crumble under the weight of what must be done. We are to reach how many? 98% of 11,000,000 people?!?!?!

    This is why we must pray. Prayer is not wishful thinking. It is accessing the supernatural power of God and releasing it into the situations we are concerned with. The church cannot accomplish the task at hand…but God can. He will use the church to do it. But it begins and ends in prayer.

    This year I am renewing my commitment to pray three times a week with our R.P.M. team. God has also called me to renew some private prayer commitments.

    Tell me, how has God asked you to pray?

Irene and the Seven-Fold Hedge

     Let me start by thanking all of you who prayed: for me, my family, and the church here in New England through Hurricane Irene. God was merciful to us! 

    Y’know, I believe that when we pray, our starting place is not requesting but abiding. For Jesus said,  “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. ” John 15:7

    For this reason I seldom ask God for something, until I have what I sense is His mind on the situation. I must first spend time in His presence and get His command for the particular situation that concerns me. Then and only then can I pray in faith believing.

    When I knew Irene was coming up the East Coast I was mindful of the fact that perhaps our turn had come to experience the wrath of God. I don’t mean to sound bleak but I do believe our nation, as disobedient as it has been, is beginning to experience God’s judgment.  Massachusetts certainly has no ground to stand on to say we should be exempt from what the rest of the country is experiencing. So as the storm approached I knew we could really be in for it.

     I began by asking God what He wanted for me out of this situation. Was He saying this was it? Was He saying to me “Head for the hills?”

     I didn’t get the sense that this was going to bring about destruction for me or my household. I felt the Spirit telling me to pray around the borders of my house seven times in the Spirit, a seven-fold hedge. On Friday I did just that. I started by the blackberry hedge and began to sing around my mother’s property in tongues. The first time around I sensed I was praying for the trees to stand. The second, I was praying for the ground to drink deeply of the rising waters. I prayed over a dead tree that if it fell it would fall straight down and not come near the house. I prayed that no flood would come to destroy. I asked that the gardens would be spared. I prayed over the transformer at the corner of our property. I prayed a shield of Holy Ghost protection over the walls of the house and the vehicles. I asked God to use the storm to cleanse the land of pestilence. I asked God to prosper us. On Saturday a group of us prayed over the church.

      Early Sunday morning the storm arrived. The rains fell thick and heavy as I walked the dogs at 6 A.M.. We were soaked to the skin in under a minute. The vernal brook that wraps around our house quickly swelled . Debris washed down from the upper pond. By 7 A.M. the brook had swollen to the top of its banks.  By 8 it had risen out of its borders and had taken command of the woods and back yard. It poured over the culvert below our house and into the street flooding our basement and those of our neighbors around the corner. By 9 we had eight inches of water in our cellar and could swim in our backyard. My mother, my sister and I headed to the cellar and began to bail in order to keep the furnace from being submerged. We bailed for a while and then called the town barn to ask them to come clean the culvert.

       A  beech tree loosened by the swelling waters fell over directly between the apple and plum-tree and didn’t break either! 

    The storm winds blew through the night and knocked over one more tree by the brook. The waters receded quickly once the town came and cleared the debris out of the culvert.

    As I watched the news this morning, I realized how blessed we truly were here in Winchendon. God chose to spare us and answer our prayers. Not one of our fruit trees was damaged. The waters are gone and left no sign of the flood.  We now have wood down for next winter and all we have to do is cut it up! And my mother has decided after a decade of haggling with her it is time to get a sump pump! As I see the footage of New York, New Jersey, and Carolina I realize His answer to me when I sought Him could have been far different. The pathway of protection was mine to walk in this instance. For that I am grateful. But I am also mindful that should my pathway have been different God would still have been with me and He would still have provided even if it had been through loss.

Got To…Or Get To?

          “I’ve got to do a bunch of stuff today God and it’s really gettin’ to me!”

      “What have you got to do son?”

     “I’ve got to go to prayer. I’ve got to call like 20 people. I’ve got to finish the editing project my friend sent me. I’ve got to water the gardens. I’ve got to walk the dogs. I’ve got to write to a list of missionaries a mile long. I’ve got to prepare youth group lessons and blogs and I have all this studying You said I had to do.”

     ” Do you like studying son?”

     “Yes God I do.”

     “Do you like preparing lessons and writing blogs son?”

     “It’s one of my favorite things in the whole world.”

     “Son, do you like writing letters to missionaries?”

     “I love your missionaries God. Praying for them and encouraging them is very rewarding.”

    ” I thought you loved gardening and the dogs. That’s why I gave them to you.”

   “Oh I do love them God.”

   “And prayer don’t you love praying?”

   “I do God. It’s like my breath!”

   “Then you haven’t got to do these things, J.  You  get to do them.”

   “You’re right God but there’s so many things on my list. I feel like I can never get all the things done today no matter how much I like them!”

