Category: Whispers (Page 2 of 164)

When we come to accept the Lord into our lives we begin a spiritual walk, hopefully one that is a progressive and transformational, becoming like Jesus. Burrow writes of the three stages of the spiritual journey we go through, and the first one is about preparation to be drawn into the life of Jesus. It has to do with grace to break the stronghold of our ego. The second stage is the inflowing of God’s grace as we see our neediness before Him. The third stage is being freed from our ego-centricity and being receptive to the living knowledge of God as we are united with Jesus in establishing His kingdom on earth.

We all need to recognize our innate poverty, for it opens us up to have capacity for God and His love. Burrow struggled with doubts even after becoming a nun and fought depression. She tried hard to put others first, and gradually she trusted God to do within her what seemed impossible. She desired to know the truth of her being and gain self-knowledge, which helped her to trust God’s mercy. Just like her we need to surrender to God our poverty, helplessness, anxieties and fears. We are to come as we are and trust in HIs grace and mercy. Let us come near to God and He will come near to us. (James 4:8)

Each of us has to come to the place where we are willing to break the ties to our past, especially if we have made vows of saying we will never forgive someone. We can’t move forward until we choose to forgive them and break the chains. It’s sad to hang on and replay the past rather than forgiving and being set free. Rosangela reminds us of Isaiah 58:6, “Is not this kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” When we keep rehearsing our blunders and mourn our past, we are held captive and tethered. Instead we are to forget what lies behind and press forward to what God has ahead for us. (Phil. 3:13-14)

Let us be done with rehearsing what caused us pain and regret, and move on to growing in the Lord. That means we let go and forgive others and ourselves, and welcome the new and exciting things the Lord will lead us into.  May each of us ask the Lord to cut the cords that have us bound in any way and experience the freedom that He has waiting for us.

Hope you have day of experiencing God’s love in a special way. We are having our friend Corbin for Finnish Pasty today. It has been a little over 3 weeks since his wife’s funeral and life has been radically changed for him. We pray for God’s comfort to heal his .

Recently, I was amazed at Connie’s faith as she battles cancer again and has such a vivid sense of God’s love for her. She mentions that she was longing for a retreat, and God who loves her so much provided it, but not as she had been anticipating. She has to stay at the hospital, but they allowed her to go outside, walk down by Lake Superior and view the beauty of fall colors. She said she got three meals a day, a place to sleep and time to just be in nature with the Lord. Yes, it was a retreat! She expresses a wonderful assurance of God’s love for her. I read in the Message translation from Luke 10:20, “Not what you do for God but what God does for you-that’s the agenda for rejoicing.”

God’s ways are not always what we have in mind or desire, but He knows the very things that will help us, guide us, bless us and cause us to grow. That’s where trust comes in. It may be in those hard times that we called on to live in faith and know He is our source, our everything. He alone is our provider, our joy. I read in Luke about the disciples when they feared and thought their boat was going to capsize. They awakened Jesus and he quickly calmed the storm and said to them, “Why can’t you trust me?”  We must remember that the Lord is in the driver’s seat and He is totally trustworthy. Let us trust Him with our lives and experience His amazing love for us.

Challenge for today: Pray the words of the song:

“All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, In His presence daily live. I surrender all, I surrender all. All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.

I was reading recently about what Professor Matthew Dickerson of Fuller Seminary had to say about compassion. He first describes sympathy as trying to understand the difficult experience someone else is going through, and it is the first step in caring for another. He goes on to say empathy is working to feel what they are feeling, and it is a step towards love. But compassion is deeper and touches our innermost self, moving us to action. The Lord is compassionate with us and we are called to be compassionate with others. David says in Psalm 145:9, “The Lord is good to everyone and has compassion for everything that He has made.” That includes us! Every day we experience His compassion and He wants us to be like Him in showing compassion to others.

How do we do that? We seek to understand what someone is going through and feel what they are feeling, which often leads us in doing something for them. It may mean self-sacrifice of time and energy, but we are entering into what they are going through. This is such a wee example, but it gets to the point. A friend who had knee surgery is gluten-free and has to be careful of what she eats. I sent her a card and we had been praying for her, but it was like a word to me from the Holy Spirit…make her G.F. cookies. She can have that, and I found joy in making them for her and she was overjoyed to receive them. Other times the Lord may ask us to sit with someone who has experienced loss, or to help someone who is overwhelmed, etc. We can be His hands and feet if we do it with compassion and love. Paul goes on to say in Col.3:14, “And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.”

Porter makes it clear that when we know the Lord and have asked forgiveness, we are made righteous and not condemned. Our past is forgiven and we are not going to being judged as sinners before the great white throne, but we do face a time when we will be judged to receive eternal rewards. Paul says in II Cor. 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment set of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” That is a time when our true motives will be revealed, for all that is not of Him will be burned away by fire. If it is of Him, we will receive rewards. (I Cor. 3:14-15).

Let us take care how we speak and guard our lips. May we not judge others and speak against what we may not understand, for perhaps it is new move of God and He is blessing it. God is the judge and we are not. How hurtful it is for a Christian to be attacked by a fellow Christian who speaks disparagingly of his ministry bringing discouragement. We need to ask the Lord for clean lips and a pure heart, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34).

Our joy is in relationship with God. The closer we come to Him, the more we experience deep down joy. This joy is different than happiness, for happiness depends on our outward circumstances being comfortable and pleasureful. But joy goes deeper and can be experienced even in the hardest of circumstances. It’s more about our hearts being filled with love, gratitude and purpose because of knowing the Lord.

Think of the people in your life that have joy. Are they the richest and is everything in their lives going super well? Probably not. We have a friend whose cancer has come back and she is having chemo at St. Mary’s in Duluth at this time. Now many of you have prayed for her in the past, as she had a long road of hospitalizations, cancer treatments and nearly died. Yet even now, she is at peace and expresses how God is loving her in her cancer. She said God’s ways may not be our ways, but we can embrace what He brings into our lives, for His love covers whatever we go through. Yes, joy still persists in hardship and all that we experience, for we are loved beyond all else.

It will be different for each of us when the Lord is stripping away those things that can distract us, for He calls us to intimacy with Him which is the foundation of all we do. When we compromise, it shows a lack of trust in Him and we go after things that may not be in His will or His timing.

We are studying the Sermon on the Mount in our Wednesday evening Bible Study. Jesus taught His disciples, and as a result they left everything to follow Him. The crowds, however, listened to Him often out of curiosity. Athough some were astounded at His teaching, others did not obey or follow. They did not recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd and sadly went their own way. We also can go to church, enjoy the music and good preaching, yet not really seek His presence and let Him transform us. Jesus said in John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” We miss so much when we go our own way rather than God’s way. and live at a distance from Him. No matter what He calls us to give up, it is worth it all.

Like Peter, we can be busy doing work for the Lord and yet feel empty if we ignore what is going on below the surface… like our anger, living without boundaries, not facing our fears and anxious thoughts, etc. He may have preached about the full life of joy but it wasn’t a reality for himself, and when his marriage bottomed out, it was a wakeup call. Circumstances have a way of helping us deal with our issues and bringing us to the place where we are willing to surrender and change.

Who we are is made up of components that are physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual. To be emotionally underdeveloped is not as easy to spot as someone who has a physical handicap or someone socially inept. Peter went for many years anemic emotionally, and he missed God’s many ways of coming to help him grow, change and mature. Perhaps we are all deficient in areas of our lives and the Lord is trying to get our attention to help us in the areas we need to grow. Let us allow the Holy Spirit into all the areas we are underdeveloped so He can be formed in us.