So, I feel as if part of the purpose of this blog is to share my own personal faith experiences as a means of helping others believe or reconnect/restart their own faith journeys.  To that end, I think it is important for me to share both of the experiences I had yesterday that I felt were messages, from God, about his love for me.

l want to reiterate what I have said in past posts, that I feel as if every message from God is personal and meant specifically for the person to which it was directed.  That being said, I think that, as Christians, we sometimes have difficulty recognizing when God is speaking to us.  We aren’t “tuned in”.

For the purposes of my own personal faith journey I make a point of listening to KLOVE or a similar station when I am in the car.  I like hearing songs that reflect how I feel about God and the love of Jesus, and I also like the positive feeling I get from listening to positive radio.  Today as I was driving to an appointment I heard one of their 1-minute messages of encouragement from Luis Palau.  He was telling a story about an airplane that was experiencing trouble and had to make an emergency landing.  On the airplane was a mother and her four-year old daughter.  In the story the mother, turns to her child, tells her that no matter what happens she loves her and then wraps herself around her child like a human shield of love, an image of sacrificial love.  As I listened to those words, I could feel tears welling up and my heart overflowing.  Yes, I’m a mother, but today, the image I had wasn’t of motherhood, but of Jesus, who also loves us SO much that he gave his life for us.  Today, in my tears, I felt my savior telling me how much he loves me, telling me that I am wrapped in HIS shield of love.  It was almost as if I could feel myself cocooned…wrapped in the arms and love of Jesus.  It was a moment powerful enough to life me for the entire day.  But that wasn’t the only message of love God had for me.

As I was driving home from that appointment I was listening to the song “With Every Act of Love” by Jason Gray.  I have heard this song many times and have just enjoyed singing along to it, but today, when I heard the lyric “God put a million million doors, in the world for his love to walk through, one of those doors is you…”   I could feel the tears welling up again.  I could feel those words coming to me as if spoken directly from God…telling me that I was a door to show the world his love.

THAT is the reason why I started this blog.  I want you to know that God is real and he loves you and he really can and will take an active role in your life if you will only let him.  I could read the same verse a thousand times and it won’t be until the 1001st time, when God is ready, that that verse will stand out to me, as if highlighted in bright bold colors. As a message.

God loves YOU!  So if there’s a point to today’s blog, it’s that if God is willing to talk to me, he can’t wait to talk to you too.  All you have to do is listen.

God bless

Meredith

Today I started re-reading Galatians.  In the very first chapter Paul reiterates one of my favorite ideas within the bible and Christianity.  “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God?  Or am I trying to please men?  If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.”   Galatians 1:18

I love this idea, and Paul restates it many times in his gospels, because it helps me to keep my life and my work in focus.  It is so easy in today’s Twitterverse and social media obsessed world to constantly be posting or doing things for the approval or “likes” of other people.

In my work, your success is often measured by how many copies of your work are sold, or how many industry awards or accolades you collect.  Maybe your career success is measured by your job title, or your salary, or the car you drive, how many celebrities you meet in your lifetime.  I don’t know your life or your journey, but I do know mine.  I know that I wasn’t able to find balance and happiness in my career until I stopped worrying about external accolades and started worrying about eternal ones.

In the second chapter of Galatians Paul confronts one of the original disciples, Peter with his hypocrisy.  In the presence of his Jewish brethren, Peter drew back from the Gentile believers and made them feel “less than” because they weren’t following Jewish law.  This was a law that God himself had revealed to Peter as no longer necessary.  This was a law that Jesus had fulfilled as the ultimate sacrificial lamb, with his death on the cross.  Peter forgot what was important…pleasing God and sought to please his fellow man.

If it is possible for a man who know and loved Jesus personally to fall victim to the temptations of sin, how much more difficult is it for us?  That is why I love this phrase, this idea from Paul ,to keep our focus on pleasing God.  When we are looking to please our fellow man we can never be enough.  We can never have enough “likes”, make enough money, have a big enough house, because it is the nature of man to be in competition with one another, to constantly judge and measure and look down upon.  Even Peter did it!  It is only when seek to make our Lord happy with our thoughts and our actions, that we find peace and happiness.  I love my job and the more I focus on using my skills and talents as a writer to focus on God, to pray that his will be done in all aspects of my life, the more contented I am and the less I worry about external accolades.

