My daughter says I should write a book. I don’t feel led to do that, but I decided to write some testimonies about miracles in my life.
This one happened 41 years ago. When I was 28 years old, I had my first bipolar crisis and was hospitalized for four months. While I was convalescing in Britain, my ex-husband left with another woman, taking our three small children with him. When I was in Scotland, my younger sister, Christine, and I were walking her dog on a deserted beach. There was literally no one in sight. My sister asked, “Don’t you regret your life? You have nothing—no house, no car, no money!” I thought for a minute, wondering how to answer. At that very moment, a piece of paper fluttered down from the sky and fell at my sister’s feet. She read it out loud. It said, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:36-37) My sister looked at me and exclaimed, “I suppose you think that this is a message from God?!” Ha! -- Lisa
0 Comments
The saying, “Necessity is the mother of Invention,” certainly took on greater meaning lately, with the increased challenges due to the pandemic and people needing to find ways to support themselves and their families.
One of the obstacles that can often seem insurmountable at the beginning of a project is a lack of self-confidence or of resources. Along those lines, there are two stories from the Bible where people encountered a serious challenge to their abilities and resources. The first happened when a widow who had been married to one of the former students of the prophet Elisha was threatened by a loan shark. Her husband had owed money, and now that he was dead, the loan shark was threatening to sell her two sons as slaves to pay the debt. When the widow told Elisha, his response was immediate: “What do you have in your house?” She was a bit surprised and said, “Absolutely nothing,” but then remembered that she did have a jar half full of olive oil, so she told him. “Go back to your house,” he replied, “and send your sons to borrow every empty jar they can get their hands on. Bring them into your house and shut your door and start filling them up with olive oil from your jar.” She did as he said, and amazingly, she filled jar after jar—every jar her sons had been able to borrow from the entire neighborhood. She was then able to sell that oil and repay her debt. The next story happened when Jesus was preaching to a crowd of at least 5,000. When evening came, His disciples realized that all of them would soon need to eat, and that they were far from any place where they could get food, so they suggested that Jesus had better send them away. But His response was: “You give them something to eat.” The disciples were shocked and said that even the better part of a year’s salary wouldn’t be enough to buy food to feed the crowd—even if they had been some place where buying food was an option—to which Jesus responded: “What food have you got with you now?” They searched and came up with only five loaves of bread and two fish. Jesus told them to have everyone sit down, then He prayed and started to break up the bread and fish and give it to His disciples to distribute. In the end, everyone was fed—and not only that, there were 12 baskets of leftovers. Remember that God can make something out of very little when we place our trust in Him and commit our ways to Him by faith. -- Simon Bishop It’s easy to be grateful when circumstances turn out well, but thankfulness doesn’t have to be limited just to the good times. Not only is it possible to be thankful in difficulties, it’s also beneficial. Thankful people cope better than those who grumble and complain. How, then, do we develop an attitude of gratitude when life is tough? The letters of “gratitude” give us some clues.
Having an attitude of gratitude is not a denial of unpleasant circumstances, nor is it a response that only a few people can demonstrate. It’s a matter of choice. We can choose to be grateful and reap the related benefits. --Florence MacKenzie
George Müller (1805-1898) was an evangelist who achieved fame not only for helping hundreds of thousands of British children in his orphanages and schools, but also for his steadfast faith that the providence of God would meet the considerable needs of his many ventures. Yet he is less known for the life-changing discovery he made in 1841, which lay behind the deep joy and faith that defined and drove his ministry.
