Category: Our Exceptional God

A Prayer of Thanks and Praise

Hello, everyone!

Did you have a good Easter?

I thank God for the beautiful day that it was, for the blessed time of singing and worship at church, and most importantly that we serve a Risen Savior!

a blessed Easter

Hallelujah!

Every day we should thank God for His blessings.

We should also thank God for who He is.

Praising God for who He is, should be a priority in our lives as Christians, and yet sometimes it takes a back seat when daily responsibilities crowd out what’s most important.

Why is that?

Jesus prayed.

The one and only Son of Holy God prayed.

What in my, or your life, is so important that we sometimes put off our quiet time with Jesus until the next day or the next?

Regaining Time With God

Prayer of Thanks and Praise

With humility, and also because I’m the queen of “gotta do this, gotta do that,” I am purposefully sitting down to write a gratitude prayer to the Almighty.

There is no greater sacrifice than that of His Son, Jesus Christ.

A Prayer of Thanks and Praise

Heavenly Father, we don’t thank you enough for who You are – the Father of absolute truth in a world of confusion.

Your holiness is unmatched. We can never attain holiness on earth and yet, by the grace of Jesus Christ alone, we can approach Your throne with humility and ask for Your forgiveness.

There is nothing and no one more important than You.

You formed this big world out of nothingness.

It is Your masterpiece.

Because you are Good and Holy, You have blessed us with Your magnificent creation.

Gratitude can’t adequately describe the feeling of knowing that You care about us that much.

Even the most talented artist comes to Your throne empty-handed because the magnitude of Your perfect creation and design are beyond all human skill and comprehension.

We thank You, Lord, for Your infinite mercy and patience with us.

How many opportunities have we missed to tell You how much we love You?

Your love for us is perfect.

Nothing conceived in our imaginations can even come close to how big and powerful You are.

Countless times in Your providence You have protected us from unseen dangers. Thank You!

We deserve nothing, Father, and we know we can’t earn Your saving grace. That would diminish what happened to Your Son on the Cross.

You, our Most High God, are perfect.

Our lives are not perfect, no matter what we share on social media.

We are a broken people in need of more You.

There is nowhere we can hide from sunlight to sundown.

You are there.

Time is not a barrier to You, Eternal Father.

We praise you because You reign forever and ever.

Thank You, Father, for who You are – the Great I Am.

Amen!

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*Ole Hallesby quotation, pastor, and theologian (1879-1961, public domain/fair use and as quoted from Christian quotes.info

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Happy Easter 2017

Happy Easter 2017!

Are you ready for Easter?

We sure are!

Easter 2017

It’s such a beautiful and blessed time of year.

We are celebrating life at our house, in more ways than one.

Spring flowers are blooming in our garden.

Easter 2017

The weather is getting much better, and hopefully, no more hail stones for awhile. Our flowers took a pounding from the recent storm, but they’re coming back, more beautiful than ever.

Life in all its beauty, given to us by God alone.

An Easter Surprise

*NG just sent us her latest coloring project.

Isn’t she talented?

We love this little Easter blessing from one of our sponsor children.

Easter is here

He is Risen indeed!

Christ alone is our hope, and through Him, we can have salvation and eternal life. Praise the Lord!

Victory, Not Failure

The Cross was not a failure.

Please don’t let anyone steal your joy saying something heretical like that.

As Christians, we know by our faith that we have victory through the Cross, not defeat.

Did Christ rise from the dead?

Jesus told his disciples it would happen. See Matthew 20:18-19. Not believing these very words of our Savior is a marker that a person’s faith is on shaky ground.

The Key To Life Everlasting

We deserve nothing more than God’s wrath. Our penalty, rightfully, is death, but God loves us so much that He sent His Son to bear our punishment.

**Only God could know what it would take to make a sinner acceptable to Him so that that sinner could escape eternal hell and live in the very presence of God in His own house.

 

Only God could determine how the spiritual nature and the supreme authority and the unchangeable perfection of His law which is holy, just and good could be completely satisfied and the lawbreaker completely justified and rightly and purely forgiven and accepted, though fallen, guilty and depraved. – Pastor-teacher, John MacArthur, from Grace To You.

Forgiven And Accepted

Christ died for those He saves. As wretched sinners deserving only God’s punishment, we can fully embrace His love in our brokenness.

Happy Easter 2017

From our home to yours, wishing a joyous Easter to you and yours!

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*NG’s fullname withheld for privacy.
**John MacArthur quote is from a sermon originally appearing here at Grace to You. 

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Ready For A Spiritual Battle?

Getting Ready

I was a Girl Scout a long, long time ago.

Let’s not talk about how long. 😉

Our motto was to: “Be Prepared.”

