Be Encouraged! Remembering God.

I am really struggling with so many different things, that I am not sure what to write about. Being a faith based blogger means that many people will simply overlook my blog, because they have no interest in anything having to do with religion. I can understand that, because my husband watches a plethora of YouTube videos on survival, boxing and other “manly” types of topics. He has no interest in fashion, so why would he stop and read a fashion blog. The same is true for faith based topics. Why would a person stop to read a chapter in the Bible when they have no interest in what is written there? Why would a person read a cook book, who could care less about learning how to cook?

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As Christians, I think a lot of us are struggling with how to respond to the goings on in our world right now. I know I am. How do I instill courage when we are faced with people dying from a virus that we still know so little about? How do I know the difference between what is real news and what is made up just to get a reaction? How do I talk about race and injustice, when what I say might be taken as racist or unjust? These are all questions I have asked myself over the last few months.

I know I am just a small blog with only about 250 subscribers. I don’t do much with affiliates and retailers to promote products and make money. Sure making money would be great, but the purpose of my blog has never been about making money. The purpose was to encourage. I think we all could use a big dose of encouragement right about now. I realize I won’t reach a lot of people and that is okay, but maybe I can reach you. Maybe you need to hear something I am going to say today, or maybe this is just God’s way of enabling me to cope.

What do I do when I am upset? I write. Here are a few things I know I need to hear right now, and maybe you do too.

God is in control.

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This may seem a bit unsettling to you. You might be thinking, well, if He is in control then why is there so much bad stuff going on? However, the facts are this, God is bigger than all of us and all that is going on. He is the Creator. He formed the world from nothing and spoke with just a few words the entirety of the natural world. When he was finished with all of that, He decided the natural world needed a caretaker and He created man and woman out of dust. Yes, you heard that right, dust. After they were formed into what we now know as our human bodies, He breathed life into them. Just a simple breath gave us life. If you think an almighty being like that doesn’t have this all figured out already…well, you have a few things to learn.

“29 Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
31 So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”

— Matthew 10:29-31 (NASB)

You are known.

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It is very easy to forget this in the bumbling chaos that we call life. When you are young, you have your whole life ahead of you, with countless opportunities. When you become an adult maybe you decide to marry and have children and you suddenly have more to worry about than just yourself. Life becomes a tangled dance of crazy schedules, conflict, and unmet expectations. The things you might have learned as a child, somehow, disappear along the way and you suddenly feel like you are handling all of this alone, and you have forgotten who you are, but God knows you. He has been there from the moment you were conceived. In fact the psalmist states,

“Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.”

— Psalm 139:16 (NASB)

God doesn’t get weary.

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I don’t know about you, but I am tired; tired of reading and hearing about the virus; tired of hearing people argue about politics and social issues; tired of having to be careful everywhere we go; tired of not being able to go see our extended family or get together with friends. I may be tired, but the one who holds my hand and hems me in behind and before, is not.

“ 28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.”

— Isaiah 40:28-31 (ESV)

God is always present.

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God is always with us. He doesn’t wander off to get a drink, or take a nap, or go do His laundry. He is a being that is both eternal and omnipresent. He is not confined by space or time, nor influenced by the mistakes of the past or the foreboding of the future. He is constant and His presence is with us both continually and continuously.

“9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.””

— Joshua 1:9 (ESV)

The above verse is one of my favorites. I love that God reminds Joshua ( and us), that it is a command to be strong and courageous. We are also commanded to not be frightened or dismayed. The word dismay means to lose our courage. God then gives us the reason we are not to be fearful or lack courage, but strong and courageous, because He is with us wherever we go.

“17 The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.”

— Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)

The following quote is from My Utmost for His Highest:

“Having the reality of God’s presence is not dependent on our being in a particular circumstance or place, but is only dependent on our determination to keep the Lord before us continually. Our problems arise when we refuse to place our trust in the reality of His presence.”

— Oswald Chambers - My Utmost for His Highest - July 20

If we do not believe in the reality of His presence, we will never know that His is present.

God doesn’t change.

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I am often in need of hearing this. With life all around us rapidly shifting and changing, it is good to know that He is a constant in our lives. Our God isn’t changed by pandemics, natural disasters, social unrest, war, political elections or upheaval.

“8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

— Hebrews 13:8 (NASB)

“19 God will hear and answer them—
Even the one who sits enthroned from of old— Selah.
With whom there is no change,
And who do not fear God.”

— Psalm 55:19 (NASB)

“14 “And to Him was given dominion,
Glory and a kingdom,
That all the peoples, nations and men of every language
Might serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
Which will not pass away;
And His kingdom is one
Which will not be destroyed.”

— Daniel 7:14 (NASB)

I hope that these verses have reminded you of how loved you are and that by following Christ, you are standing on a foundation that is unshakable.

Thanks for taking a few minutes to stop by the blog. Have a good day. Keep laughing and keep looking up.

Nothing Can Separate Us from Him

This week, I hope to finish our study of Romans chapter 8. We have learned a lot from this one chapter of Scripture. We have been reminded that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” We are told that “what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.” We learned that the “Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” We also are reminded that, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us.” We are given testimony of God’s desire to adopt us, Christ’s desire to be a sacrifice for us, and the Spirit’s delight to make us like Him.

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“36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

— Romans 8:36-39 (NASB)

Verse 36 might be a little confusing, yet as we look at it we must admit that we are indeed facing death each and every day, each and every moment. We do not choose this death, but Christ did and He did it, so that we might be victorious.

“We are conquerors: though killed all the day long, yet conquerors. A strange way of conquering, but it was Christ’s way; thus he triumphed over principalities and powers in his cross. It is a surer and a nobler way of conquest by faith and patience than by fire and sword. The enemies have sometimes confessed themselves baffled and overcome by the invincible courage and constancy of the martyrs, who thus overcame the most victorious princes by not loving their lives to the death,”

— Matthew Henry Bible Commentary on Romans 8:36

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“They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.”

— Revelation 12:11 (NASB)

Verse 37 says that we are more than conquerors, and it adds that it is through Him who loved us. You see we are not conquerors on our own. Sure, there are times when we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but more often that is how we keep going: keep working, keep loving, keep running, keep caring, keep on keeping on. To truly conquer all the things that the enemy and life throws our way requires someone much more like a super hero than I.

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The beauty of this idea, is that Christ, not only saves and conquers for us, but he loves us. Once again, we are reminded of His love. I think that truly believing God loves us, is very hard for us to do. We often find it much easier to love and forgive others, but when it comes to loving and forgiving ourselves we stumble, fall and sometimes just give up. Aren’t you glad, that our view of ourselves does not limit Christ’s view of us?

Verse 38 and 39 begins with Paul’s confidence in the person of the Christ. If Paul can be confident in Him, should we also share that confidence? Paul says he is “convinced.” From that we can derive that at one point in time, Paul did not share this conviction or confidence. If you are familiar with Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, the Lord Himself changed his name to Paul and convinced him of the truth and solidity of the Gospel and the person of Jesus Christ.

What is Paul convinced of?

“That neither - “

death nor life

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angels nor demons

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the present nor the future

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nor any powers

height nor depth

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nor anything else in all of creation

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Will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We must realize that God’s love is only fulfilled through the sacrifice of His perfect Son. It is that love, the love that we obtain when we call Him Lord, that will keep us forever with Him. Nothing, will be able to separate us from Him and from His love. If you want a real romance story, then this is it. He is the great warrior prince who will never leave you, and if you are taken away and enslaved by the enemy, He will not rest until you are back in His loving arms.

I wanted to share this chapter with you, because it is such an encouraging one to me. I hope you have been encouraged by it as well.