Walk Boldly With Jesus

CLICK HERE to read Jennifer's letter and see the photos.

We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives.  This is why it is so important we start talking about it more.  The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us.  If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at [email protected] or click here.  It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today.  Prayerfully consider sharing.  Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.
I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday.  Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day! 

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Pride Is The Utmost Evil!

Jeremiah 9:23-24 “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord.” 

The definition of pride, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is “a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired." Do you see how it says you have a deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements? We have no achievements that we have done completely on our own. Everything we have is because God is so good. We owe everything to Him.

Yet, we often try to take credit for the things that we do. We congratulate ourselves on a job well done, all the while forgetting to acknowledge the part that the Lord played in our success. God doesn’t want us to be unhappy with the things we have done; He just wants us to remember His part in all of it. When we start to take credit for everything we do, we start to think about God less and less. We put ourselves first and Him second, or maybe even further down on the list.

This can be dangerous. If we decide we want to do things on our own, God will let us. He is not about to force Himself on us. The reason things go smoothly in life is because God is working all things for our good. He is in the details. He is opening up some doors and windows, and He is closing others. You wonder why that meeting at work went so well. He was there preparing the hearts of the people in the meeting so they were ready to hear what you had to say. What if He hadn’t done that, though? What if we were truly on our own?

God is behind the scenes so much of the time. Sometimes, we are aware of what God has saved us from; however, sometimes, we have no idea the things He saved us from. Our teacher mentioned in class yesterday that she thinks she probably doesn’t praise God enough because she doesn’t know all the things He saved her from. She was talking about how joyful and praise-filled the 33 workers were when they were rescued from the mine in Chili back in 2010. They were buried 2 miles underground for 69 days. They truly knew what God had saved them from. They knew their rescue and their survival underground was not their own doing.

When we are just going about our everyday lives, we don’t realize all the things that God is doing for us, especially if nothing extraordinary is happening. If we have a disease or an illness, we might get to see the Lord working powerfully in that situation. There can be plenty of times when we can see the Lord working in our lives. However, in the good times, in the times when all seems to be working in our favor, these are the times when we can start to fall for the lies of the enemy that are in all of us. When we are killing it at work, we can start to get prideful and think that it is all because we are really great at what we do. When we are killing it as a parent, we can start to think that our children are doing so well because we are such great parents.

When things are going great, we tend to take our focus off of God and put it on ourselves. I don’t even know if we do it consciously or if it is just an unconscious thing we do. I think it is human nature, almost like our default setting. When things are bad, when we are struggling, and when we need something from God, we turn to Him and ask for help. When we receive the help we asked for, we can see it came from God, and so we find it easier to praise Him and give Him the Glory.

However, when we are in a good place, we tend to feel like we don’t need God. We feel as though we have it all under control. This is where our pride starts to rear its ugly head again. God is always in control. We always need Him in good times and in bad. It is important to stop and realize that the reason things are going so well is because God is working all things for your good. Yes, you can probably gain some success on your own, but not nearly as much success as you can have if you partner with God. 

C. S. Lewis said, “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind…… it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.” Wow, that is quite the statement. What stood out to me about that statement was that unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that are mere flea bites in comparison. Can you imagine?

The article I found (CLICK HERE for the article) said that everyone should read the chapter called Pride in C. S. Lewis’s book “Mere Christianity.” The author of the article also said that C. S. Lewis was not stating his exaggerated view. Instead, he was summarizing the teachings of all the great Saints through the ages. Why do the great spiritual leaders, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant alike, unite around this conviction? Because it is so clearly and solidly taught in Scripture. I will post a link for this article in the show notes so you can read how the author shows how this idea is solidly taught in scripture.

If pride is the root of all evil, what is the root of all that is good? John Chrysostom once remarked, “For just as pride is the root of all sin, so “humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue.” Humility is so important. Jesus is the best example to follow for humility. Andrew Murray captures it well, “Christ is the humility of God embodied in human nature; the Eternal Love humbling itself, clothing itself in the garb of meekness and gentleness, to win and serve and save us.”

The apostle Paul may well have been thinking of this very scene in the Upper Room when he urged the believers in Philippi: Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:5–8).

Humbling ourselves is not always easy, and we worry that if we humble ourselves, we might miss out on all the world has to offer. However, it says in Matthew 23:12, " Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” We can be free to humble ourselves here on Earth, trusting God will exalt us. That sounds like a much better plan than to exalt ourselves and have to have God humble us. Don’t you agree?

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us be humble. Show us where in our lives we need to grow more in humility. Be gentle with us, Lord. We want to learn. We want to wipe pride out of our lives once and for all. If we are not quite ready for this step Lord, we ask that you work on our hearts and you get them ready. We don’t want anything to stand in the way between you and us. We want direct, unobstructed access Lord. We love you so much! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!

Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just a reminder that mentoring is tonight. If you would like to join us tonight and just check it out, you can email me at [email protected], or you can reach out on Facebook and send me a message. Catherine Duggan is my Facebook profile name. CLICK HERE to register for mentoring if you already know you would like to join. I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, can you not see that I do all for you? I try to facilitate your way. Be grateful my children for all I do. The more you are grateful, the more I will pour down my blessings upon each of you."

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Forgive One Another

Ephesians 4:32 “Has God graciously forgiven you? Then, graciously forgive one another in the depths of Christ's love.”

There is a healing service coming up for the Charismatic Renewal Service of Boston. The team for this healing service starts preparing two weeks in advance. The scripture verse I am using today is from that preparation. Today’s topic for the prayer team is “Dealing with unforgiveness.” I know I have talked about God’s forgiveness a lot and also how important it is that we forgive. The reason I repeat this often is because of how incredibly important it is.

It is important to know that God forgives us for all of our sins because if we don’t believe this, if we don’t know this, then we find it hard to let Him in. Instead of being able to talk freely about anything, there will be certain things we don’t talk about. We don't talk about them because we are ashamed of them. We don’t want God to know about them. We don’t think He would still like us or love us if He knew what we did. On one hand, it makes sense that we feel this way as the enemy is constantly whispering in our ears that God could never forgive that thing we did. The enemy whispers in our ears that God could never love us. He tells us we should keep that thing hidden in the dark so God and other people can never find out about it. However, on the other hand, God already knows; he has already forgiven you and will always love you no matter what you do!

It is also important for us to forgive others. This is the harder of the two. Actually, I am not sure if that is true. They can both be very difficult. The verse above says that because God has forgiven us, so we must forgive one another. How do we forgive one another, though, when those who have hurt us are not even sorry? How do we forgive them when they have already moved on and don’t give what they did to us a second thought? How do we forgive them when we are still hurting from what they did? These are all great questions.