Does that phrase sound familiar?

The direction to “be prepared” is also in the Bible – God’s Word.

Are You Ready For A Spiritual Battle?

It’s certainly easier to respond, “no thanks,” and just live your life without a care.

Easier maybe, but that’s not the right answer.

The Bible tells us, and as Peter reveals in 1 Peter 3:15-17:

15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. – 1 Peter 3:15-17, ESV.

Contending For Your Faith

Always be prepared with confidence and complete reverence for God.

No one said it would be easy, especially when an unbeliever or false teacher is coming at you with all sorts of accusations. It can hurt, especially when the accuser is someone you know.

Have you ever heard anyone verbally attack the Bible and the Sovereignty of God?

I sure have.

It seems like the confrontations are happening everywhere – on college campuses, in the workplace, and elsewhere.

The most disturbing examples I’ve seen are on the internet and in social media comments.

attacking comment threads

It’s so bad that I only scan the headlines now, and skip over the comment threads where people are so awful to each other. There’s name-calling, threats, and twisting words of Scripture.

Do these folks realize what they’re saying, in a public forum, no less?

I once had a job where a coworker told me that a client we both knew was a “nice” person and would go to Heaven simply for that reason alone.

Our fallen human nature wants to believe that lie, but as Christians, we know that “Congeniality” is not a free ticket to Heaven.

That may sound harsh, but it’s reality. We must turn to the Bible for the answer, not Hollywood movies, or false teachers who add to or delete words of Scripture.

By our faith, we know better.

We are in great need of a Savior and a repentant heart. If being nice was all that was required to get to Heaven, Jesus would not have had to die.

The Gate Is Narrow

A very convicting Bible verse and a key reason why we, as Christians, should share our faith, comes from Matthew.

13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. – Matthew 7:13-14, ESV.

The way to eternal life is narrow. (Chilling, right?)

A very loving thing we can do for a lost person is telling them about salvation through Jesus Christ. We can also pray for them and, for the Holy Spirit to give us the right words when an opportunity comes up. I pray for this all the time.

We can’t let an intimidating person get us to back down about our personal faith in Jesus Christ and salvation through Him.

Are you ready for a spiritual battle

Are You Prepared?

You have to know why you believe.

What do athletes do before the big game?

They practice.

Practice talking about your faith, not because your beliefs are weak, but because it helps. This process isn’t the same as writing a rehearsed script and sounding like a robot. We need to examine our lives, our secular motives before we came to Christ, and the eternal perspective we gained after.

We’re not beating anyone over the head with it or trying to start fights. I take to heart what Paul said in Philippians.

27 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. – Philippians 1:27-30, ESV.

Expecting Opposition

Not everyone will appreciate your testimony. If someone gets overly ugly with you, you can opt to say you’ll pray for this person and leave. Ask the Holy Spirit for guidance.

Not a Bible expert? It’s okay. You’re sharing your faith because you love others and don’t want them to go to hell.

Here’s a useful resource, Got Questions.

In this two-minute video, John MacArthur explains why readiness is so important. Feel free to share this with others who need encouragement. God bless.

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Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, ESV, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2016 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

*Begg, Alistair. “Declare Great Things.” Crosswalk.Com. 25 May 2016. Web Access 03 April 2017. Used with permission. http://www.crosswalk.com/devotionals/truth-for-life/truth-for-life-may-25-2016.html

 

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Touchdown!

Unfortunately, I’m not talking about the football kind of touchdown.

It’s Springtime in Texas.

While that’s a good thing, there’s also a downside.

It’s a time when tornadoes come out to play, wreaking their havoc, destroying property and, in some cases, lives.

storms in our lives

*Photo credit at the end.

Last Sunday night, tornado weather came knocking at our door.

Dangerously Close

We were monitoring the weather throughout the evening. According to the forecasters, the supercell heading our direction was, by all initial appearances, weak. Even the weatherman didn’t seem impressed. In fact, he spent more time on the storms heading north and south of us.

We almost stopped watching the weather, thinking everything was fine.

building tornado

**Photo credit at the end.

The storm cluster heading our direction suddenly exploded into a big tornado. It briefly touched down seven miles from where we live.

Storm chasers shared pictures of the funnel cloud on social media.

Several minutes later, the warnings for our area started to come in, a siren went off, and my phone app announced, “Warning. Tornado is in your area. Seek shelter.”

Uh oh.

The sky turned pitch black dark, and the wind picked up considerably.

We headed to our shelter and hunkered down on the floor.

Huge hailstones (up to softball size) pummeled our house, sounding like dropping bombs with each strike.

Then I heard what sounded like glass smashing.

It went on and on.

