Don’t you be afraid, for I am with you.  Don’t be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you.  Yes, I will help you.   – Isaiah 41:10

It’s been a while since I’ve made a new playlist of songs that inspire me.  This one features a lot of the songs I’ve posted to this blog.  Enjoy and God bless!

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/playlist/merediths-playlist-11-12-18/pl.u-pMyl1DbIBvrGZ

This morning I was reading Mark 6:1-29.  That was as far as I could get because there were three very different stories jammed into such a few verses.

The first story was about Jesus preaching in his home town.  At the end of the story he says “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.”  But the part that really stood out for me came next.  “He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.”  Could you imagine!  It’s said almost casually, dismissively.  He just healed a few sick people. That’s all?!!  What an amazing miracle that would be today, but in Jesus’ time, that was ALL he would do in his hometown because the people there had so little faith.

That really got me to thinking about the miracles of Jesus.   He turned water into wine, raised several people from the dead, calmed the sea, walked on water, cast out demons, made the lame to walk and the blind to see, ROSE FROM THE DEAD himself… and oh yeah, he healed sick people.  The son of Man, in whom we place our faith was truly miraculous.  If he could heal sick people who had little faith, how much more can he do, will he do for us in our own faith?

The next part of this chapter tells of Jesus sending out the disciples to minister and he “gave them authority over evil spirits.  These were his instructions.  Take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in your belts…”  Again I had to stop because that was the line that stood out.  Jesus was calling on the twelve to fully trust in God and in His ability to provide for them everything that they could possibly need on their journey…while they were doing God’s work.  I think about how these two stories are related.  A story of little faith and “small miracles” directly followed by a story calling on you to completely trust in God and as a result “They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.” 

I don’t know about you, but there are times in my life when I find it easy to completely trust in God, to have faith and be healed and there are times when I don’t.  When I let the worries of the world overwhelm me and I start to lose faith.  I don’t listen to my internal messages of distress and instead listen to what world is telling me.  And this brings me to the final story in this section.  The story of the beheading of John the Baptist by King Herod.

Herod held John in prison because John condemned Herod’s marriage to his own brother’s wife, Herodias.  And because John made her feel uncomfortable, Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted him killed.  But “Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man.  When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.”    Herod knew in his heart the truth of what John was preaching but he wasn’t yet ready to bring himself to acknowledge his wrong doing.  He was puzzled.  And then, at a banquet, he made a promise to the daughter of Herodias in front of all of his friends and dinner guests (important people that he wanted to impress obviously) that he would give her anything she asked for.  And what did she ask for?  The head of John the Baptist to be brought to her, right then, on a platter.

It says in verse 26 that Herod was “greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests he did not want to refuse her.”   We all know how the story ends.  With the death of an innocent man.  Rather than do what was right, rather than face possible humiliation, Herod had John beheaded to.  How many times in our own lives have we done the wrong thing?  Gone against our own internal feelings of distress rather than face the possibility of being embarrassed or humiliated in front of other people?  Not had enough faith?

There is so much in these readings for me to think about today.  To try to understand.  Because I think it is significant that Mark puts this story about John’s death in the middle of messages about faith.  I think he is trying to say something about what happens to us when, like Herod or the people in Jesus’s hometown, our faith is weak.

We don’t have the benefit of the disciples.  We don’t get to see Jesus perform miracles in front of us, but that doesn’t mean he can’t perform miracles within us.  Today I’m feel as if God is telling me to have faith, to trust that he will give me everything I need, if I am only willing to leave behind my baggage and take “nothing for the journey”.

God bless,

Meredith

November is the month given to us to remember the sacrifices of the many men and woman who, through history, died to preserve the many freedoms we enjoy today. But I think November can also be the month we take time to remember another death, another sacrifice that gave us freedom.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS – By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

Composed at the battlefront on May 3, 1915 during the second battle of Ypres, Belguim

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

Now that you know God – or rather are known by God – how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles?  Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?” Galatians 4:9

This is an incredibly powerful line from Paul.  Now that you know God – or rather are known by God.   In today’s internet world, where information can be found with a few taps on a keyboard, we like to think that we are knowledgeable, smart.  We convince ourselves, that, because of science, we know almost everything there is to know and understand about our world.  Some would argue that we even know enough to know that God doesn’t exist, and that belief in God is for the weak minded, and uninformed.