Although he had routinely prayed each morning for over a decade, he realized that his mind often wandered and it could take some time before he was conscious of any comfort, encouragement, or humbling of his soul. He eventually came to the conclusion that “the first great and primary business” he needed to attend to was the nourishing of the inner self, so that the soul became “happy in the Lord.” This, he stressed, was far more important than focusing on how to serve or glorify God, because reaching the unconverted, helping others, and improving one’s character or behavior were all dependant on being spiritually nourished and strengthened. In order to achieve this, he stressed that a believer had to enter an “experimental fellowship with God,” which required reading and meditating on the Bible. This process involved, firstly, asking for the Lord’s blessing upon his scripture and then to meditate on the word “searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.” Asking the Spirit for help in considering God’s word, pondering over it, and applying it to his heart, he almost always found that within a few minutes his soul was “led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication.” In other words, despite not giving himself to prayer, the meditation almost immediately led him to it. By speaking to his Father and friend about the things brought before him in the Bible, he found that he was “comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed.” Furthermore, the process also ensured that the teaching would sink in, rather than disappearing from his mind like water through a pipe. After he had been doing this for some time, he would move on to the next part of the passage turning it “into prayer for myself or others as the Word led,” whilst continually bearing in mind that the object of the meditation was to gain food for the soul. In doing so, he was able to achieve a “peaceful if not happy state of heart” that he claimed was vital for his ongoing ministry. Indeed, he explained that the blessing he received gave him the “help and strength” to “pass in peace” through the deeper trials of life. What astonished him most of all about this revelation was that he had not heard about the approach from any believer, whether in print, public ministry, or private conversation. It was as plain to him as anything, that this had been taught to him by God. Furthermore, such was the “immense spiritual profit and refreshment” that he derived from it for over forty years that he “affectionately and solemnly” urged all believers to do the same. If you find the Bible difficult, or doubt its power, or simply want a new way of reading scripture, then why not try Müller’s approach for yourself? Not only did this “experimental fellowship with God” provide him with a deep happiness in his soul, but it was also the foundation upon which he was able to do some amazing things, often in the face of considerable challenges. After all, as he pointed out, “How different it is when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what it is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials and the temptations of the day come upon one.” From Jacki
Thank you so much for your latest gift--donations have been going for heaters and blankets since we've had snow--& more coming. Here are some photos: of the street I live on with cars stuck in the snow., a "Snow Woman" Arabic style. And a couple a baby of a mom who had no heat we gave a heater to in a Palestinian camp. Today we're distributing more. Sometimes people don't realize that we have snow in the winter here--& maybe there was snow in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. Thanks again for your help. I have always liked the disciple Peter. He made a lot of mistakes, opened his mouth at all the wrong times, didn’t want to have to forgive his brother, and ultimately even denied Jesus—three times. Yet, Peter appeals to me because I am a lot like him.
Like Peter, each of us makes mistakes, each of us has times when we don’t forgive our offenders—and most certainly, each of us has disappointed our Savior. I know I have many times. I came to the point when I looked at myself and all the mistakes I’d made (and would undoubtedly continue to make) and concluded that I was an awful person. I am not always honest, I get angry, I’m lazy, I argue a lot, I’m sarcastic and critical ... and on the list goes. Maybe He loves me for the person I could be, I thought. That made sense. So I decided to try to be that person. Loving, kind, helpful, always ready to inspire and lift others up. Well, that was the plan. But even the best plans are useless if you can’t put them into practice. And I couldn’t. I did try to be better, but now that I was aware of all my failings, it seemed that I only made more mistakes. However hard I tried, I couldn’t become the person I could be, the one I thought God loved so much. Then it came to me: God doesn’t love me as the person I could or should or might be! He loves me for who I am! Right now, right here, me. Broken, shattered, disappointing me. He doesn’t need a “because” to love me. And that goes for everyone. -- Amy Joy Mizrany Back in about 1978, when I was living in Auckland, New Zealand, an extraordinary miracle happened in my life. I was living in Mount Wellington, a fairly southern suburb, and I needed to hitchhike to Takapuna, on the north shore of Auckland, across the big harbor bridge. I had met an old university friend who had invited me for a Saturday lunch at 1:00 with him and his wife. He had given me his street address in Takapuna. I had never been to Takapuna before.
