Walk Boldly With Jesus

“O Ye Of Little Faith…Is that Me?”

1 John 5:14-15 “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.”

I was reading through an old journal yesterday and I came upon this scripture verse.  It was one that I had been thinking about a lot  at the time.  The journal entry was from June 2, 2020.  Here is what I wrote.  Good morning Dad, I have been thinking lately about the Bible verse 1 John 5:14-15 “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.” I am hoping you can help me understand this passage.  There are many passages like this in the Bible.  I have been told you always answer prayers, but sometimes your answer is no.  I have also been told sometimes you heal people with the ultimate healing by bringing them to heaven.  I guess this one makes a little more sense because it says, “According to your will.” So I guess if it doesn’t happen it was not your will?  I think what I am worried about or wondering about is if some of my prayers are not answered because of a lack of faith on my part.  It seems you said to your disciples a lot, “Oh ye of little faith.” If this is happening, if my lack of faith is in the way please help me.  I love you so much and I feel I trust you and believe in you and all you can do.  But you can search my heart, please do so and please fill any empty space with your love and complete trust.  I feel a sense of to be still and listen.  Please communicate through my pen.  The response I received this day was mostly about other stuff, however, I did feel like the Lord said He did not feel I lacked trust.  

I felt as though the Holy Spirit was pointing out to me as I wrote my letter the part that says, “if we ask anything according to His will.”  I have come back to this question many times over the years.  I believe what I read in the Bible.  I believe God’s promises.  I feel as if I truly know God can do anything.  I know He can heal people, I have seen it with my own eyes.  I feel as though I know that with every fiber of my body.  And so I struggle when I don’t see a healing.  Everything I have been learning in Encounter Ministries says that God wants to heal all His children.  So, why don’t some get healed?  This entry above was just a few weeks after my dog had died of cancer.  I am sure that is was on my mind.  I know I was asking God why.  Why did she have to die, she was so young?  Why did she have to die when she was so good for our family?  Why couldn’t He save her? Why didn’t He save her?  I guess I am writing this episode to reassure all of you today that if you ever feel like you are the only one that questions the Lord, don’t worry, you are not.  If you ever feel like you don’t understand some of the things you believe or you struggle to reconcile what is actually happening in your life with some of the promises you read in the Bible, you are not alone.  

I remember I started to really believe that anyone could pray for healings after a talk by Mary Healy.  I started reading all the books, and stepping out in faith and asking people if I could pray over them.  I was confident, not in my ability, in the ability of the Lord to heal all people.  I did not see a lot of fruit in my prayers but I kept trying anyway because it wasn’t up to me to do the healing, it is God that heals people.  I was just offering myself as His vessel, or His instrument.  I remember why my friend Iris got sick I trusted God would heal her.  I prayed over her twice at least and I was sure He wanted to heal her.  Our whole prayer group was praying over her.  She was young and so full of Love and the Holy Spirit.  He did not heal her.  Well, He did heal her, as there is no sickness in heaven, however, He did not heal her here on earth.  

I remember questioning why?  I remember wondering if it was my fault, if I just did’t have enough faith.  Have you ever wondered that?  Have you ever felt like your lack of faith was the reason the miracle didn’t happen.  Maybe someone has actually told you that.  Maybe you have been waiting for a healing and the person praying over you, or your friends or family might have said if you believed enough it would happen.  This is how I felt.  I struggled to reconcile the fact that she died with the promise in John 14:12-14 that says, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”  Ok, so I believe, and I wanted to do the works Jesus did, the healing, and I asked in Jesus’ name, and yet what I asked for was not given to me.  I didn’t understand.  This is a promise and God always keeps His promises.  I couldn’t reconcile this with the situation.  It was the same when my dog dies.  I believed, I asked in Jesus’ name, and yet she still died.  

While I was talking to the Lord about this, while I was talking to other people about this I got a bit of understanding.  What I felt like God told me was that it was not my fault she died.  I needed to hear this.  I know that God can do all things and that He doesn’t need me to save anyone and yet, we tend to feel guilty, we tend to blame ourselves, or at least I do.  God knew I needed to hear Him say it was not my fault.  My friends told me that our prayers were answered, because she was now in heaven and that there is no sickness in Heaven, so He did heal her.  When I was asking God about my lack of faith I felt Him tell me that faith is a gift from the Spirit.  The kind of faith it takes to save someones life is not something you can will, it is not something you can earn, it is a gift from the Spirit.

There is another verse that was also helpful in understanding the verse above. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”  What I felt the Lord was saying to me when I read this verse was, “Trust Me, trust My plan.  Do not rely on your own understanding for your ways are not my ways and your thoughts are not my thoughts.”  God has a plan for each of us.  God knows what He is doing.  I don’t understand everything and I don’t think we are supposed to.  I do feel like I understand more than I used to and this is because I keep searching for understanding and I keep taking my questions to God.  Did you know you can do that?  Did you know you can ask God questions and that He will answer you?  Learning that was a game changer for me.  Finding out that God wanted to talk to me and learning how to listen to Him has changed my life and my relationship with Him.  I feel so much closer to Him now.  

If you are struggling to understand God’s ways, or why it seems like some of your questions or prayers haven’t been answered I encourage you to ask the Lord.  If you feel like you don’t get an answer, read scripture.  Just ask the Lord to answer you through scripture and then turn to any page and see what it says, search the page expecting the answer to be there and you will find it.  I think that is the key to prayer and also to this verse.  God wants us to pray expectantly.  He wants us to pray and to be confident our prayers will be answered.  I know this is hard.  I have been praying for a holy boldness and radical trust for at least 10 years now.  I am seeing the fruit of those prayers.  I am becoming more and more confident that God does answer prayers.  I am becoming bolder with the prayers I am saying and trust that those things will come true.  

I suggested to a friend of mine the other day that she pray expectantly for her mom.  You see, her mom is in the hospital and she really needed her blood pressure to stabilize.  I told my friend to look at the blood pressure machine and pray for it to stabilize.  Look at the machine while praying and expect to see it stabilize.  Not as if you are hoping it will, more as if you know it will because you are confident God answers prayers.  Guess what?  It stabilized and has remained stabile.  The Lord is working.  We can trust this verse.  We can be confident that when we ask He answers, when we knock He opens the door, and when we seek, we find.  We won’t always understand everything that happens.  We only see a very small part of a very large picture.  Our job is just to keep trusting the Lord that He is working all things for our good and then when we get confused or hurt by seemingly unanswered prayers, instead of turning away from Him, turn into Him and ask Him to help you understand.  

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today!  Lord, we want to believe, we want to trust please help us.  Lord, please help us all to develop a deep trust in you.  Give us the gift of faith Lord.  Give us a holy boldness and a radical trust in you.  Teach us to trust you and your ways.  Help us to turn to you when we feel lost of confused.  Give us wisdom to understand how you are answering our prayers Lord. You know what those that are listening need Lord and I ask that you fill them with whatever it is they need on this Friday.  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 seeing you again tomorrow.  Just a reminder if you want my book I have a few copies left on my website. (Click Here)  Also, you can sign up for my newsletter on my website as well.  (Click Here) Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I.  Have a blessed day!

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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God’s Foolishness Is Wiser Than Human Wisdom

1 Corinthians 1:25 “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

When I read this verse this morning I thought it was very interesting and so very true.  It is something I don’t thing we often think about.  It is one of those things that when you hear it, you know it is true, but it might never have occurred to you.  I think it is pretty obvious that God is wiser than we are and we know he is stronger than us.  It would not be hard to find evidence to support this and yet I still don’t know if I would have thought of it like this before.  His foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and his weakness is stronger than human strength.  When I find a verse to use, I try to look at the verses around it to get the context and too see what else God wants to tell us.  The verses right after this one are pretty good too.  