Let me take a minute to explain what forgiveness is and what it is not. Forgiveness is acknowledging that the thing happened and that you can’t change it. It is deciding that you are no longer going to give that thing space in your brain. You aren’t going to think about it anymore. Forgiveness is turning the judgment over to the Lord. You don’t have to be the one to make sure that they pay for what they did. Hanging on to that idea will not help you move past it.

Forgiveness is not saying that what happened was okay; it wasn’t. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. Yes, you are not thinking about it all the time, but it doesn’t mean you have to forget it ever happened or that you need to forget all you learned from it. Forgiveness also doesn’t always mean reconciliation. You can forgive someone for what they have done and still not let them back into your life. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to trust them ever again.

Forgiveness is not about the other person. It is about you. Forgiveness is a gift you can give yourself so that you aren’t holding onto all that anger, revenge, hate, and all the other emotions that go along with it. Unforgiveness eats you on the inside. Yet, the person you are not forgiving moves on with their life. Most likely, the thing you are not forgiving is not causing them any sleepless nights. They hurt you, and then they just moved on. Sometimes they don’t even know that they hurt you.

Now that we talked a bit about what forgiveness is and what forgiveness is not, we can go back to the verse above. The verse says, “Has God graciously forgiven you? Then, graciously forgive one another in the depths of Christ's love.” One thing we can do to help us begin to forgive is to accept the forgiveness that God has graciously given to us. When we realize all that God has forgiven us for, it makes it a bit easier to forgive others. A person who cannot forgive has forgotten how great a debt God has forgiven them. I heard this quote once, and it really hit me. Romans 3:23 says, “ Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We have all sinned, and if we want God to forgive us for our sins, we need to forgive others. It is that simple. It’s not that easy, but it is that simple.

Another thing we can do is ask God to help us forgive. We can’t forgive anyone on our own. We can just make a choice to forgive and then allow God to come in and do the hard work of changing our hearts. That reminds me of something I forgot to mention earlier. Forgiveness is NOT a feeling. Forgiveness IS a choice. It is totally possible for you to choose to forgive someone and yet not feel any differently at first. This is because, as I mentioned, God is the one who changes our hearts, and He doesn’t always do that instantly. Sometimes it takes time to feel the forgiveness. That is ok. We don’t have to feel it. We just have to decide to do it, and then God will help us with the rest.

I get so passionate about helping people see how important forgiveness is because I know that God is going to forgive us to the same extent that we forgive others. It says so right in the Our Father prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are literally asking God to forgive us in the same way we forgive others. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be held to my own standard. We are human, and forgiveness can be really hard for us. However, when we are talking about our eternal salvation, don’t you think it is worth trying to forgive others? Whatever they did has affected so much of your life here on Earth. Do you really want them to affect your eternal life as well?

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode this morning. Lord, we want to forgive; please help us. Or, maybe we don’t yet want to forgive, but we want to want to forgive; please help us! Lord, we understand how important forgiveness is, and yet it is so hard. We give you permission to work inside our hearts to get us ready to forgive. We ask you to soften our hearts and help us to see people through your eyes instead of our own. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember, tomorrow night at 8 is mentoring. If you would like to join, click here or go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Rest easy, my children; I am with you. When you place your confidence and trust in me, you will be at a great and beautiful peace.”

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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Friendship With God

 Proverbs 27:9: “Sweet friendships refresh the soul and awaken our hearts with joy, for good friends are like the anointing oil that yields the fragrant incense of God’s presence.”

I heard this verse last night at my prayer group meeting. The leader was talking about different types of friendships. The first one was an association. You know people through work or your neighbors. You might wave to them or stop and talk to them. Your friendship with these people is not usually as deep. The second is association plus loyalty. These are people you would be willing to self-sacrifice for. The friends, you would offer to pick something up for them at the store or bring the soup when they are sick. You spend more time with them, and your friendship is probably deeper than that of mere association. You have a deeper level of connection. The third is association plus loyalty plus affection. This is often found in family love. It can also be found in other places. This is where you would have the deepest relationships because there is not only loyalty but also affection. 

I also looked online and found an article titled Aristotle On the 3 Types of Friendship (and How Each Enriches Life) that explained Aristotle also has three “species” of friendship. (Click Here for the article) These are: 

1. The friendship of utility. These friendships are based on what someone can do for you or what you can do for another person. It might be that you put in a good word for someone, and they buy you a gift in return. Such relationships have little to do with character and can end as soon as any possible use for you or the other person is removed from the equation.
2. The friendship of pleasure. These are friendships based on the enjoyment of a shared activity or the pursuit of fleeting pleasures and emotions. This might be someone you go for drinks with or join a particular hobby with and is a common level of association among the young, so Aristotle declared. This type of relationship can again end quickly, dependent as it is on people’s ever-changing likes and dislikes.
3. The friendship of virtue. These are the people you like for themselves, who typically influence you positively and push you to be a better person. This kind of relationship, based as it is on the character of two self-sufficient equals, is a lot more stable than the previous two categories.

Friendships are important. Especially this last type of friendship. Aristotle says these are the people who typically influence you positively and push you to be a better person. This is why it is important to have friends who are striving to be holy. Friends who are striving to please God and who seek a close and intimate relationship with God. If you surround yourself with people who are moving in the same direction you are, it is so much easier to get to where you are going. You will see what others are doing to move ahead, and you can do the same.

Our friends can help make us or break us. If all of our friendships fall into the utility category, then our friends probably aren’t helping us get to where we want to be. If you surround yourself with people who just want something from you or you want something from them, then as soon as they get what they want, they will leave, and you will need to find new friends, or you will be left alone. If all your friends are in the pleasure category, then you may also lose them if your hobbies change, if your likes change. Maybe you always go out drinking with the same group of people, but then you give up alcohol. Do you still stay friends with this group of people? What if you have a group of ladies that you always knit with, and then you stop knitting? This has happened to me recently. I made several friends when I joined Toastmasters, a public speaking club. I haven’t been attending the meetings lately, so I have essentially lost those friends.

You are likely to do what your friends do. This is why I said if your friends are moving in the same direction as you, it will be easier to get there. It is hard to go against the grain. If your friends are all going out several nights a week to party, it will be hard for you to stay home and do what you want to do. Many of us wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun. If your friends are all going to brunch on Sunday morning at the same time you would normally be at Mass, you might be more likely to miss Mass because your friends are all going out. However, if your friends are all going to mass on Sunday morning, you will be less likely to skip because you will want to see them. If your friends are all joining a Bible Study, you will be likely to join, too. Do you see how who you are friends with really matters?

