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Whose Are We?

We are who owns us. We derive our nature and uniqueness, our very selfhood, from our owner. Furthermore, we willingly join ourselves to God in Christ. Being forced to go to church, or feeling under coercion, ordered to be who we are, is like telling a bee it must gather pollen and fly to the hive. If it were unnatural to be who we are, the Christian life would be alien, foreign and against our will. But we belong to God.

All Mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. John 17:10

Through His gracious generosity, in Christ Jesus, God has adopted us. We are not natural born, but supernaturally born children, through the cross and resurrection of Jesus; He owns us. That’s the reality. Embracing any other owners, or powers is like swimming upstream or committing spiritual suicide. As long as we remember that we belong only to God, and continue to assemble to worship Him and do the work He has given us to do, we will be who we really are and do what we truly should do.

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Letting God

“Letting God” testifies to the release of tension, the surrender to trust, and being at ease instead of in “dis-ease.” What is offered in each day’s meditation is relaxation and peace in Christ. You will be called to turn over control of your steering wheel. You will be urged to relax your power and control and open your door to the priceless gift of serenity in our Lord and Savior. You will be presented with scripture, stories, short essays, and even humor as ways to let God take over.

I have learned in forty years of experience with alcoholics and other addicts, that living the Gospel truth AND Twelve-step recovery creates a hallowed and holy life. This holiness is not sainthood but a serene state of being, achieved as cease our striving, halt our stressful efforts, and fall into the arms of our Higher Power, Jesus Christ.

“Letting God” is the key to most all experiences of sacredness and spirituality. The surrender to the divine within and without, the acknowledgment of the humanity of the Holy and the holiness of the human ls to “Let go and let God.” As we allow God to be God, without trying to fix or manipulate his reality in heaven or earth, we welcome his healing love. We let love flow. We use no force, no struggle, no strain, no competition, no trying harder, no willpower. We admit and accept our weakness and God’s strength. If we do not make this unconditional surrender to God, our own spirituality will lie dormant and lifeless. Our selfish will becomes our god, and we run rampant toward our own self-destruction, screaming to the end, “I can do it myself!”

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A Prayer for the New Year (by Matthew Henry)

“My times are in Your hand!” Psalm 31:15

Firmly believing that my times are in God’s hand, I here submit myself and all my affairs for the ensuing year, to the wise and gracious disposal of God’s divine providence. Whether God appoints for me…

    health or sickness,
    peace or trouble,
    comforts or crosses,
    life or death–

may His holy will be done!

All my time, strength, and service, I devote to the honor of the Lord Jesus–and even my common actions. It is my earnest expectation, hope, and desire, my constant aim and endeavor–that Jesus Christ may be magnified in me.

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The Under-Discussed Damage of Spiritual Abuse (Part 2)

This is a two part article. See: Part One

Therefore, concerning what is being asked of or expected from us, which approach are we seeing from the particular leadership in question?

This?

Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity. Titus 2:7

Or this?

And many will follow after their sensuality, through whom the way of the truth will be maligned. 2 Peter 2:2

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Relationships & Codependency

If you are having problems in a relationship, you may want to consider and ask yourself these questions:

    1. Does this person respect me?

    2. Is this a person I can really communicate with?

    3. Do we resolve conflicts well?

    4. Do we both compromise in a healthy give and take?

    5. Do we both take responsibility for the relationship’s successes and problems?

    6. Is there room for me to grow and change in this relationship?

    7. Am I able to reach my own goals within this relationship?

    8. Can I be honest and share my true feelings?

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A Time Comes in Your Life When You Finally “Get It”

A time comes in your life when you finally get it. When in the midst of all your fears and insanity you stop dead your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out ENOUGH! Enough fighting and crying or struggling to hold on. And, like a child quieting down after a blind tantrum, your sobs begin to subside, you shutter once or twice, you blink back your tears and through a mantle of wet lashes you begin to look at the world through new eyes.

This is your awakening.

You realize that it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change, or for, happiness, safety and security to come galloping over the next horizon. You come to terms with the fact she is not Cinderella and you are not Prince charming , and that in the real world there aren’t always fairy tale endings or beginnings for that matter, and;

That any guarantee of “happily ever after” must begin with you. And in the process, a sense of serenity is born of acceptance.