Think about the places in your own life where you seek external validation.  Is there something you can offer up to God.  Something that you can let go of and find greater peace?

God bless,

Meredith

Prayer seems to be almost synonymous with faith.  Even for religions that do not believe in Jesus as the risen Lord, prayer or a time of spiritual mediation is always important.  Why?

I know for myself that making meaningful time for prayer can be a challenge.  I wake up early every morning and I spend about an hour before the kids wake up reading my bible and thinking about what I’ve read.  If I’m going to take time for prayer, it is usually then.  After I’ve finished my readings, if I have time, I will write down my thoughts to God.  Things I want him to help me work on, things I am grateful for.  But note the caveat…”if I have time”.

That’s not to say that I don’t talk to God every day.  Often in my car, I will have a conversation or say a quick thanks, send up a plea for guidance.  But that isn’t really what I’m talking about when I’m talking about making time for prayer.

There are at least 27 bible verses talking about Jesus spending time with his Father in prayer.

“After He had sent the crowds away, he went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone.”  Matthew 14:23

“It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God.”  Luke 6:12

In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.”  Mark 1:35

“But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.”  Luke 5:16

How often have you heard the phrase “WWJD – What would Jesus do?”  We use Jesus as a model of how we should love our neighbor and have compassion, to be charitable.  But how often do we use Him as a model for our prayer life?

I know that if I want to continue to grow in my own Christian journey, to grow even closer to my heavenly Father then I need to make quiet time in prayer a priority.

If you don’t typically pray, try making a point every day, at the same time, maybe over your morning coffee, or before you close your eyes at night, of taking time to have a conversation with your Father in heaven.  If you don’t know what to pray or how to pray…start with the prayer Jesus gave his disciples.  ”Our Father, who art in heaven…”

I know that the times I get down on my knees and really give myself over to the experience of prayer have always been incredibly restorative.  I’m going to set myself a goal for November to make prayer more of a priority in my own life.  What about you?

God bless,

Meredith

So yesterday in the writings I posted from George MacDonald, he talked about mankind being condemned for the sins that we won’t give up, the sins we are called to abandon and instead cling too.

That got me thinking about other things that we cling to and refuse to give to God.  I think that has been a theme for me lately as I struggle myself to recognize what it it I’m holding on to right now.  What it is that is keeping me from have a rightful relationship with my heavenly Father.

Last night I had a dream that I was helping my grandmother get ready to donate a bunch of old and broken down chairs from her garage.  Now my grandmother died more than 13 years ago and she really wasn’t the pack-rat/hoarder type, but never-the-less that was the dream.  Each time they were getting ready to take the chairs away she kept coming up with a reason why she needed it, or couldn’t let go of it.  My part in the dream was to keep trying to convince her that these things weren’t making her life better.  They were a burden.  I have chills thinking about it.

I have said before that I think God sends us messages and we know know them when we get them because they are personal…directed specifically to us at a particular moment in time.  I knew that dream was something more than just a dream.  It was too random.  Last night I felt as though God was speaking to me.  Telling me to let go of my need to be “perfect”.  That is was only holding me back…that it was a burden.

What are you holding on to?  What burden is God telling you to give to him?  To let him carry?

God Bless,

Meredith

Everett has been sick for the past few day so yesterday I took him to the clinic.  Having nothing to do drives me crazy, so I took along a book; Discovering the Character of God by George MacDonald.  If you haven’t heard of MacDonald then let me tell you that his fantasy works heavily influenced both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.  But he was also a man of strong faith and I wanted to share a few things I read yesterday that I found meaningful.

True Deliverance

“It is true that Jesus came, in delivering us from our sins, to deliver us also from the painful consequences of our sins.  But these consequences exist by the one law of the universe, the true will of God.  When that will is broken, suffering is inevitable. 

But in the perfection of God’s creation, the result of that suffering is curative.  the pain works toward the healing of the breach. 

