Which Voice Do You Hear?

The face in the clouds

Acts 14:10 "Said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked."

Which do you hear?

Two voices, one of positive encouragement the other a put down, both on the same exact subject. An example? 
"Does my hair look okay?"
"It looks great."

"I think it looks like it got caught in a blender on high speed!"

When you hear (read) both, which do you hear that you'll carry with you? Do you hear how great your hair looks and you carry that positive affirmation through your day? More times than not you hear the negative comment and go on with your day with a little chip hanging on your shoulder ready to pounce on anyone that looks at you the wrong way.

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” John 10:27 (NIV)

I love this from Bible Gateway: "Jesus doesn’t tell us if we dig deep enough or study long enough or go to church often enough we’ll be able to uncover the hidden mystery to hearing His voice. Instead, Jesus lists only one prerequisite to hearing His voice: Be one of His sheep." - Katy McCown

You see, my point is, I listen to God but there are people out there muffling His words for me. I sit in the quiet of the morning, meditating on His word and His voice, listening in the still small place that He and I share in the spiritual flow of the cosmos, my soul. When I come out of this place, some negatively call it 'from under my rock', I see it as time WITH my ROCK of salvation! The negative voice hurts and puts a dent in my space but I truly try so hard not to carry it around in my day. It's kind of hard when the clamoring comes beating on your door seeking what it is you have hiding there.

It's ironic that I listen and hear his voice. I try and tell people that they too can listen and hear but I assume they have discord hammering at their door with other priorities that keep their focus away from hearing Christ in them. Yesterday, I received an email noting the distractions WE ALL have knocking on our door keeping us away from hearing HIS voice and listening to another voice that pulls and tugs at us and we often aren't even aware.

I happily live under my rock for many reasons, one of those reasons is to keep the distractions from trying to pull me into the deep end of the pool and drowning me. The other reason is that it is a cool solid place to dwell when needing a rock to lean on that actually listens and HEARS what I'm whispering. I can scream and shout outside of the rock and no one hears, and I'm okay with that too. After all, Jesus has been gently nudging people for centuries and the people smothered Him with fires and flames so they didn't HAVE to hear him.

When I was first diagnosed, the doctors circled around me like a school of sharks. They in no way offered me anything remotely helpful. This conservative state wants you to swim WITH the sharks or be eaten alive BY the sharks, you are not allowed an in-between spot on the spectrum. I am neither liberal or conservative, so basically, in a nation that DEMANDS you to choose a side or be burned at the stake, I'm screwed! I go to the doctor, they offer me drugs. I tell them my stance, they scoff and wave their hands as if blowing me off. They don't, I repeat, they DO NOT offer anything alternative! I need to cross state lines for that, and since I don't see that in my cards anywhere down the line, I stand firm with Christ and where He and He alone will lead me. HE is my safety net, my Rock! 

I CANNOT afford a chiropractor or an acupuncturist, I cannot do yoga because of my arthritis. I cannot turn to a doctor because all they spew at me is, "You need chemo chemo chemo. You don't need a chiropractor, you need chemo!" or "Here, have some drugs for your pain." That right there is the sharks I won't swim with. You too can agree or disagree with me, it is your right. I thank you all for caring endlessly for me and wanting to help. I sincerely love you all to the moon and back! 

I think I need to go under my rock for a bit and enjoy what is left of summer. Which voice is it that you hear? I hear God telling me over and over, "I GOT THIS! I GOT THIS!" All my praise and Glory goes to HIM! 

This is basically how I feel when not under my rock.

"And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!
That's one thing he hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! " The Grinch, Dr. Seuss

Godspeed friends, in all that you do, be BLESSED!

2 Cor. 1:3 "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;"

A closer look at The Face in the Clouds

My Inner Strength

2 Sam. 22:33 “God is my strength and power: and he maketh my way perfect.”

My Inner Strength

I remember as a child my sister would always tell my mother, “Let Joni do it, she’s the strong one.” Even now, with this diagnosis, my sister told her daughter, “Joni will beat this, she’s the strong one.” This is the reason I’ve yet to tell my mother anything about this, she’s not the strong one. 

I always felt like my older sister looked up to me because she sees me as the strong one. She always turned to me whenever she had any problems whether physically, emotionally, spiritually, or psychologically. I’m the baby and my family always looked up to ME because I was deemed the strong one, the one looked to in a time of need, the one once depended upon.