It was a long distance to hitchhike. I estimated it would take three hours, so I needed to leave our house by 10:00 a.m. I was just on the point of leaving our little community when I remembered I had two urgent short notes to write to people I had met on the street, so I stayed back, thinking, “The Lord will have to give me a better ride.” The notes were written, and I was just about to leave the house when someone rang the doorbell and wanted to talk to me. Well, how could I say no, that I had to go to a lunch appointment? So, I said to myself, “The Lord will just have to give me a better ride!” In the end, my visitor stayed an hour! Hmmm! It was now 11:30 a.m., so I decided to phone my friends to say I was coming, but I might be late. They said, “Why not come next week?” I said, “No, today is the day, but I may be a little late.” I went out to our front gate and had to decide whether to go to the left, to hitch a ride at some traffic lights, or to go to the right and walk about one kilometer down to the on-ramp to the motorway. The Lord showed me to go to the left, up to the traffic lights. With a sinking heart, I went to the left, even though I was so very late, and I was actually going in the opposite direction of where I needed to go. At the traffic light, I was able to hitch a ride very quickly down to the motorway. I ran across the road to the motorway on-ramp. I had been there about 30 seconds when a small van stopped and I got in. The driver asked, “Where do you want to go?” I said, “Downtown Auckland.” He said, “I’m going there, too! Whereabouts in downtown Auckland do you need to go?” I said, “Well, actually, I need to go to the north shore, across the harbor bridge.” He said, “Well, look at that, I’m going there, too!” Whereabouts on the north shore are you going?” I said, “I need to go to Takapuna.” He said, “Well, look at that, I’m going there, too! Whereabouts in Takapuna are you going?” I said, “Well, actually, I’ve never been there before. But I can show you the address.” I showed him the address, and he said, “Well, look at that. That address is just around the corner from my place!” We drove for about an hour, all the way to his front gate where he dropped me off. I walked around the corner to my friends’ place and arrived just before 1:00. Needless to say, my friends were suitably impressed! This has been kind of a landmark miracle in my life, showing me that if the Lord wants to, He can do absolutely anything. And, of course, He is the one who gives us the faith. We serve a wonderful God! Praise the Lord! -- Geoffrey My favorite taste is sour— sour candies, pickles, anything with lemon, sour cherries, you name it—I love it! Some people may prefer savory, or sweet—or the newcomer to the block, umami—but the one basic taste I’ve never found to be anyone’s favorite is bitter. I’m not surprised! In fact, the word I’ve seen most used in definitions of the word bitter is “unpleasant.” It seems to make sense that the word “bitter” is also used to describe the act of holding on to resentment and anger.
I once read an article that said there are three types of bitterness.
Hebrews 12:15 says, “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble.” Bitterness can make you miss out on the grace that God wishes to give you. And like the example of the root, at first it’s difficult to notice bitterness, but as that “weed” sprouts, there will be symptoms. And if you let it continue to grow without uprooting it, it can take over your life. In Matthew 18, Peter asked Jesus how many times he needed to forgive someone, and if perhaps seven times was sufficient. Maybe Peter had been wronged six times and figured he’d had quite enough. Jesus answered that it was seventy times seven, and He followed up on that with the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. In the parable, a king wants to sort out his accounts, so he gets his servants to pay back the money they owe him. It turns out one servant owed him ten thousand talents—about 200,000 years’ wages! He wasn’t able to pay, so the king decreed that, in line with some contemporary Roman legal practices, his wife and children and everything he had would be sold to pay back the debt. But when the servant fell on his knees, crying, “Be patient with me and I will pay back everything!” the king took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go. I don’t know what you would do if you just had an unimaginably monstrous debt forgiven and your family and life returned to you, but something was seriously wrong with this servant, because after leaving the king, he found someone who owed him a hundred denarii—a debt that was 600,000 times smaller than the one he had just been forgiven—and he attacked him and began to choke him, demanding he pay the money back immediately. When the debtor dropped to his knees and begged, “Be patient with me and I will pay you back,” the servant instead had him thrown in prison. When the king heard about this, he called the servant back and reprimanded him, saying that he should have had the same mercy on others as had been shown to him. Then he had the servant thrown into jail until he could pay back his debt. Jesus concluded with a pretty hefty statement: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:35 NIV) Talk about motivation! Of course, it’s not always easy to, as the Bible says, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:31–32 NIV) But God knows that, and He promises that He will help us to forgive, if we ask Him to. (Philippians 4:13.) -- Tina Kapp The Bible makes it clear that each person stands before God as an individual. God doesn’t hold every person in a nation accountable for the ills and evils of the nation, or for the mistakes and sins of its leaders. Governments may be misguided, morally bankrupt, corrupt, or evil in some cases, but that doesn’t mean that all of the people in those countries are guilty of these things collectively.
“God is love,” and “He is not willing that any should perish.” Each person is a unique individual, created by God in His own image, and God loves each one as if they were the only one. Each person is someone Jesus died to save. God takes people where they’re at and works in their hearts and lives accordingly. He loves every single man, woman, and child, no matter who they are, where they live, what color their skin is, what their ancestors did or didn’t do, or what they believe or don’t believe. He still loves them, even if their lives are consumed with sin or they live in spiritual darkness. No matter good or how bad you think you are. Turn back to God and tell Him that you love Him and that you are sorry for neglecting Him. For God has promised, … Let … him [that’s you and me and all of us] return unto the LORD, and He [God] will have mercy upon him [you]; … for He [God] will abundantly pardon. (Isa. 55:7) |
AuthorThe goal of the blog is to provide interesting, motivational, soul feeding material. All to help remind us that God loves us all and wants a personal relationship with each of us and will take care of us in times of trouble. I aspire to be a force for good by providing you with positive input. I encourage you to share the blog with others. Archives
August 2023
Categories
All
|