The other important thing the leader of the prayer group wanted us to know is that God wants to be our friend. Crazy, right?! Why would God want to be our friend? Did you know God wanted to be your friend? She cited many people in the Bible who were God’s friends. First, in St. James 2:23, it says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”; and he was called the friend of God.” Next, in Exodus 33:12, “Moses said to the Lord, “See, you are telling me: Lead this people. But you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said: You are my intimate friend; You have found favor with me.” Moses is talking with God and asking for what he needs. You can dialog with the Lord too! Finally, in Acts 13:22 it talks about David. “And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king; of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’”

God was friends with these men, and He wants to be friends with you too! One important thing to know about these men is that they were not perfect; they were sinners, just as we all are. They did not always do the right thing, yet God wanted to be friends with them. He wants to be friends with you as well. Yes, He knows all the things you have done, and He wants to be friends anyway. Are you willing to be friends with God? What does this even mean?

It means you treat God like He is your friend. How do you act around your friends? What do you do with your friends? What kind of friendship do you have with the Lord right now? I am going to guess it is the same for most of us. We probably have a friendship of utility. We talk with God mostly when we need something. We need prayers for ourselves and others, so we bring that to God and ask Him for help. We might try to do things for Him so that we feel we are more likely to get our prayers answered. It is all very transactional. I need something from you; let me try to do something for you.

If we want to move past this, we could start to spend time with God when we are not asking Him for something. We could just spend time talking with Him. This doesn’t have to be all day, every day. It could just be for your car ride to work, or the time you are in the shower, or getting ready for work. It could be while you do the dishes or the laundry. It could be whenever you want. Just spend that time telling the Lord about your day the same way you would if you were talking on the phone to a good friend. Also, you can’t have a solid friendship if you are always the only person talking. If you want to have a friendship with God, you also need to be quiet and listen to what He has to say to you. Quiet time can be hard because we tend to feel like we should be doing something or saying something. However, I assure you, it is totally worth it. God is speaking to each of us; often, we just can’t hear it because we aren’t taking the time to listen. If you take the time to listen, your friendship with the Lord will grow.

God wants this friendship; he is already there waiting for it. It is not as if it will be difficult to get His attention or difficult to get Him to participate. He is already in it. He has always been in this friendship. He has always been right there waiting to interact in a deeply personal way with you. He is just waiting for you to be ready. The first step is just so simple. Just say something like, “Hey God, it’s me,” and then go on to say whatever you like. God will guide you in this friendship. He just wants your desire and your yes. He will do the rest.

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, thank you so much for desiring a friendship with each of us. Thank you for always being there to listen to us. We are sorry we don’t spend more time listening to you. We are sorry if our friendship is one-sided. Please show us how to be better friends with you. Please increase the desire within us to be friends with you. Lord, this concept may be new to many of us; please help us understand what you are wanting from us. Show us how we can be friends. Show us where we can spend more time with you. Guide us, Lord. We love you, and we want to spend more time with you. We want to listen to all you want to say to us. Please help us! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like to spend more time with the Lord but don’t have any idea how you would fit one more thing into your already busy days, go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or CLICK HERE and join my mailing list. I will send you a free audio training on how to invite Jesus into the things you are already doing. I look forward to seeing you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!

Today’s word from the Lord is a follow-up to yesterday’s vision. If you haven’t heard that one, you can listen to that episode, or you can find it on my Facebook page. “The Lord gave me a sense that sometimes that curtain we are trying to push is a stubbornness. We want our lives to go the way we would like them to go, and trying to push the curtain back to allow Jesus in is very difficult. It's a constant battle, and he is more or less saying to me in this passage, "Don't be stubborn and hard-hearted like the Pharisees were. They wouldn't believe it. They wouldn't reply to me. They knew that healing and my grace and forgiveness were what everybody needed. But they wanted things the way they were. They wanted their life the way they were comfortable." I get a sense that the Lord is saying just give me that part of you that’s holding onto, what you want in life that's comfortable, and I will open that curtain wide, and you will see incredible healing that will come from that, not just for you but for all those in your life that you touch.”

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Forgiveness Is Hard But Necessary

Matthew 6:15: “But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”  

I know a lot of people that are holding on to un-forgiveness.  I get it. Forgiving people is hard!  It is especially hard if they did something unspeakable to you, and they aren’t sorry and are not even asking for forgiveness.  Here is the thing I have learned about forgiveness, though: it is not about them; it is about you.  You are not forgiving them so that they feel better. You are forgiving them so that you feel better.    You’re not forgiving them because they deserve it or because it is not bothering you anymore.  You are forgiving them because each day that you refuse to forgive and hold onto that resentment, it eats you up inside.  I heard a saying once that helped me to visualize and understand this so much better.  “Un-forgiveness is like drinking poison every day and expecting the other person to die.”  When you forgive someone, you are not saying that what they did was okay.  It was not.  What you are doing when you forgive someone is acknowledging that the event happened, that it is in the past and you are no longer going to let it have power over your emotions.  You are moving on from it.  Forgiveness is about acknowledging what happened, learning what you can from it, and moving forward so you can live your life in the present.

I know this is not an easy thing to do.  I know that it takes work and it takes time. It is such an important thing to do, though.  I remember the moment I learned that God forgives us as we forgive others.  I was sitting in a bible study, and someone mentioned it rather nonchalantly.  I was like, “What, hold the phone. What did you just say?”  If I don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive me.  Is that what you are saying?  Matthew 6:15 says, “But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”  The reason they said it as if everyone knew it was because any Catholic, or any person who has said the Our Father prayer, has said that exact statement.  Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.  Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…There it is, as plain as day.  And yet, that thought had never occurred to me.  I have said the Our Father almost every Sunday for my entire life.  I have said that prayer thousands of times over the course of my life.  How is it that I never really understood that line?  I am writing this because I thought, what if that thought had never occurred to you either?  

I don’t know about you, but I definitely need God’s forgiveness.  I would love God to be very forgiving as I am human, and so I make all kinds of mistakes.  So, if I need God to be very forgiving, then I must be forgiving to others.  “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive others…”  How do I forgive others?  Am I very forgiving?  Do I keep grudges?  Am I too hard for people who have wronged me?  We have all heard the saying, “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.”  But I feel like this brings it to a whole new level.  Do unto others as you want God to do unto you.  Wow, learning that was very powerful for me.  

