Suffering...

A white tiger who had suffered at the hands of man but is now in a sanctuary to protect and save his life 

3- 11- 09

Jer. 29:11 “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.”

Suffering...

Why does God allow so much suffering? I totally feel like I’m on a boat drifting on the water that is full of sulphur, the product of an erupted volcano, and the tiny boat is taking on the sulphuric acid water and is slowly disintegrating.

The NIV puts the Jeremiah scripture like this:
Jeremiah 29:11, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the LORD. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’” (NLT)

They changed the words to say plans for you; good not disaster. A future and a HOPE! I’ll take the words any way they come these days because, in my suffering, I cling to His every word, because I know nothing else. 

The other day my hubby woke with a stiff neck also. Now we both have sore necks and we attribute it to the new mattress. We lived so long sleeping on the fifteen-year-old mattress our bodies grew accustomed to the dips and curves, with the new firm mattress, we need to reacquaint our bodies form to the mattress and it's taking its time getting to know us. 

I told my hubby that our bodies are getting older and these pains come with age and it’s been pointed out to me more than twice in just two weeks, ‘getting older is no fun’ from the elders of the world. Since the older generation has planted that seed in my mind, I now feel as if it is my aging body. Time is degenerating my skin, my insides, my everything and it’s only a matter of time before it totally disintegrates. Thanks, elders, here I just thought I had an illness at my young age.

It seems around every corner people are negatively dumping their thoughts on me. It’s as if they’re saying I don’t have enough with my suffering let me dump some more on you. From my mother, “You’re HOW much older than Steven? You better take good care of him, there are plenty of ‘young’ girls out there.” To my mother-in-law stating, ‘this getting old stuff isn’t much fun’. Out of context, it looks harsh but they didn’t know how bad I’ve been, only the people who REALLY care and KNOW me, know! Thank you to my dear friends.

I have done so much suffering in my life I thought I’d have a spell of no suffering but then I laugh, no suffering, that is funny as all get out. Just as I said yesterday that God loves us all the same, uniquely, individually but the same. He knows our suffering and is more than willing to give us comfort during these trying times. I cry out, ‘Lord, give me comfort. Comfort in life and comfort in death.’ Eggshells scattered all around, tread lightly.

I’m sure there are many of you out there saying, “Suffering? You don’t KNOW suffering like *I* know suffering.” I think each and every one of us sees our suffering as worse than the others, yet you need to understand, our suffering is unique to us as individuals. He has a different plan so each person has a different type of suffering. Your suffering is no harder than mine, nor mine yours; suffering is suffering plain and simple! Like a fine garden, some just need a little more tending. I’m in the ‘overly brown garden needing lots of tending’ stage. 

I would like to let my dear friend, who for the past year has sent me funds monthly! Yes, monthly, to ease my burden of paying for supplements and anything I need to ease this pain I suffer with daily. They need to know how GRATEFUL I am because I don’t believe I thank him/her enough. I will keep my benefactor private for now because the Lord knows and that is good enough for all of us. Help is vital to me and so much appreciated, I’m honored that God chose this person to help me. My love to you!

This week I purchased (waiting for it to arrive) a reasonably priced neck traction device that chiropractors recommend for stiff necks and such. Since I can’t afford a chiropractor and gave up taking Naproxen for my pains, this device will aid in the pains in my neck! There has to be relief for me somewhere and maybe this will be the device I need to find a little reprieve, a little comfort. Just letting my dear friend know, the funds are going to assisting me in staying alive! Take that to heart, you’re doing great, my friend! This also relieves a lot of stress from my hubby who has to pay for medical insurance for me, organic food, and anything else this newly high-maintenance gal might need.

While suffering is part of the plan I often think of those that never suffer and have a ‘looks can be deceiving’ life! I honestly don’t think they are not suffering, I just think they have a veil so no one sees their distress. I also think we all suffer and share differently. They might hide their pain out of shame or because they don’t want to be that person that always laments and whines about everything from a stubbed toe to a broken nail. While I usually don’t share my minor discomforts, here lately it’s all I have to offer, muscling through the torment daily with a Popeye of a God who is carrying all of my heavy burdens, and He never complains! *big old smile*

My days are being spent away from the negative dumping ground of social media. Facebook is taking too much of a toll on me and I know my friends understand my time away or they wouldn’t call themselves friends now, would they? I’m told that I’m like a bad penny, I’ll show my face again, but now, the time just isn’t right. When it is, you bet your bottom dollar I’ll come back raring to make you all smile! It’s what I do best.

Spring will be arriving soon, as will my New Year, and my days of isolation may be coming to an end, I pray. I’m assured of that with the warming of the afternoons, the Robins hanging around the brownish/green lawn, and the longer days. I’m not adding sunshiny days because they are still sporadic, soon though, soon! My suffering might have an expected end in sight, one of HOPE! 

May God be with you all! 

Pss. 33:22 “Let thy mercy, O LORD, be upon us, according as we hope in thee.”

Jesus suffered more than us all! 

My pain is nothing!

