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Waiting on Hope?

Feb16

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;” Psalm 130:5

Do you see the connection between this verse and this photo?

The dead leaves represent the concealment of hope.

After waiting through the winter, the daffodils thrust through all the dead leaves and shouts,

“Hope is alive!”

THEN

The psalmist advices us to wait on hope,

For hope will spring forth from God’s word.

God illustrates His truths, time and time again, through nature. A daffodil’s appearance following a cold winter fairly shouts the truth of hope. This visual of hope serves to remind us to wait and just like the daffodils, in God’s timing, hope will spring forth.

Let’s ponder our present troubles (winter). Like the dead leaves do they conceal the signs of hope? The psalmist counsels us to wait. And as we wait, or gaze upon a simple daffodil, we will be reminded of the hope we have in God’s word.

What to do?

Aug9

Version 2

What do we do when in spite of all that we know and believe, the darkness continues to stalk us? We wait and wait but the hoped for relief remains a no show.

Instead of giving in and sinking lower and lower, try putting one foot in front of the other. Whatever we do we do not give into the hopelessness.

Instead we hold up our shield of faith and extinguish all the fiery darts of the enemy. (based on Ephesians 6:16.) One fiery dart at a time.

We replace every fiery dart thought with a Truth thought from God.

We keep moving forward, depending on God’s strength.

 

And if in spite of all of this, the darkness remains?

Remember, God’s way is the only way. There is no other way that will bring the help we need. Focus on trusting God to come through for us.

This will require faith. Maybe more than we have at the moment. Trust God to supply what we lack.

Ask for help to shut out the negative debilitating thoughts; to replace them with God’s thoughts. .

Maybe it’s been lingering far longer than we could imagine.

That doesn’t make God’s Word any less true.

Yet the stalking negativity sometimes keeps hanging around.

Then just keep putting one foot of faith in front of the other. Looking neither to the right or the left. 

Keep in mind, everyday won’t be like this. There will be better days here and there. We won’t drown in just one day. 

Hebrews 10:36, You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

Seasons! some good, some not so good

Jul12

Winter
Summer

 

      Each season possesses beauty unique to its time. Sometimes the beauty is obvious and a wonder to behold and experience. Some seasons, however, the beauty is less obvious. Those seasons require an extra effort on our part to experience the beauty. Nevertheless, the beauty is there; waiting to be known. 

     Life is like that too! There are seasons that present quite the challenge to discover its beauty. Seasons change. Some changes are sudden and completely upend our lives. Some changes happen slowly but inevitably. 

     These changes bring with them a most undesirable host of temptations. (I call them fiery darts, remember) Fear, doubt, discouragement, anxiety, depression, anger (just to name a few!) have the potential power to overwhelm us (even destroy us). And they will, if we face them unequipped.

     There is only one source that I would recommend that is capable of extinguishing the temptation of such powerful negative emotions. 

Consider the following:

Fear 

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7  Do not receive what has not been given to you by God.

Doubt

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. James 1:6  Without faith, fear will overwhelm us. 

Discouragement

The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.Deuteronomy 31:8 God is with us and goes before us all at the same time. He can do that because He is God. He is preparing the solutions ahead of time to our problems.

Anxiety

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7 Worry and anxiety are sin. But the world will tell us it’s normal. We can’t help it. Oh! but this verse wipes out such a false assumption. Do we desire peace or anxiety? It’s a choice we make! 

Depression

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Psalms 42:1 Without hope, depression can get the best of us. Think about God, how He loves us, the extreme measures He went to to assure us of hope. Don’t allow the enemy to steal that from us. 

Anger

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. James 1:19-20 Anger can be brought under control. Take the measures recommended here to defuse it.

     For every fiery dart that attacks us in those not so pleasant seasons of life, there is a Truth thought that will extinguish them. Only then will we have to vision to uncover the beauty they hide. If we can but remember Romans 8:28,

 

 

 

Even when the answers don’t come

May3

     Somedays, I feel my dreams are slipping away.  Somedays, I feel I am a solitary soldier. Somedays, I feel abandoned. Somedays, I feel overwhelmed. And no matter how much I pray and attack these fiery dart thoughts, relief and/or victory just doesn’t happen.

So what does one do at times like these?