I set out to learn how to forgive better.  If that was the standard I was going to be held up to, I had some work to do.  As far as I can remember, I was not really one to hold grudges, at least not for long.  However, I would get angry often, and sometimes it was for things that were not really a big deal.  I am trying to think about what I did to learn to forgive more easily.  I honestly am not sure.  For me, I think that just knowing that God was going to hold me to whatever standards I had was enough of a push for me to start working on forgiveness.  I prayed that God would help me with forgiveness.  I went to confession and confessed when I felt I was not doing well with forgiving.  There are lots of resources out there to help people learn to forgive better.  I started looking for them and reading them.  Forgiveness is something that most people, if not all, struggle with.  No one wants to be hurt, and when someone hurts us, we want them to suffer like we suffered.  We do not want to forgive them, and we do not want to let go of that pain because we feel like if we let go of the pain and anger, then we are saying that it either didn’t happen or that we are somehow ok with it happening.    This is not what you are saying when you forgive.  You are saying, yes, it happened; yes, it was awful, and no, it was not ok; and yes, I am going to stop giving it power over me.  I am going to stop spending time thinking about the person who did it.  I am going to forgive that person and move forward.

Forgiving also doesn’t mean forgetting.  You do not have to forget what this person did.  You should remember all that you learned from this situation.  You also don’t have to be reconciled with this person to forgive.  You can forgive someone, wish them no ill will, and still not want to be around them.  Forgiveness is about you feeling better, not about making them feel better.  I know this topic is sensitive, as many people reading this may have deep wounds, and forgiveness may feel far from reach.  I heard a priest address this one time.  There was a woman who was so badly hurt by someone that she could not forgive them. The priest asked her if she wanted to forgive the person.  She said no.  He asked her if she wanted to want to forgive that person, and she said yes.  He said, just start there.  If you are struggling to forgive someone and it seems like forgiveness is impossible, then just work on wanting to want to forgive them.  Pray to God and ask him for the grace to want to want to forgive that person.  Once you are able to want to forgive them, work on wanting to forgive, and then once you want to forgive, you can work on forgiving.  It may seem impossible, but forgiveness is possible.  The consequences for not forgiving seem too steep not to at least try.  

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to forgive others, but it is really hard at times. Please help us. Please help us understand what forgiveness is and what it is not. Please help us to turn it over to you and not hold onto that anger, hate, and resentment. Lord, put on our hearts anyone we need to forgive, and then we ask for the strength to forgive them. Show us how, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

Today’s Word from the Lord is in the form of a vision someone had at our Prayer Group. I wasn’t going to use it, but I think it is important to demonstrate the various ways God might talk with you. "I had an image of trying to open a bifold curtain, and it's heavy. You know, the separators between rooms where they come together. It was really heavy, and I was really trying and having trouble pushing. I sensed the Lord saying to each of us there right now he would like us to take a few minutes and listen in the depths of our hearts because we each have a curtain right now. It's very heavy for us, and we are trying to push it away, but he has something he wants to say to us about it. I don't know what it is, but he wants us to listen and to know, and he will help us with that curtain. He will give us all the strength we need to push it aside.”

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Today, I would like to witness to you about my Encounter Ministries project. If you have been listening for a while, you know I am in a two-year program with the Encounter School of Ministry. Year 2 students need to complete a ministry group project before they can graduate. I travel to class each week with 4 other ladies from my prayer group, so we thought it would be best to do our project together since we are always together anyway. We also had another student from class join us who lives close to where we met.

When we first got together to discuss what we wanted to do, we all had the same thing on our hearts. We wanted to do something to help teenagers. We had several people in our prayer group who were personally touched by teen suicides last summer. I think there were 6 people in a two-week period. We also have been getting a lot of words of prophecy at prayer group over the last year or two that are urging us to pray for the children of the world. With these two things combined, we knew we needed to do something to help teenagers have a renewal of their minds. We knew we needed to come up with some way to help them see how loved they are by the Lord.

This world is a rough place, and it is even harder for teens. With social media today, their bullies have easy access to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It used to be we might be bullied on the bus, at school, or right after school. However, if they wanted to call us up and bully us, they needed to go through our parents, and they weren’t likely to do that. Now, they can call, text, or send a message on social media any time of day.

Then they also have to deal with the need to compare themselves with everyone they see on social media. Social media portrays the best of the best. Very few people put the real stuff on social media. They take 20 photos and post the best one. They act like they just rolled out of bed and snapped a photo when, in reality, that was probably the 10th photo, and it had a filter to put makeup on and get the lighting correct. No one looks unhappy, and everyone’s life is perfect. I know people who seem to be knocking their lives out of the ballpark on social, and then when I am talking to them, they are sad, lonely, and really struggling.

I get it. No one wants to air their dirty laundry on social media for the world to see. However, making it seem like all is perfect, when it is the opposite, really messes with people's perception of how the world should be. Imagine if you are a teen and everyone in your social media feed, everyone in your life seems so happy all the time. How do you reconcile that with your life? How does it make you feel to know that your life is not perfect? You are not happy all the time. You don’t roll out of bed looking like a model. You don’t have it all figured out. Then you start to think, what is wrong with me? Why is everyone else so happy, and I am so messed up?

I know adults who struggle with comparison on social media. They see everyone posting about their kids, their spouses, their jobs, and their vacations, and they wonder why they don’t have those things. They wonder why they always feel like they are 5 steps behind and the rest of the world seems to have life all figured out. If it affects adults, imagine how much more it affects teens.

So, we knew we had to do something. We just weren’t sure what. We prayed about it and talked about it, and we decided to come up with a program to talk about their identity in Christ. We wanted to answer this question for them. Who does God say that I am? We talked with the confirmation formation team, and they were happy to have us come in and talk with the confirmation candidates and their sponsors. It all worked out pretty perfectly, actually. They were looking for a candidate/sponsor event, and we were looking for teens to present to.

We typed up a proposal for our teacher of how we wanted to run the event. We decided we would first let the kids know how ridiculously loved by God they are. Then we would talk about the lies that we all come to believe about ourselves. Lies like I am not a good mom. I am a loser. I am ugly. No one likes me. No one understands me. I can’t do anything right. I am not a good Catholic. God doesn’t love me. God will never forgive me. We all tell ourselves lies like this, and we thought it was important to show the kids that these are not true. The world doesn’t get to tell us the truth about who we are. Our identity comes from Christ.

Next, we decided we would have the students and their sponsors write these lies down on paper and nail them to the cross. We wanted them to know they don’t have to carry these lies with them. They can hand them over to Jesus, and then they can replace these lies with the truth of who God says they are. After they do this, we talk about the truth of their identity. We talk about where their true identity comes from and how they can learn more about their true identity. We go on to teach the teens and their sponsors how to listen to the voice of the Lord. We cover the various ways we might hear the Lord talking to us. In our original plan for the project, we would then move on to having the students ask the Lord to share with them what truths he wanted to replace the lies with.

