Homeless

Somewhere in time, this week, my church hosted an event called Project Homeless connect.  This happens once a month in various locations in Arizona.  It brings in all the services and organizations that can help the poor into one location.  My job was more or less a guide.  I had a list of all the organizations and where they were located.  They would assign me someone and I would guide them to each organization they wanted to visit.  This was my very first time to work at this type of event and I enjoyed it.  I like talking to people and walking around, so it was a good day.

When I first approached the line of waiting people I felt a bit of trepidation.  I am a woman, I didn’t know if I would feel comfortable helping a man, not being one, I’m not sure of what their needs might be.  I said a little prayer “Lord, can you allow me to work with a woman.”  God answered my prayer and I met five very lovely women that day.

It amazes me the different reasons people need assistance.  Sometimes it was bad choices that lead to addictions.  Sometimes it was health related.  Sometimes it was just the economy.  Intelligent, hardworking people lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

As I helped each of these ladies, I could see a little bit of myself in each one.  I haven’t dealt with an addiction, but I have made wrong choices and suffered the consequences. I did lose my teaching job a few years back, a product of a reduction in work force.  God has been unbelievably good to me. Sustaining me through each day, each month and each year by his grace.

This is from the Message Bible -

Ephesians 2:1-6 “It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living; tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it; all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ.  He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus our Messiah.

All of us are the same, we are sinners saved by grace.  The good news is, it’s not up to us. God shows us mercy and love.  We just need to accept it and bless the Lord for His goodness.   

Matt Redman - 10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord) (Official Music Video) from matt-redman on GodTube.

The Fiery Furnace

Somewhere in time, this week, I was watching an end time’s movie from the 1990’s. Its fun watching movies that try to figure out what will happen after Christ’s return and the church is taken from this earth.  It is believed that many people will come to faith in Christ during this time and they will be persecuted for their faith.  In this particular story, the Christians are placed in a furnace.  It reminded me of the Bible story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

In the third chapter of Daniel, it recounts this story.  What you need to know about the setting for this story is that Israel has been conquered by Babylon and thier King carried the best and the brightest people Israel into captivity in Babylon.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were three such people. They were respected and had earned their way into a position of power in Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom.

King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold ninety feet high.  He must have been pretty proud of it because he showed it to his advisors so they could see the wonders he created. They all decided that when anyone heard music, they should bow and worship this image.  A group of the king’s advisors were a little jealous of the position the Israeli’s had achieved, so they took it upon themselves to share with the king that three of the Israelites did not bow and worship the golden image. This made Nebuchadnezzar furious.

He called in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to talk to them.  He basically gave them an ultimatum.  They could worship the image of gold, or be burned to death in a fiery furnace.  This was their response.

Daniel 3:16 – 17 (NIV) “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king. “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.  If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.””

This made Nebuchadnezzar so mad, he heated the furnace up seven times hotter than normal.  He then ordered the three to be tied and thrown into the furnace.  The soldiers that had the unpleasant task of throwing three live human beings into a fire did not survive. The heat of the furnace killed them.

Sometimes it seems like the struggles of life have taken us out of the pan and into the fire.  Standing up for the truth, holding to your convictions can at times by hard.  After days and months of hard times, it may be hard to hold onto the knowledge that God never leaves us or forsakes us.  We get caught up with the reality of the fire and don’t see the deliverance that is coming to set us free.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had the courage necessary to face the flames. They knew that God could deliver them, but even if he chose not to, that God was still in control. When we are going through hard times, God may choose to deliver us, or He may choose to walk with us through it.  Either way, God is still with us.

 In the fiery furnace, the King watches on.  He wants to see his perceived enemy die for disobeying him.  Instead what he sees is four men, up and walking around.  The ties that had held their hands and feet together were burned, but nothing else was.  The king notices that one of the men looks as if he is the son of God.

Think about this.  Times were hard, they were in a furnace, but God was in the fire with them.  God was walking through the hard spot with them.  He didn’t rescue them from the fire. He protected them and walked through the fire with them.  If things are looking bad, just remember that God is walking through the hard time with you.