That’s a lot of weight for the baby of a family of eight, including my mother and father. I was the one full of courage; the thread that kept the blanket together and when I left the family unraveled one string at a time. They more than likely wouldn’t admit to the downfall of the family to my leaving them but honestly, if they look closely they’d see the total demise coincide with my leaving home.

Job 4:4 “Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees.”

I wonder now if I wasn’t led away from home and my family to build up that inner vitality because God knew I would need all my strength for right now, this place and at this time! When God told me to leave all of my possessions behind I did, going to Texas with the clothes on my back and some toys and clothes for my son. 

Looking back now I see God’s handiwork as He molded and shaped each instance to bring about an inner tenacity that I would need for this exact time in my life. He was building a solid palace and what I left behind was a shell of a straw hut. My family had drained me and I needed this stability to carry me through all that I’m enduring now.

Pss. 40:2 “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”

When I was diagnosed I could have crumbled, fell to my knees and allowed the doctors to carry me away in handcuffs and lead me to my death. Instead, I found this amazing inner muscle to stand firm, rise and announce that I was going to heal with the Lord’s handiwork. Was I crazy? What was I thinking? Where on earth did I find the willpower to fight what I deem the strong arm of the law, the doctors? 

Let me tell you, when I was a child I had to fight off sexual predators on a daily basis. I had to fight with superhuman brawniness and stand up to my parents for my faith when they were of a completely opposite religion. When I lost my first child many wanted me to fall; when the Lord and I overcame drug addiction and alcoholism they wanted me to buckle. Depression? Fought and won! I was supposed to do everything the way they were normally done with doctors, medication and follow along in life on a leash like a nice little puppy.

2 Sam. 22:40 “For thou hast girded me with strength to battle: them that rose up against me hast thou subdued under me.”

Instead, I busted through the ashes, I stood with the Rock of my Salvation after fifty years of struggling against what the world wanted me to be, normal. I was in no way normal and I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to make such a statement. Nothing about God or Jesus is normal; nothing about the Omniscient Lord is normal, and I’m honored to not be normal with Him!

So when people look at me and ask where I find the ironclad strength to go on, I tell them, God. Where and how do I stand against what is ‘expected’ of me, God. God has NEVER put a leash around my neck to lead me astray. He’s never fed me lies so that I looked good to the people. He has made me abnormal for all the world to look at, laugh and scoff, and tempt me with lies and feed me the poisons of a system gone wrong.

You might ask why would a loving God do that to a person? So you can SEE Him, all his Healing Power, all His Glory, and all of His Saving grace. He didn’t whip me into submission; I followed Him willingly on my own because I found an inner strength and serene peace there, in His arms. I could have bailed at any time for an easier life but I chose the hard road because the hard road was going to make me STRONG and THIS is where I find my Inner Strength! 
All praise and Glory to God! 

1 Chron. 29:12 “Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all.”

Dominion

Eph. 6:12-18 -

[12] For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
[13] Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
[14] Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
[15] And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
[16] Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
[17] And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
[18] Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;
[19] And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,
[20] For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

We wrestle against rulers of this world through lies, deceit, commercialism, buying into the falsity that is fed us by the ladle-full.

What hand do you have in participating in this deception of innocent souls? Taking on the whole armor of God is not telling you to wear God when He’s convenient and fits into your lifestyle.

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, is not a casual affirmation, it is a deep down spirit-filled prayer that ripples through your body and becomes a part of who you are as you wrestle with the evils of this world.

The wrestling match is on – good or bad, dark or light, up or down. Free will allows us to choose – there is no place for lukewarm, indecision or maybe.

Since living in the safety of the armor means oneness with Jesus, we can expect to share His struggles as well as His peace. Remember, God offers us His victory in the midst of trouble -- not the absence of pain. So "do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ..." (1 Peter 4:12-13) ~ Eternal Crossroads

Begin your day as a journey with Christ knowing full well you are safe in His hands. Wrestle with the enemy to keep yourself on the straight and narrow road you must travel.

 
God be with you all.

Lent: Day Thirty-five ~ Salvation

Joshua 24:15 (NIV) "But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."