The Beginning of the End

Matt. 24:10-11 “And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.”

The Beginning of the End

I don’t normally go off topic but Monday I did an NFL post about the entire franchise smelling like a manure farm. Today I’m not going too off topic but I rarely, meaning never, do a political post and this is more about the end being so close I can taste the bitterness swirling in my mouth and people need HOPE.

I’ve noticed that people who were all in and about the political arena, meaning friends, that sit back and use the social media as a political platform to state their views, have all but been silenced by the lack of someone running that they can actually get behind.

Now that it has been narrowed down to two people, no one wants to put their voice behind them for fear of being laughed and scoffed at in the social arena. Some are standing by their party; some are sitting quietly in the background picking on the other party, I guess so that they appear involved but from afar.

The entire fiasco reeks of the beginning of the end. Some will say the end has been happening for years now, some will state facts (chuckles) that they KNOW the end is here, where me, I’m going on my instincts and what they are telling me and it doesn’t feel right, I can tell you that.

A few years ago there was talk of Martial Law. I’m not a political person so I laugh at the mere mention but I do not laugh when all the scoffers are laughing at the Bible and calling it a book of fairy tales. 

I find it quite amusing that the non-believer can call it a book of fairy tales when I have never in my life read a book that has been so accurate in foretelling the future than the Holy Bible. There was 400 years of time that passed between the book of Malachi and the beginning of Matthew. Upon reading this (same link as above) you can see the ‘so-called fairy tale’ take on more shape and meaning.

Prophecy has been around for centuries and while some don’t want to believe that we’re living in the end times all they would have to do is read the Bible to see what prophecy says about the end times. While I’m not a prophet nor claim to be, I’m a writer and as such I dig and dig as I research a project to bring you the most informative (information I’ve gotten) information I find, and most of it agrees with my views. Granted, your truth and research might find something completely different.

Age of the Earth: 

Did you read the link – Temple Mount? I read the entire thing and this paragraph stuck out to me as what I am trying to convey here. 

“It is amazing how God utilizes history to work out his purposes. Though we are living in the days that might be termed "the silence of God," when for almost 2,000 years there has been no inspired voice from God, we must look back -- even as they did during those 400 silent years -- upon the inspired record and realize that God has already said all that needs to be said, through the Old and New Testaments. God's purposes have not ended, for sure. He is working them out as fully now as he did in those days. Just as the world had come to a place of hopelessness then, and the One who would fulfill all their hopes came into their midst, so the world again is facing a time when despair is spreading widely across the earth. Hopelessness is rampant everywhere and in this time God is moving to bring to fulfillment all the prophetic words concerning the coming of his Son again into the world to establish his kingdom. How long? How close? Who knows? But what God has done in history, he will do again as we approach the end of "the silence of God."”
~ Ray C. Stedman

We are at the most hopeless point in U.S. history. There has never been an election where BOTH parties were so unfit for the job they wish to undertake. Are we living in the Beginning of the End? Judge for yourself. In my opinion, no choice you make this election year is the right choice. God has purposed it this way and your vote is… the Beginning of the End.

May God be with you all!

2 Cor. 6:2 KJV  “(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)”

2 Cor. 6:2 NIV For he says,“In the time of my favor I heard you,

    and in the day of salvation I helped you.”

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.

Invisiible

This is a self-portrait

(sarcasm)

Invisible

Ephesians 4:25 ESV “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”

Sometimes you can feel totally invisible standing amid the crowd but when you look around, maybe they are enjoying all the beauty out in the world that they don’t see you standing right in their face.

From a June 3rd, 2014 post of mine on facebook – “A Grackle Tale – Sure they’re just annoying blackbirds but I love all birds and animals and communicate with them in some weird ways. Yesterday when one seemed distressed, I immediately went out to see what was wrong. She was looking down in the garden and just being so noisy; I assumed her baby fell from a nest or something. But she was just cawing and cawing and not going down to the garden where she had her eyes fixated on.
Many of her Grackle friends had joined her in a show of support but she was the only one cawing out. They sat in the tree in numbers watching her and ready to respond.
I noticed an empty black flowerpot had been blown into a divot in the garden and just lay there, unable to get out of the hole. 
I looked at her she at me and I said, “What, is this what you’re so excited about?” All the birds stirred as I moved toward the pot; her hanging close by watching me intently cawing and cawing. 
I picked up the pot, set it away on the nearby table so she could see it. The cawing stopped…she and her friends flew away. She thought the black pot was an injured grackle!
Moral of the story? When one person suspects their friend is in trouble, she makes a loud noise so her surrounding friends can support her and help if any danger ensues. Danger gone, the birds (friends) fly away, relieved.
Surround yourself with friends and prayer – all danger and fear will subside.”

There is another moral to the story but not as good as the first one. Sometimes when a friend puts a call out for help, many turn a blind eye and ignore. Humans are not like birds, I do believe we’re the lesser of the species. I’ve never met an animal with an ego as big as humans. Sure this makes people keep their control of not wanting to help but it is also an insult to the injured party.