However, when we turned our proposal into our teacher, he felt we should add an element of prophecy to the evening. At first, we weren’t sure how this would go over. We thought the confirmation formation team leaders, the teens, and their sponsors would all be uncomfortable with this. Sometimes people can just hear the word prophecy and get very uncomfortable. We weren’t sure how it would go over, but we really wanted to graduate from this program, so if our teacher said we needed to add prophecy, then we needed to add prophecy. I don’t think we really saw the wisdom in it at the time. I think we were doing it because we had to, but we were unsure how it would turn out.

Now that we have done the project once, we can see the wisdom in it. I think what our teacher saw, which we didn’t necessarily see at the time, was that words alone don’t change hearts. He knew the teens needed a personal encounter with the Lord. He knew they needed to hear directly from the Lord how much He loved them. We can teach them all day long, but until they have that personal encounter, it is still just words.

We decided that after we explained what prophecy was, we would form three teams of two, and the six of us running the project would speak words of prophecy over each student. We started with a moment of silence so we could ask the Lord what He wanted to say to each student, and then we spoke His words out loud to the student. We asked the sponsor to come up and stand behind the student to witness the words the Lord wanted to speak over their candidate. After we spoke the words of prophecy over them, we asked them to go back to their seat and reflect on what they had just heard. We asked them to write down anything that really spoke to them or touched their heart. The confirmation formation team had printed off a paper that asked the sponsor and their candidate to write down he thing that touched them the most about what was said.

After this, we moved on to talking about declarations and how important it is to take the truths they just learned about themselves and turn them into declarations that they can say every day. We gave them some examples of declarations of who God says they are and the Bible scriptures to go along with them. We had the sponsor and the candidate pick up to five declarations that would help them live into their true identity and then share it with one another. We thought declaring them out loud to their sponsor would help make an impact, and also having the sponsors say them to their candidates could be powerful.

However, after doing this event for the first time, we realized that we didn’t go into enough detail on why declarations are so important. We also think that although the examples we gave them were straight out of the Bible, we might need to write them in a way they can relate to more. From the feedback, we learned they didn’t really resonate with them like we thought they would. We will revamp this part for our next presentation.

We closed by recapping all we had gone over that night and reminding them of the key things to remember. We then played a song that went very well with digging all the roots of our lies up and replacing them with the truth. The song is called Look What You’ve Done To Me by Tasha Layton. That is one thing I didn’t mention earlier. All throughout the night, we had current, upbeat songs that went along with the various sections of the talk. We figured instead of just hearing our voices all night; they could hear the voices of some younger people singing about the things we were talking about. The last thing we did was ask for feedback on the evening and to see if anyone would be willing to tell us what they liked or didn’t like about the night. We had 13 students and their sponsors there that night.

The feedback we got was that they loved the music. They loved the songs that we had chosen and the message each song had. What they liked the most, though, was the part about the words of the prophecy. They really liked getting to come up and hear what the Lord wanted to say to them. Even the sponsors loved being able to hear the Lord say such great things about their candidate. One woman said she knew all those things to be true about her niece, but she knew her niece didn’t know they were true. So, it was nice to get to hear someone else tell her niece such nice things. Then someone else said they loved nailing the lies to the cross. The paper they used to write the lies on was red, and this candidate said it felt great to nail them to the cross. She said it felt like we were giving Satan a piece of his own medicine.

God was in every step of this project. He was there from the conception of the idea through the planning process, and we presented it all throughout the night. The whole time we were planning it, God kept reassuring us that it would touch hearts, and we believe it did. Not just the teens’ hearts but those of the sponsors as well. We are so honored that the Lord chose us for this project. We are honored that he chose us to take this class. We are honored that He put the six of us together and put this project in our hearts. We all listened to each other and worked well together to create an amazing event. Thank you, Lord, we love you! Thank you for all the hearts you intend to touch with this presentation. Thank you for showing up and speaking to the candidates through us. 

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What If We Just Met People With Love And Acceptance? 

1 Corinthians 12:3 “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit."

I think this is a great verse because I think sometimes we can get too caught up in things that don’t matter. We can get caught up in the religion of it all and forget about the person.  We can see someone who is of a different Christian denomination, and we don’t want to talk to them. We are cautious and skeptical of being friends with them because they don’t believe the same things we believe. However, if they are Christian, then they believe in the same God, the same Jesus, and the same Holy Spirit.

When Jesus walked the world, He did not just hang out with those who were similar to Him. He hung out with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, and anyone who wanted to hang out with Him. He came to save the lost, not the righteous. In Luke 5:31-32, “Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” We have to have a renewal of our minds if we want to be more Christ-like. We need to think more like He did and less like the world does.

The world tells us that we need to get our act together before we can go to Christ. We have to change our ways. We need to stop sinning. We need to be perfect, and then we can go to Christ. This is not the case. Christ wants us to come to Him now, just as we are. Yes, He wants us to repent, but we don’t have to do that before we come back to Him. Repentance is only possible through Him. Philippians 4:23 says, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.” Jesus died on the cross for us while we were still sinners. He doesn’t need our perfection. He doesn’t need us to have it all figured out. He just wants us to come to Him with an open heart, and He will do the rest.

According to Matthew 22:37-40, the two greatest commandments are, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” I think we put all of our attention on the first one of these and forget about the second one. However, it says all the laws and the prophets depend on these two commandments, not just the first one. We need to figure out how to see people the way Jesus saw people. If we want to love our neighbors, we need to figure out how to accept people for who they are. Jesus did not put conditions on his friendships. He did not say you could come to dinner with me if you promised to change the way you were behaving. He invited them to dinner and treated them with love and respect. He showed them the love of the Father, and they couldn’t help but change after an encounter like that. The love of our heavenly Father is more powerful than anything else. If we can give people an encounter with His love, He will do all the work.

What people are desperate for right now, maybe always, is acceptance. Jesus offered that. He accepted all those He met, even if they didn’t believe as He did. He loved them and accepted them. I think sometimes we think it is our job to correct people when they are living in a way that we don’t believe in or that is contrary to the way Jesus taught us to live. Jesus laid down some pretty hard truths while he walked the earth. It wasn’t as if He was a pushover who said whatever the people wanted to hear. He said some things that were so hard for people to hear that a lot of His followers left after He gave certain teachings, yet He still gave them. However, when He was dealing with people one-on-one, He loved and accepted them as they were. This is what changed people the most. When you feel loved and accepted, you want more love. When you have a personal encounter with the love of the Father, you realize it is like nothing you have ever felt before, and you would do anything to feel it again. To have that love surrounding you.