Salvation

I have good news for you, people. The past couple of weeks I’ve written about the renewal of your spirit, I talked about serving the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, praise and worship of the Lord and so many other richly rewarding posts, but today I bring great news, Salvation! It is free, not earned, nor bought or achieved by any works that your physical body can do, it is FREE, given with the blood of the cross.

I may come off a little crass in saying serve, praise, worship and be a part of a church. I think I make it sound like that’s your only way into heaven. It is not so, all these posts are for the committed Christian who understands what it means to serve our great and mighty God. We don’t serve because it will BRING us closer to God; we serve because it helps us FEEL closer to God.

Jesus calls us to be more than a mere Christian in word. If you call yourself a Christian you need to know what it means to be Christlike ie. a Christian. But if you’re a non-believer and searching for the peace within your body and feel that there is a higher power governing you, you need to meet my friend Jesus Christ.

I’ve have a few friends who say they won’t serve such a cruel God, who maims and kills and destroys but they see all His blessed goodness and would rather call the goodness by another name. Can I ask you something? When you were a kid and you defied your mother and she disciplined you, did you hate her? Did you turn away from her? Stop loving her? No, not often.

God is like that. When we sin, sure He disciplines us but by His saving grace we are forgiven. That is not to say that once you become a Christian you carry on like nothing has happened spiritually to you. You don’t drink booze, lay around reading and believing, sin and keep on sinning some more because God will save you.

I know a few people who will believe in God and all the testimony in the Old Testament but won’t believe Jesus is the Son of God. They’ll believe God parted the sea, they’ll believe he wiped out humans on the earth and saved the animals via Noah, they’ll believe a man resided in the belly of a whale, but they won’t believe in the Immaculate Conception?

“Since no man is excluded from calling upon God the gate of salvation is open to all. There is nothing else to hinder us from entering, but our own unbelief.” ~ John Calvin

To be Christian, you believe that the blood of Christ was shed for you, a sinner among men. You’re not going to become a Christian just because it is a phase you’re going through. You’re going to become a Christian because you feel empty inside; you feel like something is missing and you sense that there IS a power out there that can fill the emptiness. Salvation! You become saved by grace from carnal sin by the hanging on the cross of God’s Son.

Christians are called to serve the Lord. We feel a need to do good, help others, attend church, praise and worship; it is part of our spiritual Christian growth. But to others who don’t know Him who want to know Him, salvation is yours for the asking and receiving. God extends His hand out to you, sends a comforter by way of the Holy Spirit, and washes you in the Blood of Christ so you too feel changed spiritually.

When this happens to you, you no longer hang onto just reading and believing. You want to take ACTION, not because it brings you closer to heaven, or brings you closer to God, but because you can sense the power of God in you and this new spiritual growth calls out to you and propels you into action. You crave being closer to God! All the reading and believing in the world will not bring you into a closer relationship with God, action FOR and TOWARDS God, will.

Through salvation, the will of God becomes evident. You won’t miraculously stop sinning, but you have a clean slate FROM your sin to begin anew. You will STRIVE to be Christ-like meaning you recognize any and all of your sin and bring it to Jesus. Only He can wash away the unclean sin.

Yes, we are all sinners and fall short of the Glory of God but salvation is the saving grace, through Jesus Christ. Read and believe this, you CAN taste heaven and see what awaits you. You CAN drink from the cup of salvation and walk eternally with Christ himself. You can take this to the heavenly bank and cash it; God awaits YOU!

“If you have to be reasoned into Christianity, some wise fellow can reason you out of it! If you come to Christ by a flash of the Holy Spirit so that by intuition you know that you are God’s child, you know it by the text but you also know it by the inner light, the inner illumination of the Spirit, and no one can ever reason you out of it.” A.W. Tozer

A New Year ~ 2014

Pss. 65: 11 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.

A New Year ~ 2014

My eyes shall see tomorrow

For today has gone away

A year that I put in the past

A new one’s come my way.

While others all celebrate

In partying lights galore

I’ll be home in quietness

Your peace for me I adore.

My eyes shall see tomorrow

I’ll face a brand new day.

With sunshine and happiness

That can never go away.

I’ll see the Light forthcoming

And it will shine from me.

Through works and salvation

I taste true purity.

Jer. 29:11-13 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

Good Friday~ A time for CHANGE

John 3: 16 For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.
***

Change what?