1 Corinthians 1:26-31 says, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are,  so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,  in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” One of my favorite verses/sayings is that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts greater than our thoughts.  God does not think like we do and He does not do the things that we would do.  

If we really need a prayer answered, or a healing to occur, who do we tend to ask first?  I tend to ask my dad first, as I know he prays a lot and I feel his prayers are answered quickly.  I also tend to ask the ladies in my prayer group because again, I feel their prayers are heard.  Many would go to a priest first.  We tend to go to the people that we think are “holier” than we are.  When someone needs a healing, they tend to want a priest to pray over them as they are very “holy.”  We want the best of the best as we know the stakes are high for some of our prayers.  What I felt the holy Spirit tell me when I began this verse is that is not how the Lord thinks.  Jesus did not come to earth and ask all the teachers, or the priests at the time to be his apostles.  He was not looking for the best and the brightest.  He came and called many who were considered foolish, outcasts, or weak to the rest of the world.  

Some of us may feel we have a calling and then we start to think about all the ways we aren’t good enough to answer that call.  We aren’t smart enough, we aren’t strong enough, we aren’t old enough, we aren’t young enough, we aren’t holy enough and so on.  We list all the reasons why we can’t do the thing that God is calling us to do.  Did you hear that last part, the thing God is calling you too.  Why do we question our call when God is the one doing the calling?  Don’t we know He is smarter than we are?  If he says we are good enough, then we are good enough.  If He says we aren’t too young, too old, to foolish, to sinful, then we aren’t.  It’s crazy how if you asked us if God was wiser than we were we would say yes without any hesitation.  Yet, when we question our worthiness of the call He has given us we are saying the exact opposite.  We are saying that He must be wrong and that we know better than He does.  

When we start to question our calling and when we start to think of all the ways we are not enough, we should stop and think about all those that came before us.  Were they the smartest people around?  Were they the most holiest people around?  Were they the ones you would have chosen?  St. Catherine of Sienna is a doctor of the church and yet when she was a child she had great difficulty learning to read and did not learn to write until she was an adult.  There were plenty of religious leaders at the time that Jesus came and yet He did not call the religious leaders to be his disciples, he called every day normal people like you and me.  He also called people like Matthew, who was a tax collector.  That is not someone any of the other apostles would have chosen.  God knows what He is doing.  He has placed a call on each and every one of us and it is a call He chose specifically for us.  It is perfectly suited for our strengths and weaknesses.  He knows us better than we know ourselves.  Trust in Him and his ability to know you and what you can and can’t do.

Right at the beginning of writing this episode I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling me that this is a two way street.  He wants us to believe in our calling and also to believe in other’s calling as well.  The same things I just said about your calling apply to others as well.  Trust in the Lord’s ability to call others as well.  Sometimes we may see a priest at the pulpit and we might thing they don’t seem the most qualified to be giving a sermon, or we see someone on the street talking about God and we might think they are not qualified to be talking about God.  We might see our loved one volunteering at a soup kitchen and think they aren’t qualified, or a friend who wants to be in a healing ministry and yet you know they aren’t qualified. My question to you is, “who are we to judge their qualifications?” God gave them the calling, not us.  Why do we think we know better than He does?  

I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling us not to dismiss the answer to our prayers because it didn’t come in the package we thought it would.  For instance, a young kid makes a profound comment and yet you blow it off because he is too young to know what he is talking about.  A person in the line at the grocery store asks to pray for you and you say no because how powerful could her prayers be anyway.  Someone offers to pray over you for healing and they are not a priest so you say no.  God did not come to use the best of the best.  Yes, those he used did become the best of the best, but that was only after they agreed to be used by God for whatever He called them too.  The power of prayer, the wisdom, the strength that we have, that all comes from God.  This is what the verse is trying to tell us when it says, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are,  so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”  God chose the ones that He chose because that way all would know that it was Him and not the person.  

If someone that is not well educated, has not gone to fancy schools, has not studied theology and yet they can speak eloquently, wisely and authoritatively about the church and its teachings, that person can not boast in their own abilities as those abilities are through the power of God.  If you want a greater example of this go back into the Old Testament and read Judges 7 about Gideon and His army.  Gideon was severely outnumbered with his army of 30,000.  However, God had Him send almost everyone home and just had him keep 300 men.  He wanted to make sure the Isrealites knew it was God who was winning the war.  If we rely on our own strength, wisdom and power, we would claim all the glory, that is our fallen, broken, nature.  However, if we have no power, no strength and no ability, then we know it was all God who accomplished the impossible thing.  All the glory goes right to God where it rightfully belongs!  

The next time you need help, remember to turn to God first.  Also remember that He can send help through anyone.  Don’t judge the person or the way God decides to help you.  Remember that God can use anyone at anytime for anything.  They don’t have to already know how to do the thing, they don’t have to be full of natural wisdom or talent.  One of my favorite sayings I ever heard is, “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.”  If you say yes then God will give you all you need to succeed.  The same is true for every person that He calls. When He calls you don’t worry if you are enough, He will give you all you need to be enough.  

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, we know you are wiser than we are and stronger than we are.  Help us not to forget it!  Help us to lean into you and to trust that when you call us to something we don’t have to be afraid to say yes because you will be right there with us giving us all we need to succeed.  Lord, help us to look at others in the same way.  Help us to not judge others or to question their call.  We love you Lord, you are amazing.  I am seeing so many answered prayers around me and I am so grateful!! 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.  If you would like to purchase an autographed copy of my book there are still some available on my website.  I want to thank you all for your support and ask if you wouldn’t mind sharing my podcast or my book with just one person over the next week.  It would really help me out.  I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow.  Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I!  Have a blessed day!

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Today I have two witnesses for you.  Both of these witnesses were sent to me via email & FaceBook and so I am going to read them to you.  The first one is from my aunt.  My dad only has one brother and he lives in CA.  We haven’t seen him in a very long time and while he was living in CA he got married.  I have never met his wife.  One day I got a notification that I had a new subscriber on my YouTube channel and I could see by the last name, it was his wife.  I found her on facebook and reached out to her.  I had heard she was very sick and wanted to offer to pray over the phone for her healing.  She accepted and then sent me this testimony.

Hi Catherine I thought I would send this to you because I'm just so excited that your prayers over me to our Lord resulted in my  healing. 

Here's my story. My name is Joanne I'm 70 years old and I've had diabetes since 1998 and peripheral neuropathy since 2010.  I've asked myself many times over the past years how long do I have to wait for a healing? This neuropathy has been steadily getting worse over the last years and I had to quit my job in November of 2022 because the pain was so severe I could not walk. I had basically become bedridden.  People have prayed over me many, many times for healing and it never arrived. So that's why I asked how long do you wait for a healing? 

My husband and I have our quiet time with the Lord every morning Jean, my husband has a brother, Pierre, who informed him that is niece Catherine has a podcast called Walk Boldly with Jesus. We started listening and we signed up with her podcast. She contacted us and asked if she could pray over me for healing. Of course, I said yes because I never give up a chance for healing. On June 10th she called and ask me what my pain level was using a scale of 1 to 10. That day my pain level was an 11. She prayed over me for a long time and after she was finished praying there was very little change in my pain, however I was more at peace. Catherine called the next day and I told her that my pain level was at about a 7 and she prayed over me again. Each day for 3 days the pain level went down a little more. On June 13th I got out of bed and I did not realize that I didn't have any pain until I made it to the kitchen. The Miracle that I had been longing for was finally mine. I had no pain for the first time in so many years. My husband and I were praising God left and right up and down. Jean kept asking me "are you sure you have no pain", "are you sure you have no pain?"