The Lord never came to deliver men from the consequences of their sins while those sins yet remained.  that would be to cast out the window the medicine of cure while still the man lay sick.  Yet feeling nothing of the dread hatefulness of their sin, men have constantly taken this word that the Lord came to deliver us from to sins to mean that he came to save them from the punishment of their sins…and save us from hell.  But in that they have misrepresented his true mission. 

The mission of Jesus was from the same source and with the same object as the punishment of our sins.  He came to do more than take the punishment for our sins.  he came as well to set u f free from our sins. 

No man shall be condemned for any or all of his sins that are past.  He needs not dread remaining unforgiven even for the worst of them.  the sin he dwells in, the sin he will not come out of – that is the sole ruin of a man.  His present, his live, sins – those pervading his thoughts and ruling his conduct, the sins he keeps doing and will not give up, the sins he is called to abandon and clings to – these are they for which he is even at this moment condemned.  “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

It is the sin in our being – no essential part of it, thank God! – the miserable fact that we as a very child of God do not care for our Father and will not obey him, causing us to desire wrongly and act wrongly – this is what he came to deliver us from, not the things we have done, but the possibility of doing such things any more.”

I find those words so powerful and comforting and reassuring.  Yes, I will continue to sin, because I’m human and imperfect, but my role as a child of God isn’t to be perfect, but to listen to and obey my Father.  Thank you Jesus for your gift to us.

God bless,

Meredith

 

 

 

Yesterday Isaac had his first horse show.  Because the show was scheduled to start at noon, I let everyone sleep in and went to the early service at our church.  It felt like the  first time in forever that I actually got to “go” to church.

Of course we go to church as a family every Sunday (even through the summer), but because I teach Sunday school, I miss out on most of the service.  That means that I haven’t had the opportunity to sit and listen to a sermon, or say the pray the prayers, or have that special time in God’s house since summer ended and school began.

I don’t want to say that I cried through most of the service, but I do know that I really needed that time.  To sit there in God’s presence and be renewed.

Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve been to church.  Maybe you’ve never been to church.  I’ve heard lots of people say that you don’t need to go to church to be a Christian or to believe in God.  Heck, I used to be one of those people.  I mean life is busy these day, especially when you have kids.  There are hockey practices or dance recitals, swimming meets, soccer tournaments…it seems like we are always driving somewhere so it makes sense that you’d want to have one day a week when you don’t have to go anywhere.  When you can just relax and be renewed.

But what if I told you that you could find a greater sense of peace leaving your house?  That’s the wonder and miracle of God.  Once you go to church you don’t actually miss the time.  I can’t imagine what I would do on a Sunday morning if I wasn’t in church (unless I’m away for work).  What seemed like a Herculean task – finding time to go to church is easy.

And while it’s true you don’t need to go to church to believe in God, I do think you need church to maintain your faith.  To keep it strong.  I love the imagery our priest uses.  Imagine yourself and your faith as a matchstick.  It doesn’t take much to blow out that match.  But when you go to church you become part of something bigger.  You are part of a bonfire, that keeps the fire of your own faith lit.  Going to church helps keep God in the forefront of your life, and not pushed to the back-burner as something you will get around too when you have more time.

How many hours a week do we waste watching Netflix?  Think of your faith like your fitness.  If you want to get in shape you need to make time to exercise, to prepare good meals and eat right.  If you are looking to deepen your faith, or change your relationship with God, or just to find more peace in your life…you need to make the same time for God.  Church is a couple of hours on a Sunday morning, or a Saturday night, depending on your faith.  And much like exercise,  you just might find you get more from it than you’re giving up.

God bless,

Meredith

The other day Everett and I were talking.  As he is getting older he often questions my faith in order to develop his own understanding.

Our conversation on this particular day was about signs from God.

Everett: “So you’re trying to tell me a green light is a sign from God, Mom?”

Mom:  “It can be, to a person who is in a hurry or just needs something small to turn their day around.  Lots of times signs from God are small and only mean something to the person they were given to.”

Everett:  “I asked God for a sign, but he didn’t give me one.”

Me:  “Maybe he didn’t think you were in the right mental state to recognize a sign from him.”