Uh oh, here I go again, talking about change. Is all of this really necessary? I have to say, yes it is. Life is way too short to never change.

Do you know what today is? Today is what is called Good Friday. Some of you are believers some are not, that is okay. I’m a believer. If you haven’t figured that out by now, then you haven’t really been reading my blog. *wink*

There’s a point to be made here, and I’m getting to it.

Today is the day that we remember Jesus, the man who went before Pontius Pilate, not guilty of a single thing, and was battered and beaten, hung on a cross and left to die. What? He was the supposed King of Kings, the Messiah, the man who claimed to be ONE with God, His son, the Savior. Why was He left to hang up there and die?

Luke 23: 21 But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him.[34] Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.[46] And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.

Let me just say, had Jesus been whisked off that cross by the hands of God himself, we would still be here, not believing in anything other than man. How sad is that? Man did not create man, the earth, the stars innumerable, nor did science. God did. He had a plan from the very first breath, and man, man destroyed every step forward. So we needed salvation, redemption, grace. By the changes brought on by the Death on the Cross, we were granted a chance, a hope, a living breathing reason to change!

Jesus fulfilled the prophecy in the Old Testament. I hear a lot of people believe in the Old Testament, but are not sure whether to accept the New Testament. The two testaments walk hand in hand.Science does not fulfill, man does not fulfill, only did Jesus and all of His works fulfill the prophecy in the Old Testament.

God did not leave Jesus hanging on the cross to die. He watched as man denied His Son. He watched as man laughed and scoffed. He wrinkled His brow as man poked and prodded the wounds to make sure that this blasphemer was really dead.

There were few who remained true to Jesus, and on the Resurrection, He shone Himself to be the true LIVING BREATHING God! Prophecy fulfilled, the chance for hope ignited, the love for man breathed into our nostrils once again.

And still, as years pass, man turns his back on truth, on change, on life, for the love of false idols, materials, lies and deceit.

This is what this week has been to me. Remembering who died for ME! The man who shed blood for my sins; the God who loved me enough, and found me worthy enough to take the time and come here for me, for you, for salvation.

Change...all for the WORLD to take notice. Do you?

***

John 3: 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
[18] He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
[19] And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
[20] For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
[21] But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

Salvation

Romans 15:15 Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the more boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the grace that is given to me of God,

I like to think myself intuitive with a 95% positive rate. So when I dreamed last night that today’s blog would be about Salvation, I took the cosmos up on its request.


When I look up the word salvation here is what I get:
salvation-
1. the act of saving or protecting from harm, risk, loss, destruction, etc.
2. a source, cause, or means of being saved or protected from harm, risk, etc.
3. Theology: deliverance from the power and penalty of sin; redemption.

I like number three the most, but that is only because I am a Born-again Christian. But when I look at salvation from other religions I find that many believe in salvation, not necessarily the God granting redemption of ones sins, but through suffering, reincarnation or meditation. I won’t sit in judgment of these faiths as I journey through life. I find it quite enlightening that throughout the ages no matter what humans endure, we all seek salvation at one point in our lives.

Through my writing, I am acting as a relay person to protect you from harm, risk, loss or destruction. I don’t want you to risk losing all that you’ve learned so all of my posts are archived. I am a writer helping other writer’s to be the very best they can be whether it is in their writing or in their daily lives that they muddle through.

Sometimes we get confused with where to go, what to be in life, but often times we have a guiding hand in there tweaking us as we go along to choose the right or wrong path. Maybe salvation means being saved. Interesting concept either way.

“His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” Philippians 4:7

Acts 13:26 says, Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent.

II Timothy 3: 15 says, And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

I Peter 1:5 states, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

I’m not pushing my faith on any one of you. You are all your own individual human beings whom lay down their lives for something. As we near the end times, I’m sure you think of mortality more and more. Do you think of being in the ground six feet under with worms crawling over you? Do you think you just go to sleep eternally?

Whatever it is you think, before you leave this earth, your last thought will more than likely be either “I’m afraid to die,” or “I’m saved, Lord take me home.”

Salvation, the deliverance from the penalty of sin.

Okay the weird and quirky lecture is over. May you all listen to your instincts as you go through life, maybe, just maybe, you might hear the word of the one that you worship in your faith.

Praise be...godspeed