Taking Up Your Cross

I borrowed my title from a message I heard in revival last night. It has been a while since I have written an entry to my blog. I dropped my cross and am now picking it back up. I got weary and weak. I quit moving forward. Faith without works is dead. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. James 2:26 (KJV) We can sit here and say we are doing God’s will but if all we ever do is sit and wait for God to show up then we are just sitting. There is always something to be done while waiting for God’s plan to be realized. I seem to have forgotten that. I have taken my eyes off of God and put it on the circumstances around me. When you do that trouble will abound. Idle hands are the devils playground. If God has showed you what he wants you to do then you can be taking steps to help prepare you for when the time comes to move. You can read and feed your soul with his word. You can fast and pray. You can be an encouragement to someone in need. You can be a witness to a lost soul. You have to crawl before you can walk. I know we get impatient with God’s timing but we don’t see the big picture. It takes time to put a puzzle together. He knows what we need when we need it. We just have to keep pressing on. So I ask you my sweet dear friends please don’t lose sight of your purpose. If your cross seems like it is getting heavy check to see if you have slacked on your strength training. Keep you eye on the cross and know that I am praying for you.

Doubt

Doubt is the opposite of faith. It is what satan uses to block us from our purpose. As we begin to do what God has called us to do, satan begins to get a little nervous. He starts pulling everything out of his hat to deter us from our purpose. He usually begins with placing doubt and fear in our minds. He may even use other people to try to discourage us. Since we walk in the light of truth we are able to see these snares that he tries to place in our way. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. 1 John 2:10 (KJV) As we begin to take steps toward our calling instead of running from it, satan begins to set snares. He knows we will become a powerful weapon for God.. My cousin wrote a song and one of the verses says you need to get up and walk away from those that make you doubt your calling from God. That is so true. You don’t need anyone’s approval but the Lords. If God has called you to do something it doesn’t matter what others think. How do we know that God has called us? Well, my husband and I know what God has called us to do because of doubt. At first we doubted, questioned and ran from God’s will. Then we fasted and prayed about it. We studied the word and prayed some more. We are finally at perfect peace with what the Lord has called us to do. Does that mean we have no doubt? NO!! As I have said before our flesh is sinful. It will constantly wage war with our spirit. We take it’s power away by fasting and praying. Then it falls into submission with our spirit. I pray that each of us has the strength and courage for what lies ahead. I pray you get encouragement from reading my blog and it helps you to move toward your higher calling in life! Keep pressing toward your mark!!! I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Phil 3:14 (KJV)

Spiritual Rut

It seems we have fallen into a spiritual rut. We have gotten comfortable and settled. We know our purpose and man says that is half the battle. What does God say? I have been brought back to one scripture many times this week. It is But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves James 1:22 (KJV) If we know our purpose but do not act on it, we deceive ourselves. It is like knowing you have to go to work but not actually going. We would never do that because we have bills to pay and things to buy. Why then do we know what God is asking of us but sit and think of a million reasons not to do it? Like this blog for instance, God gave me this entry a couple of days ago. I am just now sitting down to write it. I knew what God wanted me to do but my flesh wanted to do other things. It is a constant daily battle between the flesh and the spirit. The Bible says we must crucify our flesh in order to please God. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God Romans 8:8 (KJV) Our sinful flesh doesn’t want to do the will of God. We have to bring it into submission to the spirit. That is not a pleasurable thing to do but a necessary one. It may be difficult but well worth it. We must break out of our comfort zone and step out in faith. God has not called you for something you can’t do. He will give you what you need when you need it. If you won’t do it then you will have no one to blame but yourself. How can you say you can’t do something if you haven’t even tried? I challenge us all, myself included, to reach out of our comfort zone this week.Take a step toward what God is asking you to do. You may just find yourself running toward your prize!!

Harvest Time

I have been talking about the the fruits of the spirit so now I want to talk about what we do with our fruit. This time of year for most country folks is a busy time. It is harvest time, which means canning, freezing and preserving fruit and vegetables. It is a time when we keep some of the harvest, throw away that which is too ripe and give away the excess. A time when we get to reap that which we have sown.
We start by gathering the fruit and sorting it out. Take for instance, our apple trees. We have had an abundance of apples this year. My mom and dad have been preserving them in a variety of ways. They have been drying them , freezing them and canning them. We must find ways to preserve our fruits of the spirit in a likewise manner. We need to store them in our hearts, minds and spirit so they will be readily available when needed. Thaw out our patience so when that car cuts us off we can pray for them instead of get angry. Open up a can of joy in the middle of our trial instead of sinking into despair. That way we can enjoy our fruits long after the harvest is over.
After we gather the good fruit to preserve then we must deal with the rotten fruit. The fruit that has gotten too ripe. The seed that God has planted that has ripened but was never picked. The seed to tell someone about Jesus and we just let it sit on the tree until the harvest has passed and it begins to rot. We have many reasons why we have left it on the tree. We just couldn’t find the time to share. We are afraid it won‘t be well received. God has promised his word will not return void.  So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it Isaiah 55:11 (KJV) We are to give them the fruit. It is then up to them to do with it what they will . If we don’t share our fruit it will dry up and rot. The one rotten apple will start to spoil the whole bushel!
Lastly we give away our excess fruit. We all love to receive the excess of the harvest that our friends and family have. They made a choice to share their harvest with you. We must choose to share our fruit with others. Love those that persecute and use us. Show kindness and mercy to those that take offence to our message of hope. Give your time to help those in need and the joy you receive will be worth the time you have spent laboring in the field. Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest Luke 10:1-2 (KJV)

Got Fruit??

