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

Thank God that being angry is NOT a sin.  Today I got so angry at a woman on the phone that I almost insulted her.  I remembered that to do such would be a shame to my faith and that there were probably reasons why she was so rude.  When I got off of the phone I just sat down in silence and processed my situation.  I was so angry that I was ready to cry.  After accepting how I felt and my responsibility for what was happening I then proceeded to pray for her, myself, and our families.  I was still angry when I did it, but I meant what I prayed.  Then I felt a lifting of the anger just enough to realize that I had a possible solution close by.  Anger happens to all of us, and there is nothing wrong with that as long as we don't use it as an excuse to act wrongly. The Bible says to be angry and sin not.  I believe that every emotion has a positive purpose if we work through the feelings and into what our emtions are t...

Being a mother is hard.  Sometimes I wonder "will he ever learn this or when will he stop doing that?"  Every day is a struggle to remember that things will turn out alright.  It can be difficult to work in close proximity to a project with little results, and parenting is like one open ended project after another.  I love helping to develope someone's life, but it is not always lovely. After so much investment of time, energy, and/or money exhaustion starts to set in.  This is when my mind starts to wander  into places that exasperate me even more. In those times(and I almost have them every day) God says to take courage and don't give up.   Life will try to ware us down because life is a test of what we believe and who we are, but you and I have the power to change our vantage point.  With God all things are possible, and adversity doesn't change that.  If I look at situations from the vantage poin...

In my church I work with children and I am always mindful that Christ said unless we come to him as children we won't enter the kingdom of Heaven. To me this means that I stay hungry to understand how I am suppose to live, that I feast on God's knowledge and learn by his teaching me. I learn by asking questions and imitating him.  I trust him to take care of me and guide me into my destiny. It means believing God knows what is right for me to do.  This is child-like faith, and we need that.   In the illustration in II Peter on child-likeness there is also direct instruction in the Bible concerning growing up.  We are suppose to take the posture of children so that God can grow us up. There are many lessons to be learned and not forgotten as a child, but we are suppose to take that child experience and format it to a humble adult lifestyle. This is why I want to be child-like, but not a child.  I was looking at my son today and couldn't...

What does a confident person look like and what makes them confident?  I recently had a friend who felt like they lost themselves (no it wasn't me this time).  She was so angry and disappointed in the whole world that she thought that she would never be happy again.  In that moment I wondered "Lord I know this person.  She is so amazing, and there is no way that she should be in this condition. Why is this happening to her?" I talked to her about changing her mindset so that she could then pursue herself, but it broke my heart to see her like that.  I pray for every woman or man who is going through this right now. I have felt like I was losing myself so often in the last few years that I almost couldn't take seeing it in this person that I love so much.  This is not how God's women are suppose to live, but sometimes life circumstances get right in your face and challenges you to duke it out.  For me it is a daily fight, and I don't always win becaus...

This is the choice that we all get to make every day.  Things happen around us and we have to decide what to believe about them.  Every thing else happens based on what we choose to believe.  I used to think that life was so complicated and the right choices were so elusive, but when God gave us choice it was simple: Believe me or not.  The only thing that we can do to please God is believe and the only thing that we could do to garauntee our demise is not to believe.  Everything that do we do is based on what we believe deep within ourselves.  Our lives reflect our level of belief in who we are, who others are, and who God is.  Believe it or not our future all depends on what we believe.  The tricky part comes when we try to change the truth to what we believe versus changing what we believe to fit truth.  The truth can not change, but what we believe can.  When we try to twist the truth rather then amending our understanding ...

 I find myself being very territorial about the one thing that I can't afford to hold on to most.  I am  clinging to my painful failures.  I feel like I am living a life of secret shame more often then I should.  I don't like to share what is deeply going on inside of me, and I don't like to tell people all of the things that go wrong in my life.  I don't like to share my pain, and it turns me into this quiet hollowed out human being that is slowly suffocating under a pile of failed expectations and dead dreams.  If anyone tries to get too close I despirately fight to keep them back because it hurts for anyone to see that aweful part of me.  I feel like a lot of people only want to know my shame so that they can shove my head down in my filth like a dog who has not learned to take its business outside.  I have issues just like everyone else, but I a...