What if we could do this? What if we could be friends with those who are not like us? What if we could see people as the Lord sees people, as Jesus saw people? What if we saw people for who they are and not what they do? What if we started to look at each person we see as a beloved child of God? Would that change the way we interacted with them? What if we took a moment to think about how much we love our children, our nieces and nephews, or our friend’s kids and then realized God loves this person even more than that?

We don’t just love our kids when they are perfect; we love them no matter what they have done or how awful they have been. They are our children, and we still love them. The same is true for God. He loves His children no matter what they have done. So, shouldn’t we do the same? I think a lot of people are turning away from the Catholic Church and other Christian Churches as well because we are leading with all the things they are doing instead of loving them for who they are and accepting them for who they are. Love and acceptance are what people are craving, and it is what Jesus was offering. We are human, we can’t offer them the love and acceptance that He did, but we can try. We can offer respect. We can offer our time. We can offer our friendship.

We had a speaker in class last night, and he said he is friends with a witch. When he tells people that, they usually freak out, they ask if he is worried she will do something to him. He is not afraid of that, though, because he is completely secure in his oneness with Jesus. He knows that there is nothing on the outside of him that is stronger than that which is inside of him. 1 John 4:4 says, “Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” We all have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We don't have to be afraid of anything in this world because the Holy Spirit living inside of us is stronger than anything in this world.

The witch did try to do certain things when she first met him. However, he did not judge, and he did not react harshly. He calmly acted in the authority that He has because of the Holy Spirit. She had never known someone who was so knowledgeable and also so accepting of who she was. When she told him she was a witch, he told her that was a label from a world he was not a part of, and that was not how he saw her. Because he could be friends with her and accept her for who she is, they have been friends for 8 years now. She has come a long way, and parts of her are in the kingdom of God, and parts of her are still stuck in the other world. It is a process, and he is just loving her on her journey. Imagine what the world would be like if we led with love. If we didn’t care so much about all the division and we looked for unity. What if we looked for what we had in common instead of how we are different? What if we were happy for our friends and family who have a relationship with God or with Jesus, even if it doesn’t look like ours? What if we stopped caring if they went to the same church as we did and were just happy that they knew the same God that we did? How would our life change? How would our relationships change? How would the world change?

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to be more Christ-like. Please help us! We want to see others as you do; please open our eyes and allow us to see others as you do.  Please help us to show your love and acceptance to all those we meet. Please place on our hearts where we might have good intentions and yet be getting it wrong. Please convict us, Lord, of how we can be more like you. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tonight’s topic for mentoring is God’s Forgiveness, and I hope you can join me! If you would like to try it out before joining, send me a message at [email protected], and I will send you a Zoom link to join in tonight. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

Today’s word from the Lord is, “I know you in and out, but I love you just the same, my children. I love you, my children. I keep telling you that. It is because I do love you that I say it to you each and every day. Open your ears more fully, and you will hear me. You will hear my whispers. You will hear everything I wish for you to know. I speak to you with hope. I speak to you with tender love. I speak all that you need to know and that you need to learn. Just open more fully to me.”

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Be Specific In Your Prayers

Colossians 4:2-4: “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.  Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.”

This year I decided I was going to focus on one scripture verse a week during my morning prayer time. I asked my friends on Facebook to give me their favorite scriptures, and during the week that I focused on the scripture they gave me, I would pray for them in a special way. I was reviewing the verses I received this morning, and the one I chose for this week is John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” I thought this would be a great verse for an episode, as I love reminding people that the enemy wants to keep us in the dark. However, if we bring his lies and tactics into the light, we see him for who he really is. I truly believe there is no darkness too dark for the light of Christ to break into. All we need to do is invite the light into the darkness. While I was thinking about this verse, I looked it up and found out I already did an episode on it. It was episode #568, titled “The Darkness Will Not Overtake You!”

After realizing that I had already used this verse, I moved on to the next verse someone gave me, which is the verse above. My friend Lela gave me this verse, which I think is perfect as she was such a great friend when we lived in England. She and her husband were some of the first people we met, and we got along right away. We hung out a lot on Friday nights as we had kids similar in age. We even went on vacations together. It was great! This verse talks about being thankful, and I am so very thankful for their friendship.

The verse above begins by saying, “Devote yourself to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” These three things are so important. Prayer is as simple as talking to God. You can do it formally, as in scripted prayers like the Our Father, or you can do it informally like you are having a conversation with your best friend. It doesn’t matter how you pray; it matters that you pray. That time you spend with the Lord is important. Whether it is 5 minutes or 5 hours, it doesn’t matter. Just spend time with Him.

After it says to devote yourself to prayer, it says to be watchful. I wasn’t sure what this meant, and I didn’t want to lead you astray, so I looked it up. I am glad I did, as this is something I talked about a few minutes ago, and yet it didn’t even occur to me when thinking about being watchful. We need to be watchful of the enemy. The devil is constantly trying to steal, kill, and destroy us. He doesn’t make a full-on frontal attack, though. He comes at us from all sides, and his attacks are usually masked with lies or with temptation. He temps us with things He knows we want, and he lies to us about things he knows we already questioning. In Matthew 26:41 it says, “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” This is us. Our spirit is willing, but our flesh is weak. We fall for the enemy’s tricks more easily if we are not on the lookout for them.

Lastly, the first line says to be thankful. You would think this one would be easy. It isn’t. We often forget to be thankful when things are going well. When things are tough, we ask God to come in and fix them. Then, when He does, we often forget to say Thank You. Gratitude is something that can help us in many ways. If we have an attitude of gratitude, then we are more focused on the positive. We are looking for things that we can be grateful for, and so we naturally notice more good than bad. Our focus is important. Are we looking for all that is going wrong, or are we looking for all that is going right? What are three things you have to be thankful for this morning? I start off each day, well, most days, by writing 5 things I am grateful for. I tried to make them as specific as I could. For instance, instead of saying I am thankful for my boys, I write down I am thankful Sam made it home safely in the snow, I am thankful for the conversation I had with Ryan, I am thankful Noah got to see his friend he hasn’t seen in over a year. Do you see how specific I get? Now it’s your turn.