The truth that these three men, did not die in the fire, instead they are alive and well was enough to impact the hard heart of King Nebuchadnezzar.  He yells into the fire for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to come out.

Daniel 3:29 “Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to be cut into pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way.”

When times are hard, remember the fiery furnace and realize there is no other God that can save this way.  No other God that is able to save us from our sins and lead us to eternal life.  No other God is God.

Big Daddy Weave - Redeemed (Official Music Video) from big-daddy-weave on GodTube.

Freedom

Somewhere in time, this week, we celebrated July 4^th as America’s Independence Day.  It caused me to think of freedom.  Freedom that our founding fathers fought to earn for us and freedom our soldiers currently sacrifice everything for.  Freedom is something we should respect, prize and do everything to maintain.

This week I have been feeling a little frustrated with my country.  I think we are letting our freedom’s be taken away, little by little.  When my tax dollars are used to fund things I consider morally wrong, a chink in the armor of freedom appears.  When the government imposes a mandate on religious organizations, forcing them to insure a life style they don’t embrace, the chink deepens to a crack. When you can’t speak your mind because others disagree with you, the armor develops a hole and the wearer becomes vulnerable.  I believe we should respect each other’s opinion, but we don’t have to agree, that is part of what makes America a great country. 

As I was thinking this, I remembered that even with our flaws, we still have it very good in America.  There are places in this world right now where admitting to being a Christian is a death sentence.  In some places, if you admit to being a Christian, it immediately reduces you to a life of poverty with no hope of rising above.  Speaking your faith brings persecution, suffering and often time’s death.  By comparison, my minor complaints are nothing.

To be honest, freedom doesn’t come from the country I live in, it comes from God.  That is why people suffer for their faith and still have unlimited joy.  Their freedom is found in their inmost being and radiates out from there.

John 8:32 (NIV) “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

2 Corinthians 3:17 (NIV) “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

Freedom, true freedom, is a matter of the heart.  You can be free while in prison if you choose to.  You can live in a grass hut in the middle of a desert and experience freedom. The spirit of God is everywhere.  Where God’s spirit is, there is freedom.

For all of us who can practice our faith without persecution, let’s remember to pray for those who can’t.  Let us also be thankful for the freedoms we do enjoy.  There may come a time we are not as fortunate as now.

Stories Of Freedom - ignitermedia.com from ignitermedia on GodTube.

Break my heart for what breaks yours

Somewhere in time, this week, I have been listening to a Casting Crowns song.  The title is “Jesus, Friend of Sinners.”  This may sound a little crazy, but the song bothers me.  I agree with the message of the song and I see their point.  There is a line in the chorus where the singer asks God, to break my heart for what breaks yours.  I don’t think as humans we can handle that.  If we saw all the evil and all the hurt, we would crawl under a rock and never come out. 

The song has other points.  It points out that as Christians, we sometimes are perceived as judgmental. We tend to point out the wrong instead of caring for the hurting.  Sometimes we do point out the fault in others, while ignoring the fault in ourselves.  All of this is true and can be dealt with.  As Christian’s we think that we need to clean people up before we lead them to Christ, either that or directly after.  The funny thing is, that’s not our job.  We can definitely disciple, mentor, encourage and pray for people, but we can’t become the judge and jury.  When someone truly accepts Christ and surrenders their heart to his leadership, He will nudge them towards seeking holiness.  Sometimes, in our attempts to help, we make matters worse.

Romans 12:2 (NIV) “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

I think transformation takes time.  When a person first comes to Christ, transformation is inevitable.  God will change you.  How quickly the change happens is dependent upon the person and upon God.  You and I can help, but that is about all.  For me, realizing it’s not my job to fix everyone was a major revelation.  I can give advice, but I can’t be hurt when someone doesn’t take it. 

Back to the line that bothers me.  “Break my heart for what breaks yours.”  I want to see people as Jesus sees them.  No preconceived ideas, no hidden agendas.  I want to show the love of Christ, freely given, expecting nothing in return.  I don’t want to know all the evil that exits in this world.  The little I know about is heart breaking enough.  So my prayer is not for God to break my heart for what breaks his, but to allow my heart to break for the things I can handle.  The few things I can do something about. 

