She Stands

  Colossians Chapter 4:6.   Let  your speech always  be   with grace,  seasoned with salt,  that you may know how you ought to answer each one. Speech with grace, seasoned with salt ...………… Admitting out loud the numerous times I have tripped and tumbled over my words in my younger years can be compared to eating a tablespoon of vinegar. Many times, my words have been less than desirable. Rank-smelling, mouth puckering, and eye-watering pain would be a better description.   They held no salt, only the salty tones of my utterance. My salty tones were not spoken to encourage, lift up, or be a positive influence. They were the back tones of my own emotional injuries that I had selflessly chosen to share like an arrow hitting a target.  Jesus tells us in Matthew Chapter 5:13. You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underf...

 It was day 6 of my 21 days fast a few years ago when I discovered just how much I relied on social media for my daily encouragement. It's so easy, just one click of my mouse, and it's there for me to see. A short cut of sorts, a quick fix in a world, my world, that is constantly moving and changing. But when I dig into the word of God, when I take the time to seek Him, the encouragement is more. So much more. Today I am encouraged by the woman who suffered with the issue of blood. For 12 years she suffered a life of misery and in her culture was considered unclean. It was a chronic condition which means she probably had anemia as well as physical weakness. She was hopelessly incurable by the many doctors she had sought out for medical care. She had become destitute for she spent all that she had. Everything and everyone who she would come in contact with would have become ceremonially unclean making her shunned by all in society including her family. Her husband, if she had on...

  The  bible defines darkness as ignorance and light as knowledge. To live in the darkness of the world causes one to live in ignorance, but to live in the light of Christ allows one to live in knowledge. Whatever we give ourselves to, it will give back in the same measure we use. Are you giving in to darkness or surrendering to light?   - Pastor Ron Carpenter. I go back to those  words again and again. Their resonating sound in my heart causes me to pause as I take in a deep breath and exhale. I can hear the tapping of these words running through my mind. It can be so easy to slip into the world of ignorance, to trust what we choose to believe rather than what we know to be truth. Darkness or ignorance does not always appear to be what one would call red flags shouting for us to stop. Many times, it appears wrapped in a pretty package, clothed in what we believe to be real, and yet the true agenda is hidden behind the fal...

  In the story of Jonah, God instructs him to go to the city of Nineveh and preach a message of repentance. This charge was given to Jonah as a Prophet warning the people of Nineveh of impending judgement for its wickedness.  However, Jonah fled from the Lord and ran in the opposite direction. After being thrown into the sea and swallowed by a giant fish for three days, Jonah cries out to the Lord and is then spat up from the belly of the fish to go and do as he was instructed. Jonah Chapter1 verses1 through 3. The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me." But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So, he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarnish, paid the fare and went down into it to with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. I have such a time wrapping my head around the fact Jonah was in the belly of a ...

  "Lord, I want to love as you do."      Just shy of thirty years ago, I recall a time when I was sitting on the back pew alone in church, I whispered those words to the Lord. I had been watching the doors open as others came in for Sunday night service and through my people watching silence, I began to notice the slumped shoulders of many as though the world was sitting on top of them. The slow-moving steps, unsure were to sit or the facial expressions asking if they should even stay. The plastic smiles hiding the hurt buried deep within, and the lonely eyes that scanned the sanctuary in hopes someone would welcome them in.  With every deep breath I took I could feel a sledgehammer of affliction hitting its mark.  I looked down, in the hopes no one noticed my eyes gazing throughout the church, at my shaking clasped hands and realized I am no different.  I too had felt the world was sitting on my shoulders that night.  My feet were uncer...

  The book of Esther is one of my favorites.  A young, beautiful Jewish girl living in the Persian Empire who lost her parents at a tender age was in the care of her kinsman, Mordecai. I do not believe he ever once entertained the notion the child he took as his own would come to live in the palace of Shushan as queen. Nor save their people.   But. God.   Esther 4 verse 14 .......Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?   Esther's story is one of great faith and redemption. Her trust in God was greater than the circumstances that surrounded her.   There are seasons we find ourselves in not quite knowing how it is we came to such a place. Over the last several years I have questioned the station of my life. I had believed it to be one way and yet it's been something totally different. I often think how Esther was taken from all that she knew and placed in a life that was foreign to her. We...