We of course let  Catherine know and thanked her for that prayer to our lord for my healing. I am so thankful.

So I say for those of you that have been prayed over for healing and nothing changes immediately, don't think that God doesn't love you or that he is punishing you. Remain persistent in your prayers and have people pray over you again and again and even by phone.

I believe that being persistent in your prayers and never giving up hope, God will answer and your healing will occur.

Thank you Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.

The second witness is from someone you heard from before.  Jasmin has come on and given a witness before.  If you would like to listen to her witness you can go back to episode #256.  She has recently been looking for a new job as her current one has not been good for her physical or mental health. She found a job that she wanted to take but it did not have health insurance and she has medical issues and can not be without insurance.  She was getting discouraged and so I sent her a message on FaceBook and the following witness is the amazing reply I received.  

Hi Catherine! I thought I had send on my original message but I didn't. So much has happened and things went so far to the left but thank the Lord and by the grace of God it all worked out in the end and I have a new 5th grade position. I have such a big testimony to share about what happened and how I got here but I'm still wrapping my head around it and processing it all. Thank you so much for thinking of me

So here it is the best way I can get it out. So I have been searching for a job and there is a job fair that I almost didn't go to but of the last minute I decided to go to it and from that job fair I had several schools interested. One school in particular was very persistent and told me that she really wanted to hire me and she asked for the go-ahead to check my references. Now my principal was already aware that I had been looking for jobs and I felt it was safe to tell her yeah she can check my references. The night before I had prayed and I asked God to please show me what I need to do. Do I stay where I am, do I go to this new position, what to do? I also asked for confirmation to be so supernatural that there is no way that I could deny that it came anywhere but from Him. A little while later I get a call from a colleague who is on the administrative team. She said that my principal's furious, that she had said all kind of horrible things about me, about my disability, and about me having to go and get infusions. She felt like I betrayed her by trying to go this other school and that the other districts would use my disability against me as a reason to fire me. I was just in a state of bewilderment. I was like, “God why did you let me apply for this job and tell this lady okay to give my references if you knew that how this is how this was going to all turn out? As the day went on it got worse and worse and worse and more things were said and by this point I'm just frantic. I text my principal and I ask her to call me. She said that she would call me but she continued to instead call this colleague and continue to say bad things about me. In the midst of all this my son told me that he saw a snake in the backyard. I told him to grab the machete and kill it because we're used to killing small ones and he came running back and said no Mom is a big one. So I go to see what he's talking about and I'm like I don't see anything, what are you talking about? He keeps saying mama it’s right there, you don't see it? Mama it’s right there you don't see it? And I'm like, “No, I don't see it what are you talking about?” So he told me it was underneath something and he kept hitting the thing that it was underneath. I'm like well if it was something under they would come out and it didn't. So about this time I instructed him to get a stick and flip it over and lo and behold there was a pretty big snake curled up under there. So I grabbed the machete and I go to kill it and I strike and I miss. It never ran. It lifted his head up looked at me and continued to flick his tongue and shake his head side to side as if it were taunting me or trying to hypnotize me. I got up and strike it again and cut off its tail.  It still never ran, never moved, struck again, cut off another part, still never ran, never moved, kept looking at me with that same taunting hypnotized look. Struck again finally cut off his head. Now the crazy thing about this is that this neck never bled and it never ran. I left it there because I had nothing to pick it up with and hours later I came back not one drop of blood was spilled and the animals and the birds wouldn't even peck at it and try to take it away The ants did not even want it.

So as I'm sitting there all distraught about my job. I talk to my principal, I told her that it wasn't about her it was about me. I really want to do something different and then she goes ahead and tells me that she was hurt because she felt like I was trying to go to the same place as where we were and I told her you know I want to do something different and she basically told me that my disability and the fact that she had to make accommodations for me for my disability is the reason why I was not getting the positions that I applied for and that I would not get any other position until I no longer needed accommodations for my disability. Now at this point I am upset, I'm sad, and I'm hurt because I didn't ask to be in this predicament and I'm like what is all that is going on in this day is crazy and then I have the snake at my back door and then I'm like what does this mean and then it hit me. God spoke to me. He told me that snake has been there for ain't no telling how long, curled up under that thing that's been sitting there for over a year.  It’s probably just been there growing, doing whatever and you were oblivious to the fact that it was there and once you flipped that cover back and you saw it, it was revealed to you. He said I had to reveal this truth to you in order to make you move. Because you would not have moved had I not shown you the truth. And that's so true because I had resigned myself to stay there. I had resigned myself to stay where it was comfortable, to keep confusion down, to keep everybody happy and to just remain in my comfort zone. God told me, now that you see the truth when I open that door you know what you need to know to walk through it. A couple hours later that next day my new principal called me and said that she would still having trouble verifying my references to hold on that she really wanted to hire me and she asked to see my evaluations from the last few years. I sent her everything that she asked for 10 minutes later she called me and offered me the job.

I'm still wrapping my head around everything that God loves me so much that he sent an undeniable sign and message to me to give me the courage to step out in faith and walk into a situation that he has prepared for me. Even though it hurt me to see all of those things I learned that people who I thought I could trust and who were close to me are really snakes lying and waiting and growing right next to my back door and I was oblivious to it until God threw off the cover and allowed me to see. I don't know who this testimony can help by sharing I don't even know how to articulate it in a way that it all makes sense and this might sound crazy and jumbled up to you but I had to get it out and tell someone because never in a million years what I have thought that I would experience something like that. The fact that it didn't even bleed and that the ants and no other animals would touch it, is what really took me aback and blew me away. Like I said I'm still trying to wrap my head around what everything means but I just had to tell you.

Thank you both for sharing your testimonies with me.  I love to hear how God is working in your lives.  God is so good.  Sometimes we can’t even fathom the good He has in store for us.  I am so very grateful for the healing He did for my aunt Joanne.  She can finally walk without pain and it is amazing!! I am also grateful, not only for the job he provided for my friend Jasmin but also for the way he allowed her to understand what was going on and to be sure the new job was the job for her.  It can be hard to leave a current job and he provided her the assurance she needed to know she was doing the right thing.  Thank you Lord, you are awesome!

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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Have You Ever Met An Angel?

Hebrews 13:1-2 “Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

When I heard this verse this morning on the Big Life podcast is reminded me of a story that a friend of mine told me.  One of my friends came on the show to do a witness Wednesday and she was telling me about how she was visited by two angels one day.  She did not know they were angels while she was talking to them and she almost didn’t let them in because although they were dressed nicely she was a single mom living alone and you can never be too careful.  Something told her to let them in and they sat and talked about Jesus for awhile and then they got up to leave.  As they were leaving one of them said thank you for inviting us in and being so hospitable.  I think one of them even said, you never know when you could be entertaining an angel.  She thought that was a weird thing to say so she closed the door behind them and watched for them to walk away and they didn’t they just vanished.  They were there when she closed the door, but then there weren’t there when she looked out the window.  There was no where else for them to go.  

Another friend told a few angel stories on her Witness Wednesday episode.  She was a school bus driver and one time she was driving a field trip full of kids to Boston.  She was the second of five buses.  Somehow the lead bus took a wrong turn and they ended up on a narrow street and they were doing construction.  The first bus drove up to the edge of a ditch and almost went over.  She said a prayer that God would help them get out of this safely.  She looked out her front window and there was a man in a hard hat directing her on exactly how to get her bus turned around safely.  They all got out safely.  When she got back to the place they were going she was talking to the other drivers about how amazing the guy in the hard hat was.  They said they didn’t see any guy in the hard hat.  They saw how she got her bus out and so they did what she did.  

