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

This morning I was reading the gospel accounts of Jesus' arrest, death, and resurrection.  Each account told the same basic story, but in each story there was a different revelation of what Jesus said and did on those final days.  Many of us, including me, have looked at the priests of that time and Judas the betrayor and said "How could you?!" As I read this morning I realized that they had no choice in the matter.  It was the will of God, and none of it could have happened without the permission and the initiation of the LORD.  As I looked at the different gospels, I noticed that everything that happened to Jesus was prompted by his own words.  All of what happened was the will of God. According to the gospel of Mathew it wasn't until after Jesus declared that he would be betrayed and crucified that the chief priests began to conspire to kill him and Judas made a pact to deliever him.  According to the gospel of John, before Jesus was tak...

I have had days where I feel like   I have been ground through the mill for the sake of truth, but glory be to God.  He always puts me back together and restores me to better than new.  I recently had a painful conversation that reminded me of a situation in highschool.  Things didn't turn out the way that I expected, but God was trusted and God be praised. It is hard to represent God when you are hurting, but God always provides me the strength that I need when I choose to lean on him.  I am still hurting, but I was too emotional to lean on my own words so I simply stood on the word of God as my assurance.  When certain things happen in my life God stops me right in the middle of it and says "this one's not about you baby girl.  Do my work right here."  I am usually in a ridiculous amount of stress and emotional distress and in the times when I don't listen God still does what he does, but I miss out on an opportunity to let his glory come...

Satan just keeps peddling lies and deceiving people into thinking that wrong is right and right is wrong and I can't stand it!  He's smooth and he even using the Bible to try to trick the saints into becoming lost and confused.  Don't fall for it people of God.  I say I don't hate him because there is no room for hate in my life.  God created the Devil too and he has a purpose just like all the rest of creation.  Even the evil are created for the day of judgement.  This song isn't my exact sentiment, but it comes close.  I hate everything the Devil stands for.  John 10:10 says " The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." This is the plainest explination of the purpose of Satan vs. Jesus. 

Sometimes it gets hard to tell someone who is a Christian and who is not when you walk by them or even hold them a conversation.  I think that this is a tragedy caused by the watering down and supplimenting of the Bible.  People are saying things are in the Bible that aren't there and applying them to their lives as if they are the authentic word of God.  Cute sayings like "God helps those that help themselves" are being given the authority in people's lives as substitutes for the actual word of God and it has left us weak and vulnerable to attacks of sin and evil.  All of us at some point or another has had our spiritual senses dulled in order to accept less than God's best for our lives.  Some of us have believed the world's version of love instead of God's and have left Jesus at the aisle to chase after worldly "love".  Others of us have left discipleship with the Lord to follow popular personalities who only have a kind of God...

I've been struggling lately with being sure of whether or not people love me, then I realized that the word of God has already written the standard and all I need to do is hold up the answer sheet to the test. If their answers aren't this, then it is not love.  PERIOD

It is both logical and fair for people to think critically before deciding if they want a life of Christianity or not. It would be foolish to jump into something without having a good reason, and it would be just as foolish to give up something that you enjoy without an expectation of something better.  The more I get to know God the more I realize that I made the right choice when I chose salvation. I also am coming to a better understanding of how badly I need him in my life.  I got saved very young, and I thank God for touching my heart so early.  I wasn't playing a game or following a fad, I really believed that Jesus was the son of God and that he lived, lied, and rose again so that I could live in heaven forever with God when I died.  I wanted to be saved, and I was grateful for the love that God showed to me.  What I didn't realize was how much I needed saving from.  You don't realize how broken the world is, how broken you are until you see the orig...

I have always been a fan of the wellness world.  I love to exercise, try a variety of foods, and research healthy remedies for my body, but there is a huge difference between being a fan and being resolved.  I have taken from the salad bowl of life the healthy portions that I found interesting, but the truth is that I need to be healthier.  So it is with resolve that I am embarking on a journey of faith to be well!  The Lord alerted me to some unhealthy areas of my life that need changing and I thank God.  He used the man in my life to speak to me about being at my best and it hurt, but it was necessary.  While I was busy pouting God showed me that where he wants to take me I can't afford to be unhealthy or unkempt.  My body is the temple of God and a representation of the Kingdom.  I need to be at my best from the inside out.  My wellness doesn't stop there, however, wellness is about abundant life in every area.  I've mentioned the wel...

I've heard so many people talk about how God doesn't yell, and to a certain extent I agree.  This is not to say that God doesn't get his point across very securely when he speaks. In my opinion, God doesn't yell because a whisper is enough to stop storms, rebuke demons, and wake up the dead.  When God speaks it is not easy to overlook.  For so many of us Christians we imagine God encrypting messages and leaving  clues that have us struggling to decipher his speech, but Christ said that the mystery is revealed to God's people.  Revealed is another word for UNCOVERED! God isn't trying to hide his truth from us, and God isn't trying to be sneaky and make us struggle to understand him.  He has said over and over again that there is nothing that he will hide from us. Romans 16:25-27 says, Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery , which was kept secre...

As I think about how God has spoken everything into existance and has given us his word as our sword, it makes me ponder the power that read, written, and spoken words have in our lives.  The word of God is our only way to fight in the spirit, and because we wrestle not against flesh and blood our abitility to speak a timely truth from the word of God is critical to the quality of our existance in this present world.  The other day I was really struggling to get anything done because I had this thought in my head that my efforts were worthless and there was no point to anything that I was trying to do.  This simply wasn't true then, and it isn't true now even though most of us feel that way at some point in our journey of faith.  I had to stop and ask Holy Spirit to remind me of a word that would cut through the lie and kill it.  Thanks be to God that he reminded me that God would complete what he started in me and that I would get the prize if I endured and tha...