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

The church talks a lot about trusting God "in the midnight hour." By this they mean when it is darkest in your life. There are going to be midnight hours in all of our journey's of faith. There will be times when it seems like nothing is going right, and there will be times when you feel like there is nothing right with you.  There will be times when you wonder if you have taken a wrong turn, and there will be times when you will be unsure about which way to go.  In those times pray and trust God, but there is another way of seeing "the midnight hour" The midnight hour means the first hour of a new day.  12 AM is when it is officially a new day.  In my desire to be a better manager of my time and realizing that I wasn't giving God enough priority in  my life, I used to get up, or stay up, at midnight to pray and quietly spend time with God.  I told God that I would literally give God the first of my day.  For the years that I did that I asked God to ...

I love how God made people so different. If you believe the Bible, it clearly states that we were created in the image (likeness) of God. That means that every nation was created in his image. God is diverse, and I love that about him. He placed his image on every nation, every culture, every person from the youngest to the oldest. To deny any nation's value is to deny the image of God. We are all his creations created in his image. All of us have gotten far away from who God made us to be, but he has not denied any of us his love.  This is why there is no room for racism, classicism, or any other type of ...isms in the Kingdom of God.   One of the things that I love to do is see how different cultures worship God. Worship is a very personal thing even when groups gather.  Some people are loud and some are quiet, some stand, sit, kneel, or lay. There are many ways to worship God, and the only stipulation that the Bible gives concerning worship to my knowledge is that tho...

     All of my life, people have ridiculed me for being so "good", " "innocent", or "naive".  It was as if being these things made me somehow weak or less than those who were bad, guilty, or bitter.  As I looked around I saw that it wasn't just me who was attacked with this lie, but every single child who tried to do what they learned was right. I know now that it was an attack not by people but by evil in an attempt to keep all of us from fulfilling the word of God; to keep us from proving that the wisdom of the word of God is profitable for correction, reproof, instruction in righteousness.    So, what did these misguided people offer me as an alternative to Godly wisdom...nothing.  They pretended to be my friends, but laughed and planned behind my back. They tried to get me to do wrong at every turn and laughed at every failure. They basically told me my life was a lie and I was a fool.  They accused me of thinking that I was better...