Another time she was driving her bus in a snow storm.  It was snowing so badly she could hardly see and then her windshield wiper stoped working.  She pulled over to the side of the road and just prayed for God to intercede as this was before they had radios or cell phones.  Soon after her prayer another bus pulled up behind her.  A man got out of that bus climbed on top of her bus and switched the window blades out.  They he went back to his bus.  When she looked in her rear view mirror the guy and the bus was gone.  It just vanished.  She assumed it just pulled out ahead of her.  When she got back to the bus garage she asked who was driving the bus that pulled in just before her.  They said no-one.  She was the only bus.  God is so good.

These are examples of real angels.  Supernatural beings that have been sent here for a mission.  There is another kind of angel too and that is you and I.  We can be someone’s angel and not even know about it.  My mother in law and father in law still talk about how my sister Suzy was their angel one night.  Tony & I and his brother and his wife went out to the movies.  Leaving our babies with Joanie & Bill to watch.  They were both under one, or very close to one.  One of them was crying a lot and one of them needed to be changed and yet Joanie couldn’t change the one and console the other at the same time.  It felt like chaos and she was not sure what to do and all of the sudden the doorbell rings and it is my sister Suzy.  Suzy already had 4 boys of her own at this point and was also number 6 of 11 children in my family.  She was well versed at chaos and came right in and changed one baby while calming the other down and she did it all with a smile on her face.  She told them it was no problem and she would come over anytime they needed her to.  It was something so simple to Suzy, she may not even remember that night and yet it meant the world to Tony’s parents.  She was their angel.  

When you look back over your life, can you see where God might have put some angel’s in your path?  I think if I were to ask my husband he would say that the person that hired him into his job in England was an angel.  He was competing for this job against people who had many more years of experience than he did.  Yet, when she talked with Tony, she decided he was the right person for that job.  She welcomed him into the Mission Support Group with open arms and her and her husband made our family feel so welcome.  She was moving just a few months after we got there and so he didn’t get to work for her for very long and yet she made a lasting impression.  He will forever be grateful to her giving him a chance right when he needed it the most.  That job was probably his favorite job our of all the jobs he had in the military.  

Who was there for you when you really needed them?  Did you ever have a time when someone said the right thing or did the right thing, just when you needed it most.  Did you ever wonder how they knew just what you needed?  Did you chalk it up to a coincidence?  It is more likely that God sent them because He knows everything we need.  I remember one day my neighbor in England said I looked like I needed a hug.  I still to this day, over 8 years later, can remember the feel of that hug.  I had no idea that was exactly what I needed at that moment, but God did.  I just needed to know someone cared and that hug let me know she cared.  It let me know I wasn’t alone.  It let me know God saw me and that He knew what I needed.  

What if you could be that for someone?  What if you have been that for someone?  What if you said the thing that you wanted to say but didn’t know if you should?  What if you did that thing that God put on your heart but you are too afraid to do? I shy away from saying nice things to people.  I don’t know why.  I guess I worry the reject the compliment or something and I will be embarrassed.  That is the enemy telling me lies so that I don’t spread God’s love and joy around.  I am getting more and more bold the more I pray for a holy boldness.  I want to be able to say all the kind things that come into my head.  There are so many who say every unkind thing that comes into their head.  What if we were the opposite?  What if we said all the kind things?  What if, when we get a negative thought, we automatically think of something nice to say instead.  What if we all tried to build each other up, even those we don’t agree with, instead of trying to tear them down.

My husband and kids jokingly make fun of me because I am always asking them if that is “build me up” language when they talk to each other.  They make fun, and yet think about how different the world would be if we all only used “build me up” language.  What if we all got into the mindset that we were only going to spread God’s love.  We were only going to say the kind things.  Our criticism, our judgement will not change hearts.  I know many of us think we have to tell our loved ones when they are making bad choices and yet I don’t know if that is true.  Love changes hearts, nagging does not.  Jesus changes hearts, not us.  We can love our loved ones, we can build up our loved ones, even when they are making bad choices.  It doesn’t mean we are supporting those bad choices, it means we are supporting them.  Once people feel loved and accepted for who they are they are more open to hearing what you have to say.  If we feel judged by someone we don’t listen to what they have to say.  Lead with love is what I feel God is telling me over and over again.  So, I am going to keep telling you too!  

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, please let each one of us experience the presence of an angel at one time for another.  Lord, let each one of us be that experience for someone else at one point or another.  Lord, give us the courage to say yes when you call us into that role.  Help us say yes, even if we don’t know why we are doing it.  Help us make someone else’s prayers come true.  Help us to be there for someone when they need us.  Help us to do as the verse above says and let mutual love continue and let us show kindness to strangers just as we would our loved ones.  Lord, show us how to be your face to all we meet.  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 want to wish you all a very happy fourth of July!  I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow.  Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I!  Have a blessed day!

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 Do Not Despise Small Beginnings

Zachariah 4:10 “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.”

I heard this verse in a sermon I was listening to on the Elevation Podcast.  The sermon was given by Jabin Chavez.  This verse was a small part of his sermon and yet when he said it something inside me said that someone listening to this episode needs this verse right now.  Someone needed to hear that is it ok that things aren’t going as fast as you wanted or happening as big as you wanted.  Someone needed to hear that we don’t have to be discouraged with our small beginnings.  I know this verse is for me, and yet I felt as though I was not the only one who needed to hear it.  This verse is telling us not to despise small beginnings as this is often how our prayers are answered.  Are you looking around and thinking this does not look like you thought it would?  You thought you would be further along at this point in your life.  You thought you business would be more successful.  You thought you would be married, or you thought you would have kids.  You thought it would look different.

The “it” is different for each one of us and yet many of us share this common disappointment.  Why is this?  Why do we wish we were further along instead of enjoying the ride to get to where we are going?  I think we want to be further along because that is what the world seems to care about and we often get caught up in the world instead of what God wants.  The world tells us that we are defined by what we have.  We strive to have the biggest car, the biggest house, the best job, the most stuff.  We think this makes us worthy because that is what society tells us.  This is not what God tells us.  God tells us in Matthew 19:30 “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”   God does not look at our lives the way society does.  He is not looking to see who has the most stuff, the biggest house, or the best job.  God is looking to see, “Did you help out those in need?” “Did you love your neighbor as yourself?” “Did you follow His ways and put Him first?” These are the things God is judging.  

Even when we know this, even when we know the things God is calling us to, we can still feel discouraged because, “we haven’t helped enough people yet,” or “we haven’t loved well enough yet.”  Whether it is in our regular life, or our spiritual life, we can often tend to be discouraged with our progress.  How many of us have said, "I should be praying more,” “I should trust more,” or “I should rely on God more?” We all have times when we aren’t happy with our progress and this verse is the perfect verse to remember when we start to have these thoughts.  

Many of us can get the idea in our heads that God is up there, sitting on His thrown, looking down on us and judging us because He is not pleased with our progress.  We picture Him just shaking His head and saying, “Really, again?” or “I can’t believe they haven’t learned that yet.”  I think this verse is telling us that we are wrong.  God isn’t up there judging our progress and being disappointed.  He is up there watching and smiling at every small step in the right direction that we take.  He is reassuring us not to worry if are beginnings are small because at least we are beginning.  