I didn’t want to just stop with this first verse, as I think the next two verses are important as well. They say, “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.  Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” This is important because it shows us something important to pray for that might now have occurred to us. Did you ever think of praying for God to open a door for you to proclaim the mystery of Christ? It’s interesting to me the things others pray for that didn’t even occur to me. In this verse, St. Paul is in prison for proclaiming the Word of God, and yet He is asking for others to ask the Lord to open a door for him to keep proclaiming the Word of the Lord. I never thought of praying for that before. I do want to proclaim the Word of God. I want to help the whole world hear about God’s love and forgiveness. Yet, I never thought to pray specifically for God to open a door for that message.

This is why, when I read that part of the verse this morning, I wanted to share it with you. I wanted each one of you to know that it is possible to pray for the exact thing you want. I learned this about praying for our children as well. Yes, it is important to pray for our children, but are we praying specifically for what we would like? I read a book called “The Power of a Praying Parent.” It is a book full of specific prayers for our children. There are many versions. The other one I read was called “The Power of a Praying Wife.” These books taught me the importance of being specific in my prayers. They taught me to pray for all the things I want and not just leave them to chance or assume God knows what I want. He does know, but He also likes it when we ask.

You can pray for your children to get a good teacher, you can pray for them to have good, Godly friends, and you can pray for their future spouse or their future careers. These things may seem so obvious to you, and yet I never really thought of it before. Tony and I sat down last January, and we thought about where we wanted the kids to be by the end of the year. We thought about what things were important to us, not for the next 10 years, but what we would like to see from the boys in this one year, and then we wrote a specific prayer for those things. I am sad to say we didn’t continue to say it together for very long, but even writing it and praying it together for those few days/weeks made a huge difference. I think almost every single one of the things we prayed for came true.

We often say I guess all we can do is pray. When we say this, we are taking for granted how powerful prayer is. We are limiting it and treating it like a last resort. Our prayers are powerful. More powerful than we will ever know. I know I told this story before, but I will tell it again since it shows how powerful our prayers are. There was a man jogging by an ambulance, and a woman was being taken out of her house. He wanted to help but wasn’t a medical professional, so he kept jogging but decided he would say one Hail Mary prayer while continuing to jog. A few weeks later, he happened to be jogging by the same house, and the woman was outside. She called him, and when they talked, she told him that he had saved her life. She explained when she got to the hospital she saw the face of Jesus. He told her that she was going to die but that the prayer of this man, whose face Jesus had on the palm of His hand, had saved her. It was the face of the man who jogged by her. If one Hail Mary can save this woman’s life, think of all the amazing things that can happen when you dare to ask specifically for what you want. “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.”

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us remember to pray and to be watchful. Lord, help us be grateful for all the big and small things you have done for us. Lord, help us learn how to pray more specifically for what we need or even what we want. We know you love us and want to give us even more than we desire. We ask that you help keep our hearts pure and only ask for good things. We love you, Lord, and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, if you would like to sign up for mentoring, you can go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or you can click here. We meet on Tuesday nights on Zoom at 8 PM EST. If you are local and would be interested in an in-person mentoring group, please reach out and let me know. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

Today’s Word from the Lord is: “My children, it is my Spirit of hope, love, and joy that is falling upon you. Let it sprinkle everyone that you meet. I am your God be not afraid to spread my joy. Be not afraid to spread my hope. It is all that I give that is worthy. Be aware that you will meet difficulties but I am always there with you. Take my hand, Take hold of it. I will not let you go. I am all that you need to succeed, for I am your God.”

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God’s Way Is Perfect 

Psalm 18:30 “This God—his way is perfect; the promise of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.”

I love this verse because it shows us the goodness of God. However, some of us may argue with the first line. “This God —his way is perfect. His ways might not seem perfect if we know someone who is struggling right now. His ways might not seem perfect if we know someone who is sick and whose prognosis looks dire. His ways might not seem perfect if you have lost a child, a spouse, or a family member way too young. My son’s girlfriend said she could not believe in a God who lets little children get cancer. Honestly, I get that. I don’t know what to say to her about that. 

I do know that the Bible is the Word of God and that it is true. When the Bible says that God’s way is perfect, then I know it is true. The reason it doesn’t seem like it is true a lot of the time is because we can’t see all that God can see. We think God took a job away from us, but really, He was preparing us and freeing us up for a better job. We think God is responsible for our son getting kicked out of school, but really he is removing him from a bad situation. 

It is also important to remember that in many circumstances, God did not cause the bad thing to happen. God did not give the children cancer. God did not give your loved one the thing that is causing their death. God did not cause you to lose your job. God did not cause you to fail that class or lose that friend. God does not need to make bad things happen to us. We are very good at doing that to ourselves. God does, however, take the bad things that we get ourselves into and use them for our good. 

For instance, He may not have given you the cancer, but He can use it to make you stronger. He may not have taken your job away from you, but He might have allowed that door to close so you could walk through a better door. This happened with my husband Tony. He was in the Air Force, and for two years straight, he applied to every federal job he could find. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the Air Force; he just wanted to be a civilian and not have to move around so much. He really wanted to be a criminal investigator. However, he could not get hired as a civilian because there were so many others applying who had veterans' preferences. He would have had this if he had gotten out of the Air Force and then applied for these jobs. At the time, we had 2 small children, and I was pregnant with our third. there was no way he was going to quit one job before he had another job. How would we pay our bills? What would we do for medical insurance? Tony decided to stop applying and just stay in the Air Force. Our next assignment was to Germany. 

We were only in Germany for a little over a year when Tony found out he needed to separate from the Air Force. They had too many majors in his career field. Tony was devastated. He had come to terms with staying in the Air Force and retiring after 20 years of service. Now, at 11 years of service, they are telling him he has to separate. This was devastating to him. However, He was able to pick up a civilian job that was right up his alley. It was actually the perfect job for him, and it was a promotion from where he was in the military rank-wise. We were able to rent a really nice house in England, and everything work-wise was great. 

God knew what Tony wanted. He knew what would ultimately make him happy. He helped him get to where he wanted to be. He is not a criminal investigator, but he does have a civilian job that he really likes. Sometimes, oftentimes, God’s plan doesn’t look like we would like it to. Tony wanted a transition to civil service that was full of assurances and security. This is not what it looked like. He was let go with 4 months notice. They gave him 4 months to find another job. They also said he could keep medical insurance for up to either 6 months or a year. So, even though it didn’t look like Tony wanted it to, it did provide him with some security.

Did something similar happen in your life? Were you looking/searching for something, and you finally got there, but the road to get there looked nothing like you thought it would? Yep, me too. This verse tells us that God’s way is perfect and that His promises come true. God has said in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” We can get ourselves into some pretty interesting situations, and I, for one, am glad that God is there to turn those crazy situations into good ones. I am grateful that I don’t have to fix it on my own. I am grateful that his way is perfect. This takes the pressure off of us to be perfect.