     Well, I’m going to keep fighting and resisting those fiery dart thoughts. I’m going to replace every fiery dart thought with verses of hope. Verses that remind me of who God is and how much He loves me. I’m going to remind myself of the abundance of God’s blessings and answers to prayers from my past.

     Satan’s fiery darts are unrelenting at times like these. Therefore, I must be persistent in my resistance. Like Winston Churchill reminds us

th-22

     So, even though the relief, victory, the answers haven’t arrived, I won’t forget that each and everyone of my problems is something God cares about. And that

It won’t always be like this! 

 

How to keep from being devoured! Or how to not give up when you have lost hope.

Feb22

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    There are seasons in our lives when in spite of what we read in the Bible, we feel abandoned by God. (and if we aren’t reading our Bible then we, for sure, feel abandoned and even hopeless) We walk around in a cloud where hope is vague and happiness is something we grow more unfamiliar with by the day.

So what should we do? How do we survive such desolate days?

Keep a proper perspective

     We all have a singular enemy! He is called Satan! He has plans to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10). He influences false assumptions, prideful thinking, and deceptive human reasoning. (2 Cor 10:3-5)

Then how is it that we are so easily devoured by Satan’s plans? 

     I’ve been told that the lion stalks those who are distracted and weak. Therefore, Satan is on a constant vigil to detect the weak among us. Those who rarely feed on God’s word, are most vulnerable to his manipulation and deception. Those who have become more familiar with the lies of the world than the principles declared in the Bible are easily led astray and distracted. 

     Without a healthy understanding of how much we are loved by God, of His good plans for us, of how His plan is for all things to work together for our good, we can easily be consumed by the burdens of life. Therefore, Satan’s foremost attack is to make us ignorant of such understanding. By doing so, he can easily convince us that God has forgotten and abandoned us. He feeds our thoughts with negativity and lies. Our hope soon gives way to hopelessness and despair. 

How do we counter Satan’s attack?

    Satan attacks us first in our thoughts. A weapon referred to as fiery darts. If we don’t know how to recognize those fiery darts, then we are doomed to falling prey to their poison. How we feel will be filtered by the fiery darts we have allowed to take root in our thinking. Consider the following excerpt from my book, Fiery Darts: Satan’s Weapon of Choice:

First we entertain a thought. That thought will cause certain related feelings. Thus, our behavior is influenced by our thoughts and feelings. Psychologists say that if behavior is to be changed, then the flow must be interrupted, either at the initial thought or at the feeling point. p. 28 3rd ed FD’s

     Satan must be defeated at the first thought level. When we accomplish this, then the darkness will diminish. We won’t succumb to the deception of the enemy. We may have to deal with unhappiness but our joy remains. And instead of becoming overwhelmed we will discover that

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:8-16 NLT

 

Who do we believe?

Nov11

autumn trees

Why do we so easily believe the lies of fiery darts? But struggle to believe Truths from God’s Word?

   If the darkness of the world, Satan, and our flesh influences our thinking more than God’s Word, then our thoughts, attitudes, and actions will reflect that darkness.  Thus our focus will be on the darkness, blinding us to the light of God’s truth that lies beyond it. 

  Yet, if we desire to believe God over the lies of the enemy, we must do the following:  

We must seek God.

When God speaks we need to listen.

When God speaks we need to believe.

When God speaks we need to act on His words.

Take to heart the following:

…when you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. Is 43:2 ESV

The LORD is the One who goes before you. He will be with you; He will not leave you. Do not be afraid or discourages. Deut. 31:8

Don’t be afraid anymore, only believe. Mark 5:36 NASV

Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16

   Yet sometimes the problems we face threaten to overwhelm us. We believe God,. We believe His Word. We go to it daily.  We talk to God about it a lot, but the hoped for solution evades us! What do we do in situations like that?

We wait!

   As we wait, we continue to pray and search the Scriptures. We focus on verses like the ones above. We become alert to the encouragement God sends us as we go about our day. Through those encouragements and God’s word, we grow in our faith and perspective of the problem.

   We learn to recognize the fiery darts and how to reject them. We learn to replace them with the Truth thoughts from Scripture that God directs us to.

   We may not feel so good about the way things are going, but we must remember that if God says He will never leave us, that He will not fail us, then in spite of how things look, we must take Him at His word. 