I was Everett once.  As a teenager I asked God for a lot of things, to make me popular, to make me pretty, to make me not care about what people thought of me.  For a boy to like me.  To give me a sign that he was out there.  To help me not feel so alone.

But I think that the way you ask God for things is as important as what you ask God for.  God looks into your heart and he knows the real reasons behind your requests.  Maybe it’s a need to be liked, be popular, be famous, be powerful.

I think about the motivations behind the prayers I’ve prayed that have been answered.  What has been in my heart at the time?  It wasn’t until I fully gave myself over to God, before I fully put my life into his hands and trusted in him that I started to really see the result of my prayers.  I wasn’t until I prayed, “Thy will be done.”

In 2 Corinthians 1 Paul gives praise to the “God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles.”

Prayer isn’t just about asking God for things or to help us.  It’s also about really giving our troubles to God.  If you are still feeling worried or overwhelmed about your job, or a situation in your life that you have prayed about, then I would argue that you haven’t really given that situation over to God.  Like Paul we will have times in our life where we experience great pressure, but those times “happen that we might not rely on our ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.  On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.”  2 Corinthians 1:9,10

Prayer isn’t just about asking God for things, it’s about turning to God with an open heart and trusting that he will provide what you truly need, even if it’s not what you asked for.

I was listening to the radio yesterday and I heard these words jump out at me in a song by Mendisa that I have listened to a million times (song below).  “Go ahead and fall into the arms of Jesus.”  I could feel the tears welling up.  When I talk about the freedom I find in Jesus, that’s what I’m talking about. Falling into his arms and trusting that he will take care of me.

When Everett asked God for a sign, I know he was looking for proof, a reason for his faith.  But I also know that he didn’t really expect God to provide that sign.  He didn’t trust.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t think God will answer his prayer.  I just think that God will give him that sign when he’s ready, when he has eyes that can see it.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”  I Corinthians 13:11

Trust in God.  He will NEVER  let you down.

God bless,

Meredith

Yesterday, as I was driving home from dropping Isaac off at school, the radio program I was listening to was talking about debt.  The Bank of Canada was about to increase interest rates, and they were talking about how dangerously close to the edge Canadians are living financially.

When I was a newly single parent with two kids I lived on what anyone would consider a modest income and yes I had some debt.  But the kinds of debt they were talking about on the radio was unsecured debt (credit cards, etc) in the ten of thousands of dollars.  I can’t even image what you could need so badly that you could get yourself into that much of a hole.  Designer shoes? Vacations to Disney Land? Video games?

Today we are burdening ourselves with debt as we run around trying to buy happiness.  TV, magazines, even news programs tell you all about the latest gadgets that you can’t live without.  My household is not immune to this phenomenon.  Isaac asks me almost daily for the latest upgrade to his app or the newest toy he just saw on Youtube.  I went to Michael’s to pick up art supplies for David and found myself walking out with a stuffed bat for Halloween.  I have so many Christmas decorations I could decorate two houses.

We live in a monkey see, monkey do society.  But are all those things really making us happy?  I think sometimes kids are the purest expression of the human character because they haven’t yet learned the art of dissemblance.  No sooner does Isaac get something then he forgets about it and is on to the next thing.

Maybe we are taking on the wrong kind of debt, focused on the wrong kind of debt.  You see where I’m going right?  Jesus Christ.  We owe him a debt that can never be repaid.  I mean ask yourself, what value do you put on the salvation of your soul?  And the best part about the debt we owe Jesus is that it doesn’t take years of budgeting or cutting back to repay him.  All we have to do is acknowledge his sacrifice for us, his love for us and believe.  We just have to believe that he died for our sins and make him a part of our lives.  Accept his gift of love, let him into our hearts and our debt is erased. Just like that.  If only everything in life was that easy.  And the best part about making good on your debt to Jesus?  Freedom.  Of heart, of mind, of spirit.  His love fills your heart so full that you don’t need to keep buying things to make yourself feel happy.

I was reading 1 Corinthians 16 today in which Paul says  “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.  Do everything in love.”

