Jude 1: ²⁰ But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, ²¹ and await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring you eternal life. In this way, you will keep yourselves safe in God’s love.

²² And you must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. ²³ Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sins that contaminate their lives.

²⁴ Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault. ²⁵ All glory to him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are his before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time! Amen.

 

we talk all the time about the power of our words... last week we talked about giving up negative words... this is a great thing if we are able to achieve it...

 

what about building others up? what if we were to daily find something positive to say about everyone we come in contact with... not only would this brighten our own outlook.. it would also brighten the day of the person we are speaking the good about... and truly... all of us have positive points and negative ones about us...

 

when I was learning to train the dogs.. they teach you to ignore bad behavior and to praise good behavior.. then the dog will try to stay away from the bad behavior because they don't want to be ignored.. but will do the good behavior to get your praise... you are not to point it out.. you are not to yell at them.. just ignore it... imagine if we did this with the people in our lives... because truly... what other people do is between them and God.. yet we keep making it between them and us.. their sin is not our responsibility... them treating you badly is not your responsibility...  it is theirs.. toward God.. allow Him to be the one to make changes in someone else.. and just keep working on your own actions.. as this is what is between you and God..

I am the Lord your God.. you will have no other gods before Me.

 

we all have 'idols' in our lives.. whether they be things or people... something or someone we put before God.. even when it is unintentional... it is hard work to keep God first in our lives... my thought is that it is that way because we tend to gravitate to what we see and feel rather than Who cares most for us...

 

I read in a devotional today that every relationship in our lives will either pass on or pass away, except our relationship with God.. that is the only permanent relationship we will ever have..

 

even if we have a husband for 50 years.. at some point they will leave us and die.. our kids will either die.. or we will die and leave them... but we don't think about that.. do we.. we strive for permanent relationships on this earth.. whether they be man/woman or child.. or even friend... and I believe that all of our relationships are a gift from God.. they can be used as something to learn from whether it is a long relationship or a short one... and we should value them while we have them..

 

but the one 'forever' relationship we can have.. that is the one that we tend to take the most for granted... we are a strange people... while all of our energy should be put into the one great relationship we can have.. still we strive toward the ones that are going to end at one point...

 

Lord help me to always remember that You alone are my forever relationship and to not take You for granted but to ALWAYS give you first place in my life... amen.

Jeremiah 6: ²⁷ “Jeremiah, I have made you a tester of metals, that you may determine the quality of my people. ²⁸ They are the worst kind of rebel, full of slander. They are as hard as bronze and iron, and they lead others into corruption. ²⁹ The bellows fiercely fan the flames to burn out the corruption. But it does not purify them, for the wickedness remains. ³⁰ I will label them ‘Rejected Silver,’ for I, the Lord, am discarding them.”

 

I read this and I think how horrible it would be for God to discard me.. to consider me rejected silver... it would just break my heart... I have fallen so many times... I have done so much wrong.. and yet God did not completely reject me.. He did not discard me.. even though my heart was evil... yet He saw something of Him deep within me...

 

I am so thankful that God did not give up on me.. I will spend the rest of my life praising Him and worshipping Him and serving Him for being so faithful to me when I was not faithful to Him...

Exodus 23: ²⁰ “See, I am sending an angel before you to protect you on your journey and lead you safely to the place I have prepared for you. ²¹ Pay close attention to him, and obey his instructions. Do not rebel against him, for he is my representative, and he will not forgive your rebellion. ²² But if you are careful to obey him, following all my instructions, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will oppose those who oppose you. ²³ For my angel will go before you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites, so you may live there. And I will destroy them completely. ²⁴ You must not worship the gods of these nations or serve them in any way or imitate their evil practices. Instead, you must utterly destroy them and smash their sacred pillars.

 

as I was reading this last night I was thinking.. God sends an angel out before us.. preparing our path and protecting us so that we get where He is wanting us to get... I thought that was an awesome reality...

 

then He states " do not rebel against him for he is My representative and he will not forgive your rebellion".. well I gotta say.. that did not sit too well with me.. I have surely rebelled many a day against the way God would have me to go... so does that mean that I won't make it where I am going? does it mean we never reach our personal promised land?