Our well being depends on who we believe!

 

OUR ONLY HOPE!

Dec31

About-Tour

                                                              The Tour
“America is at a crossroads, and I believe we should take every opportunity to stand up for the things of God and His Word.” –Franklin Graham
Franklin Graham is traveling to all 50 states in 2016 to hold prayer rallies, to preach the Gospel, and to challenge believers to take a stand and take action. He’ll be urging Christians to vote, to live out their faith in every part of their lives, and to pray for our nation just as Nehemiah cried out to God to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and restore hope to His people.

    *     *     *     *

   I think and pray a lot about what’s in store for our country in 2016. Something captured my thoughts the other day concerning the presidential election in the context of the fiery dart message.

   It seems to me that most of what I hear focuses on getting the person of our choice in the White House as if that would solve America’s problems. However, I see that as a fiery dart attack on the mindset of many Americans.

Why?

   Because the enemy is using this line of thinking to keep us distracted from  the one and only thing that can save America. I have chosen my candidate–one whose platform lines up with what is taught in God’s Word. But unless our country takes to heart the message Franklin Graham will be delivering to the whole of America in 2016 there’s little hope that any candidate can turn the tide for Her.

   I shutter to think what the future holds for America if we fail to heed the warning of 2 Chronicles 7:14,

14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

   America must understand that unless we become wise to the enemy’s plan (John 10:10a), forsake it and turn to the plan our Creator has for us, (John 10:10b) then there is little reason to hope for a brighter future.

   But please note to whom 2 Chronicles 7:14 is addressed:

‘my people’

   That’s Christians dear people! First, we must confess our sins, then turn back to the Bible and familiarize ourselves with the Truth that we should be living by. Too many Christians have strayed from prayer and bible study, and as a result we have so compromised our faith that we have become blinded to Truth. We have accepted lies in place of the Truths we once embraced.

   Therefore we must return to the mandates given to us by God, so that we can act accordingly. We must pray, seek a candidate that stands by those mandates from God, and get out and vote. Consider the following numbers from a previous presidential election:

– 10 million evangelical Christians were eligible to vote but were unregistered.
– 9 million evangelical Christians were registered but did not vote.

19 million Christians allowed themselves to be manipulated by the enemy to believe their vote didn’t matter or would make a difference.

That, my dear readers, is a fiery dart that will destroy our nation.

 

 

Our Nation’s Peril and Our Nation’s Hope

Aug2

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   First of all, may I ask you a few questions?

Do you condemn yourself or put yourself down?

Do you think others, especially close to you, don’t think well of you?

Do you over focus on your fears?

Do you find yourself doubting God?

Do you struggle with inconsistency in reading your Bible and praying?  

   Have you recognized questions such as these as the fiery darts Ephesians 6:16 identifies? Satan knows quite well, that these fiery darts will never permeate the Shield of Faith. Therefore, what do you think his first plan of action will be with individuals? Of course, tempt an individual to search everywhere but God’s Word for the answers to questions like the ones above. And if he can manipulate enough individuals to reject God and/or His Word, then his plan to destroy a nation falls easily into place.

   Our country’s leaders, some even calling themselves Christians, speak and act in ways that contradict God’s ways. For example, the Bible makes it quite clear how God feels about abortion. Yet, some of our most powerful leaders stand firm in their support of organizations that promote abortion! I just don’t get it. Why would anyone, claiming to be a Christian, support something God is against? But wait, I think I do!

   People who have rejected God and His word, are easily manipulated into seeing lies as truth and truth as lies. You recall those questions I started out with? Well, Satan’s plan is to get us so self absorbed that we loose sight of who God is and the good plans He has for us.(Jeremiah 29:11) We can’t believe that He can take the bad things we are experiencing in life and turn them into something good and thereby enrich our lives by them. (Romans 8:28)

   We look for solutions to the problems we encounter in our lives and Satan makes sure that our search for answers takes us no where near the Scriptures. Every idea we get from him may feel like an answer at the beginning but only serves to intensify our problems and complicate our lives even more. (Proverbs 14:12)

  As Christians, we must seek God’s will and wisdom and apply them to the problems we face. As we hold up our Shield of Faith, then we are protected from being manipulated and distracted by the fiery darts aimed at us by Satan.

   Here’s how it works!