Pastor Chavez was saying that often times the answers to our prayers come in seed form.  We want God to just give us the answer with all the details all worked our perfectly and yet that is not often how it works.  It does happen like that sometimes and we Praise God every time it does. Often we will pray about something and God will give us an idea and then we need to take that idea and cultivate it.  This takes time.  It takes time and lots of listening to God to figure our what He is calling us to do with our lives.  However, even when we know what our calling is, it is often revealed in stages.  I am not sure anyone gets handed a roadmap for their whole life’s mission all at one time.  We often feel called to one thing, which then leads to another thing, which leads to another thing and so on.  I am sure this is intentional because we get the skills to do the next level of things while we are learning to do the first level.  I can imagine it is also intentional because if we knew where our 40 years of hard work was going to lead us, we might not say yes to that first step.  

If I knew that saying yes to attending a retreat when I was in college would lead me to having a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit, which would lead me to help start a whole revivial of the Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church, would I still go to that retreat, or would I be overwhelmed with that much responsibility.  Honestly I don’t know. I am grateful for those who attended the retreat that is now known as the Duquesne Weekend and has marked the beginning of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.  I am sure their lives changed immensely on that weekend and they helped lead the Charismatic Renewal one step at a time.  I can imagine they wanted it to spread quicker because once you know the power of the Holy Spirit you want everyone else to have that experience too.  However, they went at the pace God took them and I am sure God was happy with their small beginnings.  I will actually put a link for a description of the Duquesne Weekend in the show notes as it was an incredible experience for all involved and is really interesting to read about. (Click Here for article)

You might be looking at your life and thinking you are not where you wanted to be or where you thought you would be and yet God is looking at your life and saying, “You are right where I want you to be.”  Most of the time we have no idea of the amazing things God has planned for our lives.  It’s when we do have some idea that we get impatient and we want those amazing things now.  God’s timing is perfect.  If we want something now and God has not given it to us yet, there is a reason.  Most likely, we are not ready for it yet.  God knows our hearts.  He knows what we will do with what we are given.  God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.  We do not understand a lot of the things God does.  We often can’t understand His timing.  This is because we are looking at a very tiny piece of the puzzle and God gets to see the whole picture.  

I think what God is telling us with this verse is “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” He doesn’t want us to despise the small beginnings because He gave us those small beginnings.  Also, we shouldn’t judge our ending on the small beginnings because we don’t know what these small beginnings will grow into.  One saying the pastor said in his sermon that I really liked was that you can cut open an apple and count the number of seeds in it.  However, you have no idea how many apples are in one seed.  Only God can make your endeavors fruitful.  We won’t know how much fruit will come from each seed, each idea you have, until it is fully grown.  Keep nurturing your ideas, keep working at them,  don’t get discouraged if you aren’t where you thought you would be, God will get you there in His perfect timing.

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listen to this episode today.  Lord, help us to be content, happy, even joyous over our small beginnings knowing your timing is perfect.  Help us to be patient as we wait for the amazing things you have called us to come to fruition.  Help us to see clearly what you are calling us to and how we get there.  We love you Lord, we want what you want.  We want our wills to be aligned with your will, please help us.  We are so grateful for all the desire you placed in our hearts.  Please help us to cultivate those desires and to be patient while we wait for your perfect timing.  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 am so glad to be back with all of you this week.  I enjoyed spending time with my family last week.  We stayed up until 2-3 in the morning playing games and laughing with each other.  It was great.  We also had dinners as a family.  It was so nice to all be together.  We missed the two siblings that couldn’t come.  Hopefully we will all get together sometime soon.  I just want to remind you that you can pick up an autographed copy of my book on my website.  You can also sign up for my newsletter there.  walkbodlywithjesus.com I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow.  Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I!  Have a blessed day.

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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Be Still & Listen

Exodus 19:3-6 "As Moses went up to meet God, God called down to him from the mountain: “Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to me. If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you’ll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you’re special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”

One of my friends sent this verse in a Facebook messenger chat.  Her mother just had heart surgery and she is in the hospital with her waiting for her to recover.  Her mom’s levels were all elevated and she needed to go onto a breathing machine.  I am sure my friend was worried for her mom and I am sure the mom was worried too.  I met this woman in my mentoring group.  We went on retreat together.  Everyone in our mentoring group picks a word and mantra for the year.  This is just a way to help keep us focused on where we want the year to go and help us remember what is important to us throughout the year when things get busy.  Life can happen so quickly sometimes that we don’t live it intentionally we just get swept up in it and almost go on autopilot.  There can be so many people or things calling our time and it can get hard to prioritize if you don’t have a focus and/or you don’t priorities.  

This is why we pick a word and mantra and try to say it every day.  I was going to say that we do say it everyday, but I am sure we forget sometimes, or at least I know I do, especially on the weekends.  However, even if I don’t say it everyday, I know I have one, I have it memorized and so when I have to make a decision about something I can think about that word and mantra in my head and then the decision is easy because usually only one aligns with my focus for the year.  

My friend chose the words “Be Still” this year.  It’s funny how when we pick a word, God helps us grow into that word over the year.  It’s the same with you, even if you didn’t pick a word.  If you have a desire in your heart, or if you have prayed for help to grow in a certain area, God will help you.  When we pick a word it not only reminds us of how we want to grow over the year, but it is also the filter with which we look at the year.  Let me explain what I mean.  If my friend’s word is Be Still, then her focus is on being still and how she can learn to grow in that.  So, when she is reading her Bible in the hospital next to her mom and she gets the Bible verse above, she then looks at this experience in the hospital as a reminder to be still.  

God is amazing!  If we are looking, if our eyes and ears are open, he will give us little signs, and sometimes big signs that He is right there with us in all of our situations or circumstances.  This bible verse in the hospital was a little reminder from God to my friend to just Be Still and that He was taking of it all for her.  If you are aware that God does this, if you are on the lookout for this, you will see that He is doing the same for you.  God is not just doing this for some of His children.  He is sending us all signs that He is there with them.  The problem is if we don’t know that He is doing this, then we don’t notice them when we see them.  Let’s start being on the lookout for these messages from God letting us know He is in it, all of it, with us!

I love how today’s verse begins with God reminding us what He has done for us in the past.  It says, “As Moses went up to meet God, God called down to him from the mountain: “Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to me.” This is a great reminder that God is a miracle worker.  He saved the Israelites from Egypt is a miraculous way.  Also, it wasn’t just one miracle, it was miracle after miracle.  He did all those signs to convince Pharaoh to let them go. He parted the Red Sea so they could pass, then He rolled it back to destroy their enemy.  He miraculously provided manna for food every single morning.  He rained down quail on them when they complained about not having meat to eat.  It was miracle after miracle.  

When we are struggling, we need to be reminded of all God can do.  There are so many times when we are in a situation and we can’t see a way out.  We have $500 worth of bills and $200 in our bank account.  That math does not add up and we know that we will not be able to pay our bills.  And yet the math also did not add up when Jesus only had 5 loaves of bread and two fish and there were over 5,000 people to feed and yet He fed them all with plenty to spare.  When our loved one is in the hospital or on hospice and the doctors tell us there is nothing to do, we need God to remind us of what He has done in the past, so that we can have hope that we don’t have to worry because even if there is nothing the doctors can do, there is ALWAYS something our God can do.  I love that God knows we need this reminder, even before we do.  He is so good!!

The second half of this verse is, “If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you’ll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you’re special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” This is also great because it is reminding us that we are special.  God could choose any person on the entire Earth, and yet He is choosing you.  If we listen obeidiently to what He says, and keep His commandments then we will be set aside.  We will be His holy nation.  How great is that?  I love that this translations says we will be His special treasure.  What would you give to be God’s special treasure?  I feel as though I would give anything to be considered God’s special treasure.  God is giving us the instructions and although they seem easy, they can be harder than they sound.  