 

I don't really think it does.. my prayer/hope would be that yea.. maybe God would back up from us for a while... but as we turn back toward Him.. and we always do eventually turn back toward Him if we really knew Him... then the journey begins again.. and this time.. or maybe not for another 100 times.. but eventually.. we do follow obediently... other than unintentionaly mess ups... because at this time.. we really do desire to live God's will out... and then those promises.. that the angel will be with us and fight with us and for us and he will protect us.. then we really have that angel doing all those things...

 

and I am thankful for that... I am thankful that God doesn't give up on us in our rebellion and immaturity... He allows us to learn the hard way that our way is not the right way... and He brings us finally to our promised land... and lives and resides with us...

saturday morning I am on my way to church... as I am at a stop light a man in a lexus (fairly attractive-could have got a date in the past) is looking at me and smiling... and my thought is.. I so understand a street man.. and I don't understand a church man at all...

I have been thinking this for several years... I thought that church men don't make any sense to me because they know Jesus and yet they still treat women badly.. and because they know Jesus we are not expecting it and in my own case was hurt more deeply than a street man ever hurt me because I expected nothing from them.. whereas I expected everything from the church man...

 

this morning driving to work God says the issue is not the man.. it is the church woman... HUH?????

when you were looking at or dating street men.. you knew what it was.. you knew what to expect.. and you knew how to respond... you begin to look at a church man and all of a sudden you think he is no longer a regular man.. you think he is dating with the intention of marriage where you never thought that with a street man.. so recognize a man is a man and act accordingly....

 

WHEW!!! that was so profound to me!!! and so truth!!

we as women imagine that men in church are immediately looking to marry us in 10minutes so we will be up for whatever.. yet when you met a man in the club you weren't up for whatever because you understood what he was really thinking... reality is.. even if the church man ends up marrying you... that was not his first thought.. because he is a man.. he is visual.. and just like any other man he wants sex... it is our job to not prostitute ourselves thinkig every man is thinking about marriage.. make him wait... just like you should have been doing with the street man...

 

thank you Jesus for that amazing lesson in manology!!

I have really been having a rough couple years spiritually...

this last 2-3 years my beliefs have really been tested... there have been times that I haven't been sure if God ever spoke to me... I didn't know if I ever even knew God at all.... was God even here? was I truly alone and all of this relationship with God had just been a fantasy...

this is the truth of what I don't know and what I do know at the end of the battle... well I don't know if the battle is over or not... but I pray it is...

I need to stop being influenced by other voices...
God has been all I have believed I had all my life... so if He hasn't been real.. then I have been disillusioned long term...
whether any of this is truth whether it is not... I would rather die believing in God and Him not have been real.. than to die not believing and He is real...
I love God... all of my life.. all of these years.. He has been the only constant in my life... people come and go.. even family members... even if I were to get married.. that man would eventually die.. or I would.. and one of us would be without one another again... the only One that will never leave me.. even after death... that is God... He is the center of my existence... He is my truth... He is my reality... above all else...

I will continue to try to be more like Christ every day... what I have read and believed for Him to be... that is all there is for me...

Hebrews 6: So let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding. Surely we don’t need to start again with the fundamental importance of repenting from evil deeds and placing our faith in God. ² You don’t need further instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. ³ And so, God willing, we will move forward to further understanding.

⁴ For it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who were once enlightened—those who have experienced the good things of heaven and shared in the Holy Spirit, ⁵ who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come— ⁶ and who then turn away from God. It is impossible to bring such people back to repentance; by rejecting the Son of God, they themselves are nailing him to the cross once again and holding him up to public shame.

 

this is one of the times I am not a fan of paul.. if he wrote this book... it seems they are unsure who wrote this because it was much better writing technique than paul normally is known for... whoever wrote it.. I am not their friend... I have fallen away from God over and over throughout this lifetime.. and while I think it will never happen again... it did.. but I don't believe God gave up on me.. or determined I was worthless or it was impossible to bring me back to repentance... I just got sidetracked by self....

 

I am so thankful that God does not give up on us.... so thankful that He gave me one more chance after the 300,000 I had already messed up on...