The last line says, “He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.” God can and will protect us. He is our shield. However, it is important to point out that this verse says, “For all who take refuge in Him.” It is our choice whether we want God to be our shield or not. If we want to be on our own in the world, God will let us. He does not go where He is not wanted. He gave us free will, and He takes it very seriously. If you want God to be your shield, you need to ask Him. You need to invite Him into your life and give Him permission to work in your life. A great way to start each day is to say, “Good morning God, Dad, Lord, Papa, or whatever your name you have for God. I invite you into this day with me. I give you permission to work freely in my day and to shield me from all I need shielding from. Thank you, Lord, I love you!” It can be as simple as that. If you have never done this before, I invite you to do it today and see how different your life could be with God shielding you from the hurt and the pain.

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for working all things for our good. We are sorry we don’t come to you every time we need you. We are sorry we keep you on the outside looking in. Please forgive us, Lord. Please help us to remember to ask for your help and your guidance. Remind us to invite you in and to take refuge in you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in the name of Jesus, Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are not on my email list I would like to invite you to click here or go to my website to sign up. When you do I will send you a quick audio training on how to incorporate prayer into the things you are already doing. We are all busy and might not be able to find the time to add even just 10 minutes of prayer into our schedules. However, in this audio training I will teach you to add prayer into your lives without any time to your schedule. Check it out! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am your Jesus who loves you. I love you so much that I gave my life for each and every one of you so that you may be free of everything. Free of your anxieties, free of your fears, free of everything that binds you. My children, I love you so much that I would go through it all again because of my love for you. My children, if you ask the Father anything in my name and you ask it and trust, He will give it to you. I am the all-powerful one. I am the almighty. I am your Savior. I am all that you need to succeed, my children. So come to me, for through me, all things are possible.”

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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God’s Anger Was Kindled On My Behalf!

Psalm 18:7-10 “The earth itself shivered and shook. It reeled and rocked before him. As the mountains trembled, they melted away, for his anger was kindled on my behalf! Fierce flames leapt from his mouth, erupting with blazing, burning coals as smoke and fire encircled him. He stretched heaven’s curtain open and came to my defense. Swiftly he rode to earth as the stormy sky was lowered. He rode a chariot of thunderclouds amidst thick darkness; his steed was a cherub, soaring on outstretched wings of Spirit-Wind.”

In the last two episodes, I talked about Psalm 18. I explained that God is our rock and that we call on Him when we are in a time of need, and He is there for us. Yesterday, we talked about how our cries go right up to heaven and pierce the Lord’s heart. Today we are talking about how He responds to that cry.

The first line says, “The earth itself shivered and shook. It reeled and rocked before Him. As the mountains trembled, they melted away, for His anger was kindled on my behalf!” Can you imagine that? Close your eyes and imagine the whole earth shaking and shivering. Imagine the mountains trembling and then just melting away. Can you picture it? Now, imagine that all happened just because you cried out to the Lord. His anger was kindled on your behalf. There are billions of people on this earth, and the Lord hopped in a chariot of thunderclouds because you cried out to Him. That is pretty amazing!

I think the fact that the Lord cares for each one of us individually escapes us a lot of the time. We think of how big God is and how many people there are in the world, and we think that God loves us in a general way. Kind of like how a priest might say he loves his parishioners. He probably does love the people who attend the church. He would also probably help anyone that came and asked for it. However, the priest probably does not know every detail of every person’s life. This is how we can think of God sometimes. Yes, He loves us. He is our heavenly Father, and also, he has billions of children, so he can’t possibly know me personally. The reason we think this way is because the reality of God is so far beyond anything our mind can comprehend. His vastness is too much for us to understand truly.

God created you. He knit you together in your mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:13) He knows every hair on your head. God acts for each one of us at the same time. He can be solving your problem at the same time He is helping someone else on the other side of the world. He is not bound by the same things we are. He doesn’t have to obey the rules around time and space. He made time and space. There was nothing before God; He created all of it, so He is in control of all of it.

One line in the verse above that I really like is the one that says, “He stretched heaven’s curtain open and came to my defense.” I like this because it gives me a good visual. The whole verse is pretty easy to visualize, actually. It is a pretty descriptive verse today. However, I love thinking about there being a curtain to Heaven. Kinda like in Wizard of Oz, when the Great OZ was behind a curtain. I like to think of a curtain that God can just pull back to come to our defense. It’s not a wall, it’s not a door, it’s a curtain. A curtain isn’t hard to pull back. It isn’t hard to get through. A curtain provides pretty easy access.

I have never seen God, but I like the thought of Him getting so angry on my behalf that he would do half the things listed in the verse above. I think this verse shows us how powerful our prayers are. We call out to God, and He acts on our behalf. This is also a good reminder that we don't have to seek revenge; we can turn that over to God, and He will do what is right. God knows all that is going on in our lives. He knows all that has gone on in the past. He knows when someone offends us or does something bad to us. It angers Him when His children are hurt or mistreated. All we need to do is call out to the Lord, and He will come to our assistance.

This verse is a great reminder that we can call on the Lord and that He responds. It is a great reminder that He cares about each of us individually. Yes, God loves us all, and also He loves each one of us. He cares about all the little things in our lives. He knows all about those things you didn’t want Him to know about. He saw that thing that happened to you that you were too ashamed to tell Him about. He sees you, and He loves you. He wants to be there for you. He wants to take care of you. He just needs you to let Him. He just needs you to cry out to Him, and He will come running! That is how much God loves you! I will reread the verses above again. Close your eyes and imagine the verse is talking about you and what God is doing for you.

“The earth itself shivered and shook. It reeled and rocked before him. As the mountains trembled, they melted away, for his anger was kindled on my behalf! Fierce flames leapt from his mouth, erupting with blazing, burning coals as smoke and fire encircled him. He stretched heaven’s curtain open and came to my defense. Swiftly he rode to earth as the stormy sky was lowered. He rode a chariot of thunderclouds amidst thick darkness; his steed was a cherub, soaring on outstretched wings of Spirit-Wind.”

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for caring about us so much. We thank you for getting upset when we are wronged in some way. We thank you for responding so immediately at times. We thank you for responding so individually. Lord, we ask you to remind us to call out to you. We ask you to give us the strength when we don’t have it. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

The Word of the Lord for today is, “I am an emblem on your heart. Don't forget you are branded by my love from birth. I have marked you as mine. Give me permission to fill you with my divine presence. I need you, children. The harvest is many the workers are few.”

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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