The first thing it says is to listen obediently.  It can be hard to listen if we aren’t hearing Him.  This means we need to spend some time listening to what God is telling us.  Let’s all stop for a moment and see when we could do this?  When could we make time, even if it's just 5 minutes, in our day to sit quietly and listen to the God? Could you make 5 minutes sometime in your day to sit quietly with God if it meant you got to be His special treasure? The other thing God is asking us to do is to keep His covenant, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart my and soul and to love your neighbor.  Can we do that?  What is one thing we can do to love others more?  God doesn’t just mean your neighbor next door.  He means, how can you love everyone, even those you don’t like.  

That is something to spend some time pondering.  Is this dislike, is this hatred I have in my heart for others worth not being counted as God’s special treasure?  If you have a hard time loving others, take that to God.  Spend some time talking with God and asking Him to help you through it.  God wants us all to be His special treasure.  We don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to follow Him perfectly, we just have to really want to be His special treasure with our whole heart, and then listen to Him and He will guide us there.  He wants it for us more than we want it for ourselves.  We just have to give Him permission to work within us and then let Him gently guide us there!

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, I ask you to show each one of us where in our day we can spend some time with you.  I ask you to show everyone that we all have the time, even if we are very busy.  Show them that you can talk to them anywhere, in the shower, in the car, while they are drinking coffee, while they are doing housework, anytime we are willing to listen, you are willing to talk.  Lord we thank you for always reminding us at the perfect time of all you have done in the past.  Lord, we are sorry we always forget and are so grateful when we need to remember, you are there.  Lord, I want to keep my friend’s mom and my other friend’s father in law in our prayers today as they are who you put on my heart while writing this episode.  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.  In case you were all wondering, my parents 60th wedding anniversary celebration went great!  Their love was definitely celebrated by many.  The celebration continues as my parents, most of my siblings and I all head to Maine for a vacation together.  I am not sure we have all vacationed together since we were little.  If you were moved to find time in your day when you can listen to God and yet feel your schedule is too buys, I want to offer my audio training on how to invite Jesus into your every day activities.  It is not that long and will just give you a few ideas of how you can increase your time with God and yet, not add more things into your buys schedule.  Just a reminder if you don’t see an episode from me any day this week it is because I am hanging out with family and will be back next week. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I!  Have a blessed week!

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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Whoever Has Been Forgiven Little Loves Little

Luke 7:47 "Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

I usually don’t have a scripture verse for these episodes in advance.  I usually ask God to give me one right before I write it, or I look in my Encounter Ministry notes, or my prayer group notes.  However, yesterday when I was listening to another podcast this story from the Bible came to me clear as day.  This is not necessarily strange because as you know I sometimes get my episode ideas from other podcasts like The Big Life Devotional, Elevation, or Father Mike’s podcasts.  However, this time the podcast I was listening to was not talking about this story at all.  The story just popped into my head and I felt as if that was definitely the verse I was supposed to use today.  

I chose Luke 7:47 as the main verse because that was the main point I felt the Holy Spirit emphasized when I got the verse, however, it probably won’t make any sense without the context of the whole story.  The story is called “Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman” and it is found in Luke 7:36-50.  “When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.  A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.  As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”  Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said. “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”  Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.  Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.  You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.  Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”  Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Actually now that I am writing I see why this came to me while I was listening to the other podcast.  The Big Life Devotional Podcast with Pamela Crim was talking about loving other people yesterday.  As soon as she said do we love others, this story came to mind.  I think the point the Holy Spirit wanted me to make is about forgiveness.  In this verse Jesus is forgiving this woman of her sins.  The reason she was crying and was washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointing them with perfume is because she knew all of her sins.  She didn’t come into that house pretending to be anything different.  She knew she was full of sin and that she was in the presence of the Lord.  She knew she had a lot to repent for and she knew Jesus could forgive her sins.  She wasn’t afraid to approach Jesus.  She didn’t let her sins keep her from coming into the presence of God.  She approached him, bowed at his feet and washed his feet.  She humbled herself with the faith that she would be forgiven.  

Today’s verse says, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” The person who owned the house was thinking in his head that Jesus didn’t know all of her sins.  He was thinking if Jesus was a prophet, he would know her sins and he would not let her touch Him.  What Jesus is saying here is that if she wasn’t a great sinner, if she didn’t really have many sins, she wouldn’t have humbled herself, she wouldn’t have sat at his feet and washed them with her tears.  She loved Jesus so much because she knew how much sin she had and how great of a thing it was for Him to forgive it all.  She loved Him so much because she had so much sin.  

What the Holy Spirit was saying to me yesterday was that we should be more loving to others because we have been forgiven of so much also.  I feel like I am struggling to get you to see what the Holy Spirit was showing me, and yet I am trusting what He wants you to hear, you will hear.  What he showed me was that we struggle to forgive others, even when they had done little offenses to us.  Sometimes, they haven’t done anything to us and yet we don’t love the person because we don’t like how they look, how they think, how the believe, or how they talk.  

We judge others so much and God is saying, “Why are you judging them when I am not judging you? Why are you acting as if you have done nothing wrong?  Why are you judging my creations?  I created each person, who are you to judge them?  You have been forgiven of so much, I have overlooked so much for you, why can’t you do the same?  I love you my children with an everlasting love and unconditional love and I am asking you to do the same.  I know you don’t all look alike, sound alike, dress alike, believe the same things and that is ok.  I still call you to love one another unconditionally.  I know you can’t do this on your own and yet if you only say the word I can help you.  If you strive to love everyone, I will make your efforts fruitful.  First, you must make that choice.  You must choose to love others, even those you don’t agree with.  When you wish to judge someone, imagine me up in heaven using those same standards to judge you.  Is it worth it?  Do you want me to use your standards to judge you?  Remember all you have done, remember all your imperfections and remember that I have forgiven them all and I ask you to do the same towards others.  Spread my love like wildfire.  I promise if you start to lead with love your whole life will change.  You will be friends with people you never expected.  You will learn things you never expected.  Trust me my children and start loving more and judging less.”

Well, I did not expect for the Holy Spirit to speak directly too us, although I did pray for this episode to be His words not mine and I did let Him know I was struggling to get His point across, so thank you Lord for your amazing words this morning.  I will end with that because He has said it all.

Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, we can’t thank you enough for showing up and speaking to each one of us directly.  Help us to ponder your words Lord.  Help us to see how we can live into those words.  Give us the grace to lead with love, let that be our default Lord!! Help us to stop judging, help us to love first.  Lord, we need a lot of help in this area.  We ask you to rain down your love, your grace and your strength on us so we can follow your command to love all.  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 wanted to let you know that I will be celebrating 60 years marriage with my parents this weekend.  Their love is a love of the ages.  Not only do they love each other so much even after 60 years, 11 children and countless grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren, but they love others too.  They are a great example of what this episode is about today.  They have taught us to love others, even those we struggle to get along with.  My whole family will be in town for this celebration and several days to follow.  I am not planning to post episodes while they are in town. I am planning to enjoy this short time with them.  If the Holy Spirit wakes me up early to write an episode or creates some down time to do that then I will obey.  Otherwise, I will meet you guys again in July!  I can’t believe it could be that close to July.  If you know my parents feel free to wish them a Happy 60th Anniversary.  I look forward to seeing you again soon!  Remember Jesus loves you and He wants you to share that love with others.  I love you all too!  Have a blessed weekend!

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If You Only Knew The Power Living Inside Of You…

Matthew 8: 16 “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.”