Then there are those in the church who are willing to stand up and tell you that they know everything there is to know about God and Jesus, and what you need to do for your salvation (including you writing that big check so that they can buy a bigger house).

But Paul tells us that we don’t know God….rather…we are known by God.  Trying to put a being, who was capable of creating this incredibly glorious universe that we live in, into a box, that we are capable of understanding, or dissecting is either foolhardy at best or arrogance.  What we know about God is what he has given us to know.  What our human brains and hearts are capable of understanding.  That he loves us.

Remember when you were a teenager?  You wanted to show how adult you were by participating in conversations with adults.  But often, looking back, you realize how simple, how black and white your views were – because you had only lived a small portion of your life.  You had only experienced a fraction of what you have now.  How much more nuanced are your views and options today?  We are like teenagers in terms of our knowledge and understanding of God’s power and glory.  But, just as we are constantly growing in our own understanding and wisdom as we take this journey through life, we can also grow in our understanding of God.  It starts from a place of openness.  Of not trying to understand, or seek proof.  It starts with faith.  Paul says it over and over again in his letters.  By faith you are redeemed.  Not by knowledge, not by good works…by faith.  We need to get out of our own way.  Get rid of our preconceptions, and what other people have told us about who and what God is, and let him show us himself.  He knows YOU; who you really are with all of your faults and foibles, and he loves you perfectly and completely.  Don’t you think you owe it to him to at least try to do the same?  Don’t let someone else tell you who God is; find out for yourself.

I’ve included some quotes here from George MacDonald who also wrote on the topic.

“Men would understand; they do not care to obey.  They try to understand where it is impossible they should understand except by obeying.  They would search into the work of the Lord instead of doing their part in it – thus making it impossible for the Lord to go on with his work, and for themselves to become capable of seeing and understanding what he does…”

“…But the Lord is not unreasonable, he requires no perfection of motives where such could not yet exist.  He does not say, “You must be sorry for your sins, or you need not come to me.”  To be truly sorry for his sins a man must love God and man, and yet love is the very things that has to be developed in him.  It is but common sense that if a man would be delivered from the suffering upon him or the evil within him, he must himself begin to cast it out.  Equally it is common sense that a man should look for and expect the help of his Father in the endeavor.  Alone he might labor to all eternity and not succeed.  he who has not made himself cannot set himself right without him who made him.  But his Maker is in him, and is his strength.”

“The man, however, who instead of doing what he is told, speculates on the metaphysics of him who calls him to his work, stands leaning against the door by which the Lord would enter to help him!”

I’ve also included a song here by Natalie Grant.  I love the lyrics.  So perfectly said.

God bless

Meredith

It is easy to turn to God when we are experiencing times of trouble, when all hope is lost and we have no other option, when we have “lost control” of our lives.

It can be incredibly difficult to turn to God when things are going well, when we feel as if the things we have are because of our own hard work, because we deserve to be successful.  I have been told that people who “trust in God” or “give things up to God”  lackagency in their own life.  I have had conversations with family members about this very thing. They passionately believe that everything good in their lives is because they deserve it.  Because they’ve “earned” it.  Because they’ve made good choices.  But I would argue that in the grand scheme of things, none of us have “earned” anything.  We are where we are because of the accident of birth or because the stars aligned, because we only had a few choices to make, or…because we are exactly where God put us.

In his book The Problem of Pain C.S. Lewis writes on this very subject and I wanted to share that with you today.

“The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it.  Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil.  Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil, every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt….

…But pain insists upon being attended to, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, bu shouts in our pain:  it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

…Everyone has noticed how hard it it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us.  We “have all we want” is a terrible saying when “all” does not include God.  We find God an interruption.  As St. Augustine says somewhere, “God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full – there’s nowhere for Him to put it.”  Or as a friend of mine said, “We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hopes he’ll never have to use it.”  Now God who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him.  Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for.”  While what we call “our own life” remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him.

…”The dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently that the vices that lead to worldly success.  Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God:  the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.”

If things are going well in your life, maybe today is the day you take God off the back burner.  Maybe today is the day you put something down, the day that you make sure your hands aren’t so full that God doesn’t have a place to give you another blessing.

God bless,

Meredith

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