It has been a while since my last blog ,but I have a good reason. We have been pruning our spiritual trees. Galatians 5:22-23 (KJV)  says But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,  Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law . Our family has been focusing on these fruits for the past few days. I have to admit that my tree hasn’t been producing good fruit lately. That is what made me stop and examine my tree. In order for a tree to bear good fruit it’s roots must run deep. That is why it takes years for a tree to bear fruit. It is setting up a good root system to withstand the weather that lies ahead. If it didn’t set up a deep strong root system then it would be uprooted when a strong wind comes along. Just like if we don’t plant the word of God in our hearts and minds we will have doubt about our salvation when the trials of life blow our way. That is why it is so important for daily reading of the word. It plants the seeds in our soul that is needed to prepare us for the work that God has planned for us. The second reason a deep root system is needed is so it can draw water from deep in the ground when the drought comes. You know when we have to miss a Sunday or two and we start to feel weak and drained. We need to have enough living water stored up in us that when we do miss a weekly fellowship with our Christian church friends we don’t feel withered. We will have enough faith and joy to sustain us until we can make it back to the well to get some more. Lastly, we need a deep root system in order to grow strong and bear good fruit. Chances are you know someone with that kind of fruit. It may be your Pastor, Grandmother or Friend. They seem to never let anything that comes along in this life get them down. They have their fair share of trials and storms but their tree survives even flourishes with each one. We can have that kind of root system too if we will just follow their example. Read the word daily. Talk to God like a friend who cares about you because he cares more than any friend you have ever had. When you do these things, you will find with each storm and trial your branches grow stronger and before long you will have good delicious fruit that will help others grow.

Road Block or Rest Stop?

Ever wonder why things never turn out like YOU planned? Well these past few days God has reveled to me and my husband why the best laid plans go astray. You have seen from my previous blogs that my family and I have a purpose to fulfill. We have laid out a plan about how to get prepared to do that purpose. We were following our plan step for step then something didn’t go as planned. Of course when that happened our flesh began to throw up all kinds of doubt and red flags. Are we sure this is what God is asking of us? If this is his plan for us why didn’t this next step happen? Maybe we aren’t equipped to handle this? You know the kind of doubt Satan loves to throw at us. When doubt tries to arise we go to the master. We begin fasting and praying in order to get our flesh into submission and our spirit more focused. We dig deep into the word of God in order to better understand him. These past few days have produced the answers we have needed. First, God doesn’t call you for a job that you will not be able to perform.  I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Phil 4:13 (KJV) He will give you what you need when you need it. Second, Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD. Psalms 27:14 (KJV) I used to think this meant wait for God to step in and do it all. That is not the case at all. If your like me you read wait, I say, on the LORD and stop. The rest of the verse states he will strengthen us while we wait. Waiting is in a sense preparing for what is ahead. We have to strengthen our faith and heart for the battle that lies ahead. The last thing I have realized these past few days is WE have planned out how WE are going to achieve what GOD has planned for us. I capitalized WE and GOD for a reason. God has a PLAN for us. WE don’t need to do anything but REST in the will of GOD. When we let our flesh try to plan for something that our spirit needs to do we are asking for failure. Jesus told us exactly what we need to do in order to prepare ourselves. Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Matt 26:41 (KJV) How can we expect our sinful flesh to produce something spiritual? So do not be discouraged when your best laid plans fall apart. They are nowhere near as good as the plans that God has made for you.

A Lesson In Empathy

A friend of mine asked me to teach her Sunday School class today. Her class is the Teens so I was confident I could handle it. As I was preparing the lesson for this morning, I begin to think of all the things that the typical Christian teenager must face today. I must say this began to discourage me. It made me think of how much things have changed since I was a teenager. I began to think of what a teen today would need spiritually in order to be equipped to handle the stresses of day to day life. I figured the best thing to do would be to try and place myself in their shoes. I found this to be a very scary place. The pressures they feel today seem unbearable to me. Drugs, sexual immorality, and peer pressure are still around but a much more scarier thing has surfaced. The dark world of witchcraft and darkness. Hollywood has portrayed these things as cool and even normal. It makes me shudder to think that the next generation is being brought up to think these things are cool, normal, and not unusual. The Christian teen has so much more stacked against them than previous generations have. Their fight brings this scripture into mind "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places Eph 6:12 (KJV)" They truly do fight against darkness and wickedness in a way we will never understand. So in preparing a lesson for them, I was taught a lesson in empathy. I see the fight that lies ahead for them and will pray for them daily.

The First Step

When you ask someone what is their purpose in life your answers will be diverse. Some may state their purpose with utmost assurance. Some will say they have no idea. Then, you will have those that say they are still trying to figure it out. Our family falls under the latter category. We are sure of our purpose and what God wants us to do. We are just not so sure how to go about fulfilling it. Thus begins our first step on our journey. I have decided to start a blog first and foremost to keep up with our progress. Secondly, maybe it will help someone else who is also starting their journey with God. I believe we are all put here on earth to serve a purpose for the Lord. Whether or not we fulfill or ignore that purpose is up to us. So I would like to leave you with a thought. What are you doing today to move toward fulfilling your purpose? Remember, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step!