I was talking with a friend last night and we got on the topic of the Holy Spirit.  I love to talk about the Holy Spirit because I am still in awe over the whole thing.  I am in awe that God gave us the Holy Spirit. I am in awe that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us.  I wish each and every single baptized person on planet earth knew how powerful they were with the Holy Spirit living inside of them.  

The verse above says, “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed al the sick.”  Jesus was able to chase away demons with a word.  He was able to heal the sick just by saying be healed.  Actually there are many different ways that Jesus healed people.  If you read the many healing stories in the Bible you will see there wasn’t just one way that Jesus healed the sick.  Sometimes he said “be healed” sometimes he just told them to do something like “take up your mat and go.” Other times he did a physical action like when he put mud on a blind mans eyes or put his fingers in a deaf man’s ears.  I think there was so much variety so that Jesus could show us it is not what we do that heals people, it is who we ask.  We come to God in faith and He does the healings.  

I was talking to my friend last night because we were doing an inner healing session.  Part of the process I was using for inner healing was to renounce the lies that we tell ourselves.  I was explaining that we can do that at anytime.  She can do that on her own even when I am not on the phone with her.  When she starts to get anxious she can sit down and ask Jesus to help her figure out what specific lies she is telling herself.  For instance, my car will break down and I won’t be able to get to work.  Something bad will happen to me if I go out on my own.  My children might get hurt if I let them do what they want.  I am not sure what it might be for you.  We all have things we tell ourselves that are not true.  Things like I am unworthy of love, I am unloved, I am stupid, I am a bad driver.  Whatever it is that you are telling yourself, you can renounce that lie once you realize what that lie is.  

If you aren’t sure if you are telling yourself any lies, take a minute and think about what that inner voice is saying to you.  Maybe take a minute and ask God to reveal any lies you are telling yourself.  Once you have the lies it is easy to renounce them.  It is a simple sentence, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie, and then you state the lie.”  For instance, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie that I am not good enough, I am not pretty enough, I am not enough.”  Ideally you would repeat the sentence for each lie.  I just named a few so you would get the idea.  

Once you renounce the lie you can ask God to replace that lie with the truth.  It is amazing what you will hear when you ask God what truth He wants to give you in place of that lie.  You will see just how much God loves you.  You will see a tenderness that you probably didn’t know was there.  My friend was saying that although renouncing lies is so simple, she didn’t know she could do that.  I explained that she was not alone!  So many of us don’t know we can do that.  I definitely didn’t before enrolling in the Encounter Ministries class I am taking.  

Another part of the inner healing session is to renounce any evil spirits.  For instance, the spirit of anxiety, the spirit of depressions, the spirit of unworthiness.  When Jesus sent the 12 apostles out to spread the word that the Kingdom of God was at hand He gave them the power to do signs and wonders.  When He sent out the 72 He did the same.  Jesus made us all, each one of us part of the great commission.  He tasked us all with spreading the news of Him and all the things that happened in the Gospel.  He wants us to make sure that every person on the planet has had a chance to hear about Him.  To do this He gave us all the Holy Spirit.  With the Holy Spirit we have the power living inside of us to cast out demons in Jesus’ name.  We have the power to heal the sick in Jesus’ name.  Well, we are not healing the sick but God is healing the sick through us when we are brave enough to step our in faith and to ask.  

Did you know demons don’t have any power of you unless you give it to them?  It’s true, you have to consent to them being there.  Now, it’s not as if they ask you and you say yes or no.  They find ways in through the sins we commit and often times we didn’t know that we opened a door or that we let them in.  However, whether we knew we were doing it or not, if they find an open door they enter.  However, they can’t stay once you tell them to leave.  You, yes you, have the power to tell them to leave.  If you notice you have a persistent feeling, such as anxiety, depression, worry, anger, irritability, loneliness, unworthiness, etc, this could be a spirit causing this persistent feeling.  If you want to kick that spirit out all you have to stay is, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the spirit of …. and I command it to leave right now in Jesus’ name.”  

Once you command it to leave, it must leave.  It cannot stay, it has officially been evicted. God honors our free will and the enemy must do the same.  He just does a good job at making us unaware of the power we have.  I was telling my friend that I think that has been on of the enemies greatest tactics.  I think the enemy has done a good job of either making us forget how much power we have living inside of us, or he has twisted the truth so much in the world that we don’t believe it.  I am not sure what has happened, how he did it, and yet, we don’t seem to know that we have any real power.  

Can you imagine how different the world would be if every baptized person was walking around in the full authority that Christ gave them?  Can you imagine how different the world would be if we all knew that Jesus gave us the power to heal the sick, cast our demons, raise the dead and so much more!  It says in John 14:12-14 “ Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”  Do you believe that scripture speaks the truth?  Do you believe that God is honest and keeps His promises?  If so, then you can see why I know that we each have so much power living inside of us.

This verse does not say that a select few will do the works that Jesus did.  It does not say that priests and ministers will do the works that Jesus did.  It says, “You, whomever believes in me.” Do you believe in Jesus?  If so, then He is talking to you?  I know it doesn’t feel like you have any power. I know you don’t feel worthy of any power.  I know you probably don’t want any power, because as Aunt May says in Spider Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  And yet, if you believe in Jesus you have this power anyway, so why are we wasting it?  Why are we going around with aches and pains and not asking God in Jesus’ name to heal them?  Why are we living under the oppression of spirits when we have the power to demand that they leave?  Because we don’t know or we don’t believe we have this power. I hope after hearing this episode you go to your Bible and you look for the scripture verse John 14:12-14.  I hope you underline it, I hope you write it on an index card and I hope you ask the Lord to show you how this applies in your life.  Ask God to show you what He is calling you to do.  

Don’t worry, God is gentle with us.  He will not call us to move to another country when He knows we really don’t want that.  He may call us to ask for healing in our own lives, He may call us to church more, to daily mass, to pray for someone we know, to pray over someone we know if that is something we aren’t too uncomfortable with. Imagine what this world would be like if we all started living in the authority that Jesus gave us.  We are all so worried about what is happening in the world around us and yet we feel so powerless.  That is a trick of the enemy. We are not powerless.  We are more powerful than we know.  He knows how powerful we are when we live into that power, when we realize what it truly means to have the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us.  Matthew 17:20 says, “ He replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Did you hear that last line, “NOTHING WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU.”  

One main goal of this podcast is to help us all start to believe that a little more.  I know if we started to believe this the world would start to change.  We wouldn’t be as scared all the time because we would know we have the power living inside of us to change things.  We wouldn’t be living in so much pain because we would know we have the power inside of us to set ourselves free and to help set others free.  We wouldn’t just accept the aches and pains we get as a given thing that come with getting older, we would pray for healing because we know the power of God to heal is living inside of us.  I know the world would change, it has already started, if more and more of us realized the power laying dormant inside of us.  The Holy Spirit’s ability to work through us is confined by our free will, by our belief in His power.  If we want to have access to that power, we need to first know and believe that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us.  We have to learn what that means and the best way to do that is to read the Scriptures.  Read the book of Acts in the Bible. Read all about what the apostles did with the Holy Spirit living inside of them.  It is incredible and if they could do it, so can you because we have the same exact Holy Spirit, there is only one!