It’s a harsh reality when you’re invisible. Sometimes I cause my own invisibility because people don’t like what I write. I hit a guilt nerve that resonates through people. Their ego has them thinking I am talking about them in specific when what I write is off the top of my head and is aimed at NO ONE. 

But you see, it is okay because the Lord never said it would be easy, or that you’d be liked for loving Him, no this road isn’t full of ‘everyone likes me’. This road is full of people who have the ‘run-and-flee’ mechanism built into them because what I say is holding a hidden truth that sends people into a guilt phase.

I’m not qualified to preach and preachiness is a big turn off for me. Some of my posts might come off as me being preachy but let me tell you, I speak from my heart, not from a scholarly know-it-all level. Usually, when I post, it comes from something I’m experiencing and I seek out answers as I write and more often than not, my only solace is the words in the bible.

Rom. 3: 9 “What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;
[10] As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
[11] There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
[12] They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
[13] Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
[14] Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
[15] Their feet are swift to shed blood:
[16] Destruction and misery are in their ways:
[17] And the way of peace have they not known:
[18] There is no fear of God before their eyes.
[19] Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
[20] Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
[21] But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
[22] Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:”

That’s it my fellow man, we are all sinners! I throw my sin out there in the open for all of the world to read while many choose to hide behind their sin, so they can commit the sin over and over again and feel no guilt. 

1 Corinthians 6:20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

This is what I try and offer to people. To glorify God. It hurts me to see so many who claim to love God but do nothing to glorify Him. This is all I live for, to aid the weak birds fluttering around. I try to offer my assistance to help them stand and walk on their own. I fear my invisibility cloak will not allow those who NEED the help, to see me offering an extended hand. 

1 John 4:20 “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”

May God bless each and every person reading this.

Do We Know the Future?

Luke 21: 21: 9 “But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by.”

Sunday’s sermon touched on the false prophet who claims to know when the end of the world was near. We hear it all the time that these are the end times but keep in mind that during Jesus’ time the apostles and people all thought that they too were living in the end times. Every generation and false prophet claims that they hold the truth and know when the end times will be.

Matt. 24: 36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

I realized many years ago that focusing on these false prophecies were only doing more harm than good. It kept me from focusing on God and by allowing myself to be led into this false prophecy satan is achieving his goal and that goal is: “The more lies I feed them, the more they believe what I’m saying and not listening to the truth that God has shown them.”

Let me ask, if you knew they day and hour that you were going to die, would you do anything different? Of course you would! But knowing that the Lord has a set day and time for the day of earth to end, you do nothing?

When a blizzard is said to be coming, people rush out and stock up on food, snacks and toiletries preparing to be hunkered down for days on end. Then the day arrives and not even a flurry lands on the grass, making you realize you prepared for nothing. 

That is exactly what false prophecy is, it gets you thinking the end is near and you prepare for it in fear and then it doesn’t come to fruition. Your fears were based on lies. Yes we can rest assured that God does not lie or instill fear in us, and the end WILL happen and we should only be preparing for our entry into heaven, not wandering about looking to see if the end is upon us so that YOU know (or think you know) when the end will come. God will let those who see, see and those that hear, hear.

There’s a terrorist group that is doing this same thing, instilling fear in people. I’m not going to name them because of course that showers more attention on them and I see that they get enough attention so I’ll let you think about it for a moment. God does not instill fear or terror and anyone who does instill fear is nothing more than a cowardly bully.

Think about it, satan instills fear. We fear death, we fear not measuring up, we fear losing our job and we fear everything and nothing. To live in fear of impending terror you give power to fear.  I hear people cursing God for creating them as worthless to society. I hear people cry in desperation for some kind of anything to help them get through trouble but note, they WON’T give power over to God. They would much rather allow satan run their lives into the pits of hell than admit they NEED God to reign in their life.

I know quite a few atheist (and no, it isn’t you because you’re reading me for the inspiration you seek) an atheist doesn’t have time for inspiration, I assume they only have time for living in fear. I’m not here to judge them because if they are happy, truly happy living that way, well more power to them.

I wonder why so many people are obsessed with when the end will happen. You know what I say? Live every day like it was the last day on earth and you won’t have to live in fear or worry when the end will come.

One of the things that I feel at peace with is that my dad didn’t fear death. When he went into the hospital he knew he wasn’t going to go back home. As much fighting to live the man did, he didn’t fear death even on his last day. With one of his last breaths he told my mother he loved her and I know he was at peace in going to his heavenly home.

No one can predict the future. Not even Jesus knew when the end was going to happen so listening to a minister say HE knows when the end is, you are just feeding his ego of lies. No one knows!!! When it ends, we should all be prepared, not in a panic state, not in a fearful state but in a peaceful state.

With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching and many people traveling the highways, the railroads and the skies, instead of going in fear of what MIGHT happen, go in love and be thankful for a family to go home to on the holiday. Be grateful for the time spent on this earth and cherish every last second because one never knows, it might be your last.

Read Matthew 24

Matt. 24:36 “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”