You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect, and that not everyone will always love,

Appreciate or approve of who or what you are and that’s OK. They are entitled to their own Views and opinions).

And you learn the importance of loving and championing yourself, and …sense of newly found confidence is born — of “self-approval.”

You stop complaining and blaming other people for the things they did to you (or didn’t do for you) – And you learn that the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected.

You learn that people don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say, and that

Not everyone will always be there for you, and that it’s not always about you. So, you

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Marriage: Change of Attitude = Change of Heart

How can we concentrate more on the blessings of our marriage? How can we discover the goodness in the person we married? By focusing on what brings contentment and happiness. For instance, just a simple switch in attitude can make a person have more compassion for the person they married. We have to stop believing in the lies we hear.

The world likes to feed gullible people things that aren’t true. Some people are susceptible to these untruths because they want to believe them. I wanted to believe them and I did believe them. We want answers to our marriage problems and we’ll practically listen to anyone who has something to say that we want to hear. Anything that will provide the validation we need for our own rotten actions. Over time, believing in the lies of the world builds an unhealthy attitude in us. I receive emails from women who actually believe that their husband committed adultery because of something they did or didn’t do. This is a lie generated from the world. It is incorrect.

Unhealthy attitudes keep us stuck and trapped in our sins. Our sins are whatever we live for and whatever is controlling us. Unhealthy attitudes steer us away from God’s love and into the follies and sinfulness of the world. But if we are following Jesus than we are truly free from the lies of the world. God’s children do not search for their answers from the world. That is what those who have no understanding do. They believe in the lies of the world and that is why they are often referred to as blind. Wisdom comes from God because God is wisdom.

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What Should We Get Out of Prayer?

There came into my experience a deeper conception of God. He was” more ready to hear than we to pray.” “We love him because he first loved us.” God was taking the initiative in communion. He had sent Jesus into the world to make that known to us. What was wanted on our part really was receptivity, rather than effort.

When I surrendered my life to His will, prayer began to be a new thing: not a way to change His will, but a way to find it. It did away with much of the difficulty of the human persuasion of God, and became largely God’s persuasion of us. It was His will which was paramount and mattered, not ours.

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The Serenity Prayer: A Weeble Lesson

While sifting through my childhood toys, I happened upon some Weebles.

What are they – and what do they do?

“…an egg-shaped Weeble causes a weight located at the bottom-center to be lifted off the ground. Once released, gravitational force brings the Weeble back into an upright position… The popular catchphrase, ‘Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.’ was used in advertising during their rise in popularity…” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeble

As I was reunited with these toys, I remembered how, in my playtime, I often tried to put my Weebles to bed, lying them on their sides, only to watch them quickly spring to their vertical stance again. There was no keeping these suckers down.

“Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.”

You better believe it.

Therefore, reacquainting myself with them in my adult life, I now view them through the recovery/struggle context and the famous Serenity Prayer:

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Exposing the Adultery Pandemic

What is a pandemic? According to Merriam Webster’s online dictionary, a pandemic is an “outbreak” occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population. I would consider adultery to be of pandemic proportions considering the high rate of marital suffering, divorce, sickness and disease among a high proportion of the world. What do you think? Let’s take a closer look and examine this issue.

If you knew of a dangerous virus going around in the city where you lived that caused fever, chills, nausea, severe diarrhea, and vomiting, and death to those with a weak immune system, you would probably stay as far away from the city as possible? At the least, you would wear a hospital mask over your face to avoid the harmful germs, right?

Adultery is like a virus but much worse. It spreads from person to person like a virus and if a person is not spiritually well, it will entangle them within its insidious hold and cause much spiritual and mental anguish, not to mention, in many cases, physical illness, deterioration, and death.

As with any pandemic that we learn about we always go out of our way to avoid the offender, lest we too become sick. Viruses become a pandemic only because people do not take the needed precautions in the beginning of its destruction. Sometimes it is because of filthy conditions or lack of knowledge but once we figure out the cause we avoid it like the plague, no pun intended.

Do we avoid sex outside of marriage? Why not?

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