James 1:27 (NIV) “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

This is something I can handle.  I can’t help every widow and every orphan, but if I can help one here and one there, I am practicing pure religion.  I don’t think God cares that I am a light weight.  He gave me a sensitive heart for a reason and he knows how much I can bear.  I’m very thankful he does.

Casting Crowns - Jesus, Friend of Sinners (Official Music Video) from casting-crowns on GodTube.

Catherine Marshall

Somewhere in time, September 27, 1914, Catherine Marshall was born.  I wrote a few words about her first husband in my previous blog, but I have always been interested in Catherine Marshall.  I read the book, Christy, for the first time when I was about sixteen years old.  It’s still one of my favorite books.  Sometimes I think we have an image of perfect people living perfect lives when we think of heroes of the faith, but that is so far from the truth.  When we dig into people's lives, we find people dealing with hurt and loss and confusion just like everyone else. 

Catherine Marshall grew up in Tennessee. Her father was a Presbyterian minister with a small congregation in a small town.  She didn’t grow up with money, but she had a childhood filled with love.  She desperately wanted to go to college.  She had been accepted to Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, but her family didn’t have the money to pay her tuition. 

One evening her mother found her lying across her bed, sobbing. "She sat down beside me and said, 'You and I are going to deal with this right now . . . I know it's right for you to go to college. Every problem has a solution. Let's ask God to tell us how to bring this dream to reality.' And I prayed, 'Lord, I turn this dream over to You. I give it up. It's in Your hands.' " This first moment of youthful honesty set the tone for her entire life. "I was learning that the price of a relationship with [God] is a dropping of all our masks and pretense. We must come to Him with stark honesty 'as we are' or not at all." (www.christianbooks.com)

She was able to attend Agnes Scott and while there, she met the young Peter Marshall.  She was twenty-three when they married, he was thirty-five.  They both shared a love for God and a love for words.  They wrote a few things together that were published during their married life, but life was not rosy and perfect even as the wife of one of the most acclaimed minsters in America.  In 1943 she contracted tuberculosis.  The only treatment for this was bed rest for the patient.  Can you imagine how hard that must have been?  She had a young son and an active life and now she was confined to the bed.  During this time she struggled with questions of why.  Why would God let this happen to her?  Did God still have a purpose and a plan for her?

God has a purpose in everything. She recovered and the family purchased a small vacation cottage to give her a place to recover.  Little did she know, in 1949 she would be a widow.  She was thirty-five years old with a nine year old son.  The vacation cottage they had purchased became her home.  Not only did she loose her husband, but she had to uproot her young son and leave her friends in order to occupy the only home they owned, thier vacation cottage.   

God never promised us a perfect pain free life, but he does promise to be with us through the hurt and pain.  With faith in God, there is always hope.

Proverbs 23:18 (NIV) “There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.”

Here she was, a widow with a young son.  How would she support them both?  She decided to write a book.  It could be she was encouraged by the outpouring of love from the people that admired her late husband, or maybe it was a way to deal with her own grief, but she wrote a book about his life.  A Man Called Peter was a widely popular book and a movie, based on the story, came out in 1954.  Catherine went on to write several more books.  There is even an award given for Christian fiction in honor of her work.  It’s called the “Christy” award. 

If she hadn’t of faced the struggles she did, she may never have attempted to accomplish what she did in life. In the words of Mercy Me, sometimes the hurt and the healer collide. 

Hurt is a fact of life.  The miraculous is the hope we have in God’s ability to take our hurt and use it to mold us into the person he wants us to be.

MercyMe - The Hurt and The Healer (Official Music Video) from mercymemusic on GodTube.

Peter Marshall

Somewhere in time, May 27, 1902, Peter Marshall was born in Scotland.  Peter wanted to be a sailor.  When his mother was widowed, she remarried and Peter and his new step father struggled.  Peter tried to run away and go to work on a boat, but he was too young and they sent him home.  It was then his step father decided that if he wanted to work so badly, he could work in the mines and pay his own way.  Peter’s mother really wanted her son to get an education, so he did both.  He worked in the mines all day and then he went to school at night.