    “Then stop living as if it all has to get done  today. Live like forever is yours son, because it is.”

Passion: The Promise Of Power

     “Stir up the gift inside of you.” God said to me this morning.

      “What gift?” I asked.

      “My Holy Spirit. Stir Him up!”

       Now, Jesus was trying to stir something up in his disciples the night He was betrayed. He started by telling them He was preparing a place for them in his Father’s house. Then he went on to describe the great power that would be theirs because of him.

    “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it! ” John 14: 12-14 NLT

      The promises of Heaven and eternal life are so awesome! But they are just the beginning. It is interesting to me that Jesus started his discussion, on that fateful night, with Heaven but went on to talk about the power of the believer on Earth.

     Too many Christians get stuck on going to Heaven and make it the whole point of their Christian existence. I don’t know about you but I like to think that my eternal life began the day I gave my life to Jesus. I am not waiting for Heaven to walk in the power of the Spirit. I am attempting that now!

     There is untold potential in the people of Christ’s church. Oh, but I sense that the story of that potential is about to be spoken forth! You see God is beginning to challenge people everywhere to stir up the gift! How? By praying, asking, believing and receiving!

      I see people beginning to rise up in good old-fashioned faith again to believe in a God who can do the impossible. It’s simply this; God’s people are to pray and then move on believing they will somehow receive what they have asked for in prayer. Crazy I know! But it’s how this life of faith works. We pray and then move forward as God answers our prayers. The Christian life has never been anything other than a partnership between men and God where the man relies and God does!

What are you stirring up in your life? What have you asked God for recently?

Battling My Big Bad Buddy

     Change has become my friend. Like most real friends change and I fight a lot. Some days I look forward to meeting change. Other days I’d really like to tell him where to get off and help him get there in straight order.

    But I can’t do that. You see, change is not a real person…. He is a force of nature as persistent as the wind and capricious as the sea. Some days change is a gentle lover and other days he is as vicious as a rabid dog.

      Whichever of change’s personalities I happen to be dealing with, though, there are things I can do to cope, and I have to cope…because change is never going to change!

      Perhaps you are the same. Maybe you are dealing with change… massive change right now. Whether  lovely or  horrid change is unsettling. Change calls us to take extra steps to maintain equilibrium. Here are a few of my extra steps:

1. Breathe– Literally when the stress of change comes you have to stop and reconnect to your breath. Catch yourself running in the frenzy. Slow your pace and consciously breathe deep and slow. My sister calls it “breathing in Jesus and breathing out peace.” Every day take a few moments to breathe.

2. Pray- So funny when life changes particularly for the worse that’s when most praying people stop  and when most non- prayers start. How is it we neglect the art of prayer when we need it most.

3. Journal- Change leaves us feeling like we are losing part of our personhood. Capture that piece of yourself as it dissipates. Capture your thoughts regarding God especially during change’s maelstrom. Your words will live on when change has stolen the past from your memory and give you perspective to see how even the bad becomes good when we involve God.

4. Volunteer- Change can make us too inwardly focused. Self-pity is a destructive force to any soul. Giving of yourself to fill someone else’s need deactivates your whining engine and sets you on the road to positive thinking.

5. Make a Blessing List-  The Bible says “God works all things together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purposes.” Romans 8:28. Not everything is good. Not everything is God’s will. But God will use everything in life to bring about good. Start a list of the good things that are coming in the middle of change.

Are you battling my big Bad buddy change? What are you doing to help yourself through it?

Cries In the Deep

     My Earth keeps shaking. I am pretty sure this isn’t going to stop any time soon. I have come to it that the only thing I can control is the way I look at the trembling:  Either it’s a total curse or a curse that God is going to bring good from.

     I bet you thought that I was going to say “It’s either a curse or a blessing.”  Am I right? Well some things just aren’t blessings from God. In fact I am pretty sure God isn’t in them. That doesn’t mean He won’t use them or turn them for my good.

      I am working hard to view life just now as a curse that God is going to use for my good. I realize, for instance, that my prayer life is deepening exponentially with each aftershock. In particular I am learning the value of waiting on God.

     As I began this journey I found  that much of my prayer life was bound up in noise and complaint. So much of me was just  a voice that laid out cries in the deep.

    But Scripture says: “I  wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will not be shaken.” Psalm 62:5,6

     Understand it is not that we are not free to bring complaints before God. In fact sometimes it’s the only place we can start. God being who He is gives us liberty to stay in the place of complaining as long as we desire or need to be there. However cries in the deep can never open the doorway to the peace of God.

      The peace comes when we still our voice in our deep places. Then His deeper presence can minister to us in the quiet place.  It’s in this place of waiting that the promises of  Philippians 4 are released.

     ” Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Phil 4:6,7

     To all those of you who are living in the shadow with me I say wait on the Lord!

When your shadow becomes really deep what do you do?