this scripture just made me say... wow... this morning...

romans 4: 16This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that's reading the story backward. He is our faith father.

17-18We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!"

19-25Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.

giving God my all...

you know... I give God my mind and my heart and my body... to do whatever He wants to do in my life... but a few days ago... He asks me for my stomach... now that seemed really strange to me...

the background to this is... God wants me to give up sugar and white flour... I have a long standing love affair with biscuits and cookies... so I have not been able to give God what He wants... and He reveals to me that I am trying to do this in my own power... and I think... well of course I am.. this is not something spiritual... this is just what I'm eating...

well amazingly to me... God seems to think that even what I eat is His... if we go deeper into it... I guess this is one more thing that we try to keep control of... trying to hold on to some semblance of power... I don't think it is so much about what I am eating... as it is about giving it to God...

it is hard to recognize that every part of us... every little thing is God's.. not our own... and it is to Him to have control of it... and we don't like to give Him control of anything much less of everything... so this morning... as I wake.. and I am praying.. and giving God my life.. my mind.. my heart.. my body.. I also give Him my stomach... and even though I really don't understand it... it is about surrender..

so Lord continue to lead me... teach me to give You every part of me that I knowingly and unknowingly withhold... I ask you to control my entire life... I submit completely to You.. in Jesus name.. amen.amen.amen.

shaken... but still standing...

there are alot of things I don't understand... I don't understand God much of the time.. but this is something new for me.. when I was worldly... I understood Him much better... God's process of making us into whatever He wants us to be is confusing... everything is backwards... you have to give to receive.. you have to sow to reap... you have to die to live... none of those things make sense...

so I'm here today to tell God that I don't really understand any of what He is thinking... I can see the end result.. but I can't imagine how the way things are going is supposed to get me there...

I am supposed to stand strong while I am attacked on every side.. and I do mean every side... the promise for the future that God gave me looks unobtainable.. yet I am to continue to show love... (what possible sense does that make?? really... walking away is the smarter move... I promise you that...) my son has lost all sense of reality... my daughter is working 2 jobs one during the day and one at night and we can't seem to get her car fixed... so we are running around back and forth.. relying on others for rides much of the time... (I could just quit everything and go home after I'm done at work for the day... that would be so much easier...)

I refuse to say 'what else could go wrong' because in the midst of the drama... we have our health... we have a home... we have food.. we have clothing.. we are able to pay our bills...

but as far as what possible good all this could bring? I have no clue... I don't understand anything at all...

no matter what I'm gonna love You... no matter what I'm gonna need You... no matter what I'm gonna trust you... I know that You have the power to keep me from all pain... but if you choose not to.. all I ask is that You come through it with me... in Jesus precious name I ask this... amen.amen.amen.

God is in control.. (?)

I wonder some days if I really believe that God is in control... I used to be sure of it.. and in most situations I still am pretty much giving full control to God... but there are a couple things that I struggle to keep my hands off of...

the bible tells us that everything and everyone are subject to the will of God... are you still a 'free will' believer? well... God hardened the heart of the Pharoah... he didn't have any free will... and... the bible says that it is God that controls the heart of a man... so if God controls it... how is that free will?

now do I think we are just some puppets on a string? not exactly... but I guess I believe God opens our hearts and our minds to His will... and then we choose it...

anyways... so if I really trust that God is in control... not people.. why do I get concerned? what do I have to be afraid of if God controls the heart of a man? what is there to fear?

like the scripture says... Father I believe.. help me with my unbelief... help me to just trust You and rest in You... in Jesus name I ask.. amen.amen.amen.

it's not mine...

as you know.. I have been having this horrendous spiritual battle going on... (thinking surely this is the last few steps of this fight...)(of course I have been thinking that a long time... and it keeps getting heavier instead of lighter...)so today... God reminds me.. that HE is my source... no other person.. not finances.. God alone is my source..

so with that being said... when I look to people to comfort me and help me walk this walk.. I am looking to the wrong one.. because I need to look instead to God.. and even if He chooses a person to encourage or give a word.. it didn't come from that person.. it STILL came from God...

so what I long for.. what I wait for.. I am not waiting on a person... a person cannot fulfill what I need... only God.. so when He walks me into position... it wasn't given to me by man.. it was given to me be God.. and the position does not belong to me.. it belongs to God.. if He chooses to give it or take it.. has nothing to do with circumstance or people.. it is all up to God...

when He walks me into the position He has prepared me for... my responsibility is to keep HIM foremost in my thoughts.. and to do the job that He has called me to do... the way He has called me to do it... and to be thankful for what He gives at all times... regardless of what or who He uses to give it... and to cherish it.. as it does not belong to me to begin with... it belongs to God...

is God real...

sometimes we are confused.. we are disillusioned... we are hurt by the very ones that should never hurt us... somehow hurt from someone who claims to walk with God is the worst hurt to endure... and it causes us to doubt God some days... I would never have thought this would have happened to me... and yet to a small degree it has..

I believed all my life that I hear from God... all my life the things that I hear happen.. most times anyways... I dream things and they are real... I see things and they are real... but what happens when we get unsure if we have ever heard from God? what do we do then?

last night I lay awake.. struggling with God... asking Him to show me He is real.. to show me that my mind didn't make up the things I believe He said... I felt like Jacob when he wrestled with God...

in the end... what I realize is this... I would never want to walk through the rest of my life thinking that my God is not real... and people don't have to answer to me for the things they do or do not do... just like I don't have to answer to people... we all have to answer to God for the things that we do.. and for our disobedience in not doing what we are supposed to do...

I will walk the path God placed me on... I will do what God has told me to do... I will show love to all mankind... I will continue to seek God and not man.. I know that God has been faithful to me in the past... I know that He will continue to be faithful to me... God is the lover of my soul... at all times... and in this I will rest...

vulnerable...

I find that the closer I get to God.. the less I really know who I am..

it seems that I have taken life and allowed it to create me into someone other than who God intended me to be... and now...when I desire to be the person God created... I struggle to be that person... God wants our complete dependence on Him.. and so He wants us to be completely open and vulnerable... and our flesh drives us to cover our vulnerability...

like when adam and eve sinned in the garden... immediately they realized they were naked and ran to cover themselves... but this is not what God intended... just as there was no need to cover ourselves in the first man and woman... God is our cover and there is no need to cover ourselves now...

yet I struggle to not run back and hide under some type of cover... mine tends to be hard heartedness and confidence in self... we all have our own cover... this is just the one I created... it is comfortable and warm and safe... or so we think...

how could what we create on our own be anywhere near what God has created for us? it is time for us to open ourselves up to vulnerability and allow God alone to be our cover... that is when we are trusting God and completely relying upon Him...

God is faithful... He is trustworthy... He is a cover for each one of us...