    God’s light will shine forth for all to see and as God helps us, then we can help others. (2 Corinthians 1:4) As His light is experienced and shared then that light grows and the darkness is dispelled. (John 1:5) Eventually, as individuals turn back to God, then a nation has hope. (2 Chronicles 7:14)

  

 

Speaking Truth to the Problem!

Feb25

   We live in a day when Truth has been redefined. For quite some time now only what has been politically correct has been considered Truth. The numbers of those who support this redefined Truth have increased through the years in power, influence, and intimidation.

   It is alarming to me that during most of the these years of redefinition the Church has maintained a low profile. We know the Truth, the real Truth, and yet we have fearfully kept it to ourselves! Why fearfully? Because we were threatened by those who sought to live in license, (being able to do what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it, without being made to feel guilty about it). They were convinced in their own minds that Truth had forced them to live in bondage and if they were to be able to live free of this bondage, the old Truth had to be discarded and replaced with a new truth. (The fiery darts call bondage Truth and Truth bondage, remember)

   Political correctness served their needs more than sufficiently. And while the Church for a period of time coward in fear, I am encouraged to see the Church is stirring. Yes, we gave over ground to the enemy but increasingly Christians are waking up to the fact that we must retake that ground. We are becoming wise to the fact that Satan’s camp can in no way compare to the army of God. 

  This boldness will cost us. All over our country, people are loosing their business because they refuse to compromise their Christian convictions. Christian governmental workers and Christian businessmen and women are being ostracized for their convictions and some are loosing their jobs. 

Can you see how bold Satan has become?

   His poisonous fiery darts have permeated the minds of those who are weak in the faith (remember they have been tempted to look elsewhere for Truth other than Scriptures), and especially those who have rejected God. And, in my opinion, the entertainment industry and even some of our own political leaders have been Satan’s keenest agents in influencing us to redefine Truth.

   If it were not for what God has taught me concerning fiery darts, I would be in despair. Yet, because I know how all this plays out (Satan looses) I have every reason to raise my eyes toward heaven and accept the hope God offers.

   But there is much to do.

   First and foremost, prayer and study of God’s Word must be taken more seriously than ever before.  We must resist the fiery darts that will attempt to convince us that we don’t have time to do either one.

   As God raises up godly leaders who boldly speak forth the Truth,(and I am thinking of two men right now who are doing just this; but there are more)  we must commit to pray for them faithfully. Also we must follow their example and speak forth the Truth in our personal lives. We must not be afraid. We must remember that:

For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgment. 2 Timothy 1:7, HCSB

We must never forget that true and genuine freedom is found in knowing the Author of Truth:

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”John 8:32,HCSB

Faith, Hope, and Love, (God’s plan to defeat fear, hopelessness, and hate)

Jan9

Fear, Hopelessness, and Hate

   All across our land and beyond, seeds of fear, hopelessness, and hate (just to address only 3) are being sown. You do realize why I would label these as fiery darts, right? Because if the enemy can keep our focus on such negative thinking then he can manipulate us into creating our own destruction. The enemy will stop at nothing to create a climate designed to give rise to the fruits of such fiery darts. His diabolical efforts to maintain this climate are evidenced by the rise of persecution here and abroad.  People everywhere are living lives and making choices that have been poisoned by fear, by hopelessness, by hate!

BUT GOD HAS A PLAN!

 The enemy is counting on his victims being uninformed about who God is and the plan God has set in place to empower us to defeat evil. A personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ allows us access to all  we need to counter the attack of fiery darts and defeat our enemy. The Bible tells us what to do in every situation:
The Truth expressed in Ephesians 6:16 (HCSB) “In every situation take the shield of faith and with it you will be able to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one,” took on new meaning. FD, p. 33
   Christians who are fervent in spending time with God in prayer and avail themselves to being taught by God as to how to identify fiery darts and how to replace them with Truth Thoughts, will overcome their enemy. And added to that, their witness will lead the way for others to follow in victory.
   In the face of fear, hopelessness, and hate, God offers us the direct opposite–Faith, Hope, and Love. The following are the Truth Thoughts of Faith, Hope, and Love.  Should we choose to use them, they will solidly defeat our enemy. 

FAITH

…to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’Proverbs 24:20 

HOPE

 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11

LOVE

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16