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, we want to understand the power and authority you have given to us, please help us.  We want to live in that authority.  We want to be able to cast out demons and heal those around us.  Please build our faith, please show us how.  Lord, we thank you for giving us your Son and then when He left you gave us the Holy Spirit.  We are so grateful.  Help bring an awareness in each person listening as to what having the Holy Spirit living inside of us means for us.  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 have so exciting news, I have found a place to hold a retreat this fall.  I have been feeling called to host a retreat and everywhere I called was so expensive.  I just wanted to find a place that most people could afford to come if they wanted to.  I was getting discouraged and God is so good and He knew that I just needed to keep calling places.  I finally found one.  I will have more details in the upcoming weeks but I am excited to announce that I will be hosting a retreat in October for anyone who would like to get away for a weekend and spend some time with Jesus.  It will be a weekend full of praise and worship and thanksgiving to God.  It will also be a time when we talk about some ways to develop a more intimate relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  It will be amazing because the Holy Spirit is the one leading the charge on this one.  I hope you will consider joining me! I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow.  Remember, Jesus love you, he really does, and so do I!  Have a blessed day!

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is 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 you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at [email protected] or just 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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Open The Eyes Of Their Heart Lord

Ephesians 1:18-21 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,  and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”

In the verse right before this one Paul is praying for God to give the Ephesians a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that they may know him better. Then in this verse it starts off by saying that he prays the eyes of their hearts may be enlightened in order that they may know the hope to which God has called them, along with the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe. I love how this verse points out the importance of understanding things with our heart and not just our minds.  We can know something with our mind and yet if it just stays in our mind and doesn’t go anywhere else, it may not change our lives.  There is a difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing something with our whole being.  

I read an article, (CLICK HERE) for article, that said the Bible is like our manual for living a Christian lifestyle.  Think about all the various manuals you have in your life for all your appliances.  Did you read them?  Did you read the manual to figure out how to work your TV?  Did you read the manual to figure out how to use your microwave?  What about the one that came with your cell phone?  I am guessing most of us did not read these manuals.  Maybe we read parts of them, like the quick start guide, or if we ran into a problem we may have read the part that talked about that problem we had.  We don’t tend to read the whole thing.  The same can be true of the Bible, as we do with so many owner’s manuals, we read it superficially or hardly at all and then wonder why the Christian life isn’t working the way it’s supposed to! We need to go back and read the manual carefully, asking God to give us His wisdom and understanding.

Only God can give us the grace to understand the Bible with our whole being, with our hearts and our minds.  There are many aspects of our faith that we know on a superficial level and yet if we want a deeper understanding so we can actually live it out in our lives, we need to ask God to move it from just head knowledge to heart knowledge as well.  For instance, we can tell people all day long that God loves us and He has a plan for our lives, and yet if we don’t truly believe that in our hearts, we won’t live our lives as if this is true.  If you know in your heart that God is working all things for your good, then you don’t worry as much about the things that happen in your day to day life.  You don’t worry as much even when you hit bumps in the road and big things go wrong, because you know with your whole being that even though this sucks a lot right now, God is going to work it for your good.  If you don’t know this down deep in your heart, then even if you know it in your brain you will be more anxious, you will worry about all the various bumps in the road, you will not have peace in the storm.  

This is why Paul is praying for God to give them a Spirit of Revelation and Wisdom. We all need to pray for this.  If we want to truly understand who God is and what He has in store for us then we all need the gift of Revelation and Wisdom.  There is always a deeper level to our understanding, to our spirituality, to our relationship with God.  The only way to go deeper is through God.  He is the one that reveals the deeper meanings of His word.  Jesus even talked about how He used parables because the people weren’t able to comprehend what he was saying with their hearts.  They needed to have things explained in ways they could see with their eyes and things they could wrap their brains around. However, the disciples were granted the grace to understand some of the parables at a deeper level.  They were seeking a deeper understanding and so they were granted it.  

Now that we have looked at what St. Paul was talking about when he prayed that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened, let’s look at what the rest of the verse says.  The first line says, “In order that you may know the hope to which he has called you.” We are all called to a greater life.  We are called to an eternal salvation.  We are called to spend eternity with God in Heaven.  Do we have hope for that call?  Do we believe that Jesus died on a cross to save us and to make that call possible?  The article I read talked about two facets of this hope.  The first part is that our salvation doesn’t rest on us choosing God, but on God choosing us.  As Paul puts it (2 Tim. 1:9), God “has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.”  The second facet of this hope from the article is, “The hope of His calling is the certainty of increasing blessing and joy in Christ, beginning now and lasting through all eternity.”  This goes back to what I was talking about earlier.  We can have hope that God is working all things for our good.  We can have hope in all of the promises that were made all throughout the Bible.  God does amazing things for His people.  

The next part of the verse says, “the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.”The article I read goes into great detail on two different ways to interpret this part of the verse.  I will not go into a lot of detail, I will just state the two ways as the author did and if you want to look at how he came up with these two ways you can check out the link to the article.  Either way you interpret this phrase, whether we are heirs to a vast fortune in heaven or whether we are God’s special inheritance (both are true), the application is the same. We must live as citizens of heaven who belong to God. We must live as saints, God’s holy ones, separate from this evil world. Paul was praying for the eyes of the hearts to be opened so they could fully grasp what it meant to live as a people of God.  He wanted them to truly understand the importance of living our lives separate from the world.  God wants us to live as a holy people set apart from the rest of the world.  He wants us to live in the world but not of the world.

The last part says, "and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” This part is so important that we internalize it and make it known throughout our whole body.  Once we can really grasp this information, once it makes its way deep into our heart, then our lives will never be the same.  We will never again doubt if we have the strength to make it though.  We know we do because we are keenly aware of the power we have inside of us.  Once we truly understand what it means to have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we will be unstoppable, the enemy won’t be able to touch us.  That doesn’t mean he won’t try, but it means we will know he won’t defeat us.  

Unfortunately, this is not something we can come to know on our own.  God reveals this to us bit by bit as we need it, search for it and ask for it.  We can not will our belief in the power of the Holy Spirit, believe me, I have tried.  Faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit.  I have prayed over plenty of people and felt like I believed they would be healed and they were not.  I heard a speaker once, and I can’t seem to find the talk again, but it was Mary Healy and it was a short clip of a talk.  I heard her say something like, we can’t will our belief in healing.  It is a gift from God. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to heal people.  We should keep believing as much as we can and with each time that someone is healed our faith will grown.  God will grow our faith in His time.  God will open the eyes to our heart to see the power we have inside of us on His time line all we can do is keep asking.  I do think the more we ask, the more we desire it, the more he will open them.  If we seek, we will find.  

The article talks about six things God wants us to know about the surpassing greatness of His power.  I will list them here, and you can get more detail in the article. (CLICK HERE)  God wants us to know the surpassing greatness of His power:

Saved us.

Enables us to persevere through trials.

Enables us to overcome temptation and live in holiness.

Enables us to serve Him faithfully.

Enables us for everything that He has called us to do.

To keep us to the end.

If things aren’t going right for you.  If you are struggling to live this Christian life, which I think most of us are, maybe we should go back and read the manual God gave us.  Maybe we should immerse ourselves in Scripture and find out what God wants us to do.  However, as we have learned today, we can’t just read the scripture and understand it.  We also need to keep asking God to open the eyes to our heart.  We need to keep asking God to help us understand what we are reading.  We can continually ask for wisdom and knowledge from God and when we ask, He answers.  He will help us if we just ask!

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, we are asking for your help understanding all we read in the Bible.  We are asking for your help to understand all we see in the world.  Lord, help us to distinguish what is of You and what is of the world.  Help us to figure out how to live the life you want us to live.  Help us to truly understand the strength we have because of the Holy Spirit living inside of us.  Lord, we ask that you truly open the eyes of our heart to see the incredible power we having inside of us.  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.  If you would like an autographed copy of my book you can find it on my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or Click Here.  If you want to receive my weekly newsletter Click Here.  I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow.  Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I!  Have a blessed day!

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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