Journal of Faith: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling Philippians 2:12

I am becoming more and more protective of my feelings.  I don't mean in a controlling way where I don't let people get to me.  I mean in a way where I won't let anyone tell me how to feel. This may sound immature, but if I don't base what I do on how I feel it is actually a pretty mature way to deal.  Accept how you feel, but do right no matter what.  God didn't say don't get angry.  He said be angry and sin not.  This is maturity .  It is taking some work for me to digest this idea, but it doesn't make it any less true. It is the exact opposite way of thinking then many people in the world have been taught.  They say "Do what feels right," but the results of this can be drug and alcohol additions, fatherless children, criminal acts, and laziness.  To put it plainly when you do what feels right to you then you will SIN unless you first train yourself to be aware of what is right, and then it is still sometimes a struggle.  It takes cons...

I used to dream all the time that I was witnessing to people.  People would ask me questions and I would begin to speak about the goodness of the Lord, and how Jesus was the solution to all of their problems or desires.  I feel anointed to be having those dreams again.  Maybe someone needs these words.  I talk about my journey of faith, but maybe you haven't begun that journey yet so let me tell you about Jesus.  Jesus is the Christ, the savior of the world, the messiah, the only begotten son of God.  Jesus is God in humanity. He came down to earth, lived a human life, did miraculous things to show people who he was and how much he loved them.  Jesus felt every human emotion that any of us have ever felt. Jesus taught us how to live as people of God.  Then he died so that we wouldn't have to be separated from him anymore.   You see sin separates us from God because he is holy.  We all have sinned therefore we all should be separated fro...

When I decided to follow Christ I accepted that I belong to and with God.  This is both humbling and edifying.  If I am not my own then that means that I don't exist for my own pleasures and my own whims.  God has an idea in mind for me.  He has a plan and a mission for me while I am here.  It is the only reason that I am here, and when my purpose is done I will return to the father.  This doesn't mean that God intends for me to be miserable and get nothing that I want, it just means that my focus should be on him and his direction. There is no room for selfishness or self-centered behavior or thought. I have to be careful to be in tuned with what God is saying to me, and I have to be aware that God is not the only one that has a plan for me.  People have all sorts of ideas about how my life should go, and what I should be doing. It also seems that people want to take me for themselves and then take credit for any good that comes out of it.  Bewa...

The other day I spent some time in reflection concerning decisions that I have made in the past, and I realized that I never made good decisions when I did it because of fear.  It is a horrible thing to be afraid, but it is even worse to allow fear to coerce you into doing something that you don't want to do or not doing something that you feel that you should do.  Fear is not from God therefore while I should never make any decision on the basis of fear.  God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.   It is time to stop letting fear drive me crazy.  Today I accept that God has given me power, love, and a sound mind.  I will no longer be guided or gripped by what I don't know or what I don't want to know.   I am finding that the times of my most fear has been when I thought something horrible was coming, and I didn't want to find out.  I will not cower to willful ignorance, but I will rest in God's will fo...

  I love puzzles and I think God's word is the most wonderful puzzles of all. The more I look into it the more I see that his word has a life of its own.  It lives breathes and moves but is anchored at certain points.  It's like one of those pictures where you have to cross your eyes to see the different dimensions. The Bible is an amazing resource.  For those of you that are afraid of puzzles I would suggest that you take it a little bit at a time.  Maybe start with the framework, the edges, and then work your way to the center. I started this blog to share my experiences and my revelations as well as my uncertainties.  I am a Christ follower also called Christian, and I am after a better understanding of what my life means to me, to God, and to the world.  I hope it has encouraged you to also work out your faith puzzle.  Christ is the picture that we should be looking at to show us if we are putting the pieces together right....

I wrote earlier in my blog that this year I would be focusing on my part in the marriage analogy in the Bible.  Men are suppose to be to Christ as women are to the church. In my academia I decided to study what God has called the church to be in the hopes of discovering what God has called women to be. I have received the most amazing answer in record time.  God told me the single word that perfectly connects the relationship between Christ and the church is reflection.   I researched every scripture in the Bible that talks about the church and pulled out every adjective in those scriptures referring to the church, and amazingly enough God revealed this word to me out of my own mouth while I was praying.  I then was led to a book that I had been reading at the suggestion of my pastor.  It wasn't even about marriage or the church, but within one chapter it ended up talking about how the church is suppose to be a reflection of Christ.  At this p...

I am learning the value of the mysteries of God.  I used to wonder why God would take so long to bring me through things; why would God allow me to twist in the wind so often or get lost on my journey.  I doubt that I am the only one who has felt this way.  Sometimes I feel like I have done all that I was suppose to do, and I didn't see the results of my "obedience". I am learning that if all that I have or had were based on what I did then I would not have anything because all righteousness comes from God.  It is the grace of God that I am able to abstain from fornication; it is the grace of God that I can find it in my heart to forgive people or to ask forgiveness when I have done wrong.  It is by God's grace that I am able to do anything good because everything that is good and perfect comes from above.  I am learning to be grateful for the righteousness that is in me because it is only in me because God calls me a sweet savour of his righteousness,...

I spend a lot of time talking about things that I feel like God is telling me, but sometimes it gets really hard to hear him when my two year old son starts the all too common screams of dissatisfaction.  Single or married motherhood puts a strain on time spent doing many other things including listening to the voice of God .  I try to make prayer and meditation the beginning of every day, but so many times it is rushed by the needs of my child or the pressure of getting to work so that I can feed my child or the impending waking of my child.  When I go to read my Bible he wants to write on it, and when I go to pray he wants to pull on my clothes or break something.  It is beyond frustrating. Even while writing this I have had to stop several times to do things for him.  All of this being said becoming a parent does not excuse us from cultivating our relationship with God.  I need to talk to God in the morning before I talk to anyone else.  I need to s...

I got a revelation today as I was thinking about what the Lord wanted me to do with myself after the events of this past year and a painful beginning to this year.  I have been struggling with the idea of marriage since I was about 9 years old.  I know now that I want to get married, but it seems like a dangerous and painful road to travel.  I don't want to marry the wrong man and I don't want to let someone pick me who isn't God's choice for me.  I  may have said this before, but I think I need to focus more on myself than on men.  I have seen so many things concerning men in marriage that are unfavorable, and I have been hurt very deeply before.  My only chance, I believe, of me getting married is to focus on marriage as a reflection of Christ and the church, and, if men are suppose to be Christ in the reflection then women are suppose to be a reflection of the church.  Therefore,here comes the new revelation,  if I am going to be all that ...

When the Lord said that we were suppose to be a peculiar people I thought he only meant peculiar to non-Christians, but as it turns out following this weirdness of Christ feels like insanity to me sometimes.  It is becoming clearer to me now that the insanity that I sometimes feel is that crazy determination that nothing will destroy me.  This is the same attitude that is often cultivated in the military.  I have several family members who are from the military, and any one of them will tell you that in order to survive sometimes you have to almost be crazy.  It takes a while before that warrior invincibility attitude sets in. Being with the Lord in such close relationship has changed me from a victim mentality to that of the warrior.  This past year was a year of pain for me that caused the pain of previous years to look like tiny pinches.  I felt hurt after hurt, and it seemed like it would never stop. In the midst of some of the worst emotional pains tha...