Imagine how hard that could be, especially for one so young, but he persisted.  One evening he was on his way home from school when he felt a call from God very strongly to change his career path and become a minister of the gospel.  To achieve this goal, he had to leave Scotland and travel to America to attend Seminary. He pastored a church in George before moving to a Presbyterian church in Washington DC.  He then went on to be the chaplain of the Senate. 

I heard about Peter Marshall from his wife.  I never met her, but she wrote one of my favorite books, Christy. Peter died when he was only 47 years old and Catherine wrote his biography titled, A Man Called Peter. Peter Marshall had a gift with words and so did Catherine.  This is a gift I envy.  The ability to take words and paint mental pictures that capture our imagination and spur our thinking on to higher levels is a gift that many writers and speakers have.

Peter Marshall Quotes

A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.

Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.

Lord, where we are wrong, make us willing to change; where we are right make us easy to live with.

It is no surprise to me that God calls, poets, artist and story tellers to serve him, because all these things reflect the glory of God.  We know God is an artist, we see His beauty in creation.  We know He loves stories by the parables of the New Testament and we know He is a poet, by the psalms.

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn;

if I settle on the far side of the sea.

Even there you hand will guide me.

Your right hand will hold me fast.

Psalm 139:7-10 (NIV)

Peter Marshall felt a call from God so strong that he left everything he knew to pursue his calling.  Maybe it was easier in his time than it is in ours to hear God’s call, or maybe we are just too surrounded with noise we can’t hear God’s call as clearly.  Either way, one thing I do know is God is calling each of us to serve Him in a special way he ordained just for us.  Maybe it’s time to leave everything and pursue God’s call.

Brandon Health - Give Me Your Eyes from brandon-heath on GodTube.

My Sunday School Teacher

Somewhere in time, this week, we have been doing a lot of traveling.  Traveling is fun, but we get to spend an inordinate amount of time in the car.  The good thing is I have been writing a book and this week I was able to get a good portion of the story typed up while my husband drove.  We listened to CD Rom’s as we drove down the road and a song by 10^th avenue north reminded me of my Sunday school teacher.

My parents divorced when I was about seven years old.  My Father ended up with custody of all the children to begin with, but when I was nine years old, I moved to live with my mother.  I believe that God knew I would need my mother in my teen years and it worked out well, my mother is my good friend.  This time in my life was a little challenging though.  I lived with my father in Indiana and I moved to live with my mother in San Diego.  I had many adjustments to make, but I had a family that loved me and other people who cared and they helped me through it.  One of the caring people was my Sunday school teacher.

We attended College Grove Southern Baptist Church somewhere in San Diego.  My Sunday school teacher was a single lady that enjoyed spending time with a group of nine and ten year old girls.  She was a tall woman especially when compared to my short family.  She had a lot of love to give to a group of young girls.  She took her class to Disney once and another time to the county fair.  She always tried to find ways for us to have fun together. 

She also tried her best to teach us to love the Lord.  She encouraged us to memorize Bible verses and I am good at remembering versus, but I’m not good and remembering where the verse is located in the Bible.  She used to admonish me about that.  She would say, how will you ever find the verse if you don’t have its address.  Well she is right.  I exhaust my concordance looking for things at times and even drive my husband a little crazy seeing if he remembers were a certain passage is contained.  Since this was a Southern Baptist church, I memorized the passage and verse of John 3:16.

John 3:16 (From memory, so the version may be King James) “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

In that little Baptist Church in San Diego, I went forward and made my public profession of faith in Christ.  I was also baptized there when I was ten years old.  I was just thinking, sometimes people don’t realize they have impacted the life of a child.  They just show up and do the best they can and they or may not ever get thanked for their service.  This is my way of thanking this nice lady for giving her time to impact my life.  She helped me realize the importance hiding God’s word in my heart. 

Going back to the 10^th Avenue North song, it reminds me of John 3:16, which in turn reminds me of my Sunday school teacher.

Tenth Avenue North - Love Is Here from tenth-avenue-north on GodTube.