Orphans and Widows

Being a member of the Lords church carries a lot of responsibility. If you study your Bible you will find a lot of “thou shall and thou shall not” in it. I’m glad that information is there, God-breathed words that help guide me through my life. 

Sacred Selections

The past few months some friends and I have been working on a fundraising event for Sacred Selections, an organization that helps raise funds for adopting parents. We had so much fun preparing for the event and last Thursday evening the event took place. It was a blast and a success. Over 150 people came and donated over $20k. This is double the amount we were hoping to raise.

Working together with people I knew and some I never met until the night of the event created bonds that will never be broken. We all came together with one thought in mind… do it for the babies. 

The days following the event there was a “stillness and completeness” that I felt. This was a new emotion for me. I can’t ever remember having this calm. I can only assume this is the emotion that you feel when something wonderful has happened that has the hand of God on it. I know I want to feel that again. 

My calling is to help the widows and orphans. Think about that for a minute, widows and orphans, the beginning and the end of our lives here on earth. I know that all orphans are not babies, but by the standards of our laws, if you become responsible for yourself at age 18 then we are talking about children. If you are over 40 you can relate that we still feel like someone under 18 is a child. Who is a widow, any woman that has lost her husband? Unfortunately that is not always an older woman, but normally it is.

James 1:27
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

Since God has specifically told us to take care of these groups of people then we should focus on that. I’m not sure yet how this is going to happen and what my actions will be in the future, but know somehow God is going to use me for this purpose. I couldn’t be happier. 

Have you found your purpose in life? Maybe you just moved into a new phase in life, your children are out of the house now and you have more time on your hands. Maybe you just started retirement and looking for a cause to volunteer your time and energy into. Let me urge you to look into doing the Lord’s work for orphans and widows.

May God Bless

God Forgives Sin

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

I am so glad that God forgives me of my sins. Where would I be if He didn’t? How do people who are nonbelievers live day to day? Do they think they don’t sin? I’m not sure and each of us has to decide that for ourselves. God gave us free will to make our own choices each day.

Understanding that God forgives me of my sins is really beyond my understanding. I mean, I read it in His word, mentally I comprehend what the Bible tells me, but emotionally it is sometimes hard to grasp. How can I be forgiven so easily?

Remembering back when my girls were growing up and they did something I was not happy with; I would reprimand them and then forgive them. They were children, still learning, but had to take the consequences for their actions. 

What consequences do I get for my wrong actions? Sometimes I wish God could talk to me directly and reprimand me, then hug me and tell me that He still loves me. There is sin that has obvious consequences and there are others that are not so obvious. We can sin in private or in public, but God sees all.


My concern is that we take sin lightly. Maybe it is not the sin we take lightly but the consequences of the sin. If no one sees me sin except God, then I can quietly go to Him and ask forgiveness. If my sin is public that is a little different. People will talk and spread rumors or gossip about me. That will hurt my feelings and people will think of me differently. We should be more worried about what God is thinking about me than what my peers are thinking about me. I’m afraid we have this concept a little backwards.

 

Also, have we become a little easy on sin? What I mean is do we go into situations that are questionable and then if we sin, we know in the back of our mind that God will forgive me so it will be OK. I wonder how God feels about that train of thought. “I’m just human so if I sin I’ll ask God to forgive me and it will be OK.”

We need to be careful that we don’t fall into this last category. Giving excuses for sin. Sin is sin my friend and we will all face God on judgment day. Do we want to take the chance for a moment’s pleasure, or bad language during an outburst of not getting into heaven? We must be on guard at all times against sin. 

1 John 2:1-2
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole worlds.

May God Bless

When I Fall

Most of us have fallen at one time or another. If you watch children, most of the time they fall and get right back up. We were at one of my granddaughters birthday parties today and our youngest, who is 5, tripped, she jumped right up gave us all a thumbs up and said “I’m OK” and out the door she went.

Now that I am “older” every time I go to the doctors they ask me if I have fallen recently. What is up with that? Do people really fall down that much? 

The last time I fell down, well it wasn’t a pretty sight. It was about 4 years ago and my hands were full when I tripped over something in the garage. Down I went, full force on my knees and chin. Shocked I didn’t break any bones, I laid there and cried. Not because I was hurt, because I dropped the center pieces I was carrying that I had made for my oldest granddaughters birthday party. There was pink sand everywhere. I kept yelling to my husband to pick up the center pieces. Nothing made sense at that moment. Luckily I was just bruised and had a black and blue chin for a few weeks. Well that was the last time I fell physically. 

What if the next time you went to worship someone asked you “have you fallen this week”? What would you say? First I bet you be surprised. But think about it, we fall down spiritually all the time. At least I do. Even if I don’t mean to I mess up. I don’t kill, steal or commit adultery, but I slip and fall. 

Normally you can’t see my fall, there are no bruises or broken bones, but my heart knows. Worse than that, God knows. I can’t hide my sin from Him. So what can I do about my constant falling spiritually?

I need to understand that my falling short spiritually is normal. I am human. God knows my weaknesses and He understands how much I fight Satan on a daily basis. He knows when I win the battle and when I lose. Most of all, He catches me when I am down and helps me back up. He strengths me and forgives me and allows me to have another day. 

Yes I fall, but I get back up and try again. Thank you to my wonderful Heavenly Father and His grace that I can do this day after day. 

Philippians 3:12 I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

May God Bless

Wishing Your Life Away

Ok, raise your hand if you spend time wishing your life away. Good, now put them down. Both of mine were waving in the air. We all do it in one way or another.

I’m not talking about the child who is 14 waiting to be 15 so they can get their restricted drivers license, I’m talking about mature adults. That feeling inside of us that says when I do such and such I will be happy. Does that really mean that while we are in this certain place and time we are not happy? No, I don’t believe so.

If we don’t take time to daydream about moving further in our career or losing the weight or accomplishing the goal we have in front of us, we wouldn’t have any motivation.

 So how do we find a happy balance in life? Nope, you won’t find the answer here because I don’t have it. Besides saying live in the moment and look forward to tomorrow. I try to do that, it doesn’t always work for me. I think in some ways I may be a gypsy. Don’t laugh. My grandfather was born in Budapest, Hungry and there are a lot of gypsies there. They used to tell me as a child, “You better behave or the gypsies will come and take you away.” Let’s not even discuss how that affected my psyche.

There is this under lying feeling inside of me to move and change about every 10 years. It’s time and I am wrestling with it like someone wrestling a gator. Life would be better if we . . .

Every day I change my mind. My poor husband walks around confused, he is a very settled person. As long as everything is working smoothly, why change it. You know, I don’t have a good answer for him.

So I am working on this urge to change. There is no logical reason to make the change I am wrestling with except I think things would be better. Notice the real problem – “I think”.

God gave us life and wants us to enjoy it. So when I am wrestling with these times I go to the Bible and see what God has to tell me. I had to search really hard to find his response this time, but I think I found out what he wants me to do in 

1 Timothy 6:6

Now godliness with contentment is great gain.

God is telling me to be content where I am with what I have. I am pretty content and I am happy with what I have. But . . . What if? That nagging feeling is always there. Looks to me like I have some work to do.

All of this brings me to another aspect of the wrestling I do periodically – worry. The “what if’s” are really a worry issue. Oh no, that’s another problem for another post (smile).

Of course God tells us about that nasty little problem we have too.

Matthew 6:25“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

So how many of you wrestle with wishing your life away? Let me know how you deal with the “what if’s” that drive you crazy.

May God Bless