Hail continued crashing on top of our house as part of the funnel cloud roared above us.

hailstones

All Clear

We are praising God today that the other families in our neighborhood and we are all safe.

Our roof took a beating, and there’s damage to our outside lighting, but those things are repairable.

Thank you, God, for keeping us safe.

Like that powerful storm, awful circumstances can quickly explode in our lives. An emotional bomb drops, and it can instantly undermine our peace.

This Bible verse is taped to the wall of our storm shelter. It reads:

***20Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. – Matthew 28:20, KJV.

He is always with us. That is our assurance.

Nonbelievers don’t understand it, but as Christians, we can hold the words of Scripture in our hearts when the “storms” come in our lives.

There is no better peace than the peace that He can give.

Corrie Ten Boom, Christian heroine

Don’t know where to start with scripture memorization?

Here’s one suggestion, with verses specifically about fear.

http://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/fear-bible-verses/

I hope that is helpful.

God bless you this week!

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*Photo courtesy of Sarah. Shared with permission.
**Photo courtesy of Jessica. Shared with permission.
***Bible Reference: King James Version, (KJV) Public Domain.
****Corrie Ten Boom quotation, as quoted from Christian quotes.info

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Don’t Bury The Lead

Don't bury the lead

A lot has changed for the better in my life since my former career as a TV reporter, but I still miss that adrenaline rush.

I learned so much about writing. The biggest lesson of all – don’t bury the lead!

In other words, don’t put the “leading” information in a news story way down at the bottom of the report.

Can that relate to sharing our faith as well?

I believe it can.

Don’t Bury The Lead

The “lead” is the most important fact of the story, followed by the supporting details after that.

Here’s an example of “burying the lead”:

“A terrible car crash tied up traffic on North Central today. State troopers think that today’s stormy weather played a big part in the collision. The massive car pileup backed up traffic for several miles. People living nearby heard the crash and described it as a loud bang. One man died when his car careened off the shoulder.”

See what happened there?

A poor soul lost his life, and the mention of his death is at the end of our example. Our fictitious reporter “buried the lead.”

It’s a good lesson for a lot of things in life.

Don’t bury the lead.

Don’t beat around the bush.

Get to the point!

Sharing Our Faith and The Good News

As Christians, we’re not supposed to dwell on the bad news in the world, because we can lose sight of the Good.

And there is Good News, Praise the Lord!

We see mere glimpses of it in our lifetime, but as Bible-believing Christians, we can also have what is Eternally Good forever.

So why aren’t we reaching out more?

teaching about sin and salvation

Why do so many church leaders today feel too intimidated to preach the truth about sin and salvation?

The younger generation, (or so I’ve read) says they don’t want pastors preaching to them anymore. A growing number of these folks, although not all of them, want to change the crux of what the Bible teaches, so it’s less convicting. They only want the good works of a social gospel and don’t want to hear about sin, forgiveness, salvation, or the End Times.

Say, what?

If someone you cared about was driving towards a dangerous cliff, would you warn them?

Of course, you would!

Why are so many Christians pressured to bury the “lead” of the Gospel because it makes some people (of any age) uncomfortable?

Does this mean absolute truth now has to take a back seat to popular culture?

Lord, have mercy.

Whosoever Believeth In Him

The absolute truth of the spiritual battle we’re in is revealed throughout the pages of Scripture

Please see John 3:16, for example.

I bet you have it memorized.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  – John 3:16, KJV, public domain

God is real.

Heaven is real.

Satan is real.

Hell is real.

“Should not perish,” and, some will perish. This is why, once we have a connection building with a lost person, we must talk to them about sin and salvation through Christ alone. There are lives at stake.

The Battle Is Real

There’s a spiritual battle going on right now.

Don’t let popular culture, (Hollywood, etc.) dictate to you what to think about God. (“The Shack,” movie, anyone?). Nor, should we allow the culture to define or interpret the Bible.

God is most definitely our loving and merciful Father.

ongoing spiritual battle

But, God is also a Righteous Judge.

He will judge unrepentant sinners.

That means people that you love, who are living life with no concern for God or salvation, are in trouble, if they continue on their present course of apathy.

Here’s where we come in:

If they don’t know Christ, they are your mission field.

Invite them to church and share the Good News.

Please know that the road will not be easy. As Christians, we were never promised that, but peace in Christ can sustain us.

*No joy can excel that of the soldier of Christ: Jesus reveals Himself so graciously and gives such sweet refreshment that the warrior feels more calm and peace in his daily strife than others in their hours of rest. – Alistair Begg, Christian Pastor.

God bless

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*Begg, Alistair, “Outside the Camp.”  Crosswalk.com. 06 April 2017, Web Access 06 April 2017. Copyright Truth For Life. Used with Permission.

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