Do everything in love.  Maybe that’s our problem. Everything Jesus did was out of love for humanity, for you.  That includes his suffering and death on the cross.  I try to remind myself every day to act in love.  I pray everyday for God to change my heart and fill me with love, not for myself, but for others.

We live in such a commercial world that it is so easy, especially with the holidays coming, to get caught up.  We rack up worldly debts as a means of showing our worth, or our love.  But I have found, for myself, that the more I focus on the debt I owe to Jesus and the love he has for me, the less I feel the need to “consume”.  Because I’m already full.

There is only one debt we can take on that will truly make us happy.

God bless,

Meredith

I love that God answers our prayers even when we aren’t aware of it.  We might find out days, weeks or months later.  That happened to me last week.

Our oldest son Hayden has some very complex special needs and he lives in his own apartment in our community and is cared for by a local organization.  Last week I had the opportunity to speak with the manager of his house about lunches and meal planning.  Just as our conversation was about to end she mentioned that, from a staffing point of view for Hayden, they were in the best place they had been for several years.  Everyone working with him loves him and enjoys spending time with him.

It might be hard to understand, but this is a really big deal.  Hayden’s staffing is something I have been praying about since the summer, asking God to bring good and kind people into his life to care for him.  We’ve also added him to the weekly prayer list at church and introduced medical marijuana to try to help him with his compulsive need to self-abuse.

Seeing how much happier Hayden is on an almost daily basis, hearing his giggles and then hearing how much his new staff care about him and enjoy working with him…even though I was having a tough week last week, God was doing His thing.  He was answering my prayers and being the kind and loving Father that I know Him to be.

My bible verse for today is from Ephesians 5:20.  “Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything.”

I talked on Monday about leaning not on our own understanding.  We tend to think that because we are so connected we know everything there is to know.  But God knows so much more.  He is in all times and in all places.  As children of faith it is our job to be faithful.  To rely on his wisdom and love and plan for us.  God hears us and answers our prayers for us, and for those whom we love.

So today I’m going to spend some time giving thanks to God for answering my prayer for Hayden.  Do you have someone in your life who could use your prayers?  Has God answered a prayer that you still haven’t given thanks for?

God bless,

Meredith

 

 

I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone if I say that I had a bit of a rough week last week.  In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t terrible, but I just felt a general sense of malaise and fatigue hanging over me and it seemed like no matter how hard I prayed, or exercised or tried to get over it, I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling.  It hung around until Sunday.

Sunday morning the kids in Sunday school were crazy and challenging and frustrating. Before I went up for communion I prayed for patience and a lifting of my spirit.  After communion I got down on my knees, and just as I was about to plead with God again for relief the thought came over me, maybe I should stop talking and just listen.  So I knelt there, and I waited.

How often do you know exactly what you need from God?  You know it so well that you just keep asking him, certain that he must not have heard you the first time.  That was me last week.  I kept up a running monologue in my head, constantly asking God to lift the heaviness from my heart, show me he loved me, forgive me for whatever sin I had committed.  But never once in that time did I just stop and wait.  I knew what the answer was that I wanted, so I just kept talking.

Sunday morning, on my knees in church, I waited on God.  And it wasn’t long before I felt the peace I had been searching for all week.  I felt the certainty of God’s love for me.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”  Proverbs 3:5

Such a simple thing and yet so difficult for us to do; to be still.  We are constantly running in lives filled with busy work.  How much time are you spending with God?  Just being still?  It’s funny that just stopping for a moment and really waiting on God, I found myself filled with so much energy.  I was able to accomplish more Sunday afternoon that I had all week and I went to bed truly rested.  Because until that moment, on my knees in the pew, I hadn’t really been trusting in God with all of my heart.  I had been leaning on my own understanding of what I needed.

God knows us better than we know ourselves and he loves us fully and completely.  Your child might be convinced that he or she really needs that new video game or pair of shoes to be happy, but as a parent you make decisions based not on what you child wants, but on what is best for them.  God does the same for us.

This week trust in God.  If you have something sitting on your heart, stop leaning on your own understanding.  Give it to Him and then…just be still.

God always answers prayer, we just have stop talking long enough to hear him.

God bless,

Meredith