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Closer To The Real Source

• God -total Union with God Why Jesus is the Only Way to Union? The Answer May Surprise You. http://www.hallvworthington.com/

• Eco Friendly Wedding and Commitment Rings Post-Consumer Gold * Free Shipping www.greenKarat.com

• Who Is God? Wonder What God's Personality Would Be Like? Learn About His Six Traits www.EveryStudent.com

• God Loves You Here is a Prayer That Can Change Your Life http://www.jesus2020.com/

Finding Contentment

Search Amazon.com for contentment a godly woman's adornment

Finding contentment is a goal we should strive for every day. A lot of people get confused about the concept of contentment because they think it means they have to settle for where they are. However, there's a huge difference between being content and being complacent. When you are content, you are satisfied; you're full. It's not that you aren't pursuing your goals or striving to reach new levels, you are just able to enjoy where you are on the way to where you are going.

For example, if you send a woman to the mall to buy a new blouse, she might stroll through 14 different stores while she's there. She keeps her "mission" on the back burner of her mind, and she's content to browse the stores and enjoy her journey. Most men, on the other hand, can't understand at all why a woman would spend all that time wandering around! A man's approach would be to get in and out of the mall in ten minutes; eight if he's been to that particular store before and knows his way. That's because men are more mission-minded. The truth is we have to be both. We have to be mission-minded and enjoy ourselves on the way to reaching our goals.

One of the best ways I know to find contentment in your circumstances is to reach out and help someone in need. There's always someone in your life that needs what you have. When you turn your focus toward helping others, your own challenges seem more manageable, and sometimes, they simply disappear. Today, look for ways to be a blessing to someone and find peace and contentment on your journey of life!

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation… (Philippians 4:12, NIV).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Has Life Robbed You Of Your Joy

 
Not only is this month of November which is my birthday a reminder that I’m no spring chicken, it also has me wondering where the joy has gone. Life has a way of taking the joy right out of our hearts. Age seems to inevitably usher stress, sadness, fear, and anxiety into our lives and those carefree days of baby bouncing fade quickly away. But I'm always reminded how good I look, or how young I appear.  I am grateful for the comments, and have to remind myself that all the glory belongs to God for showing and giving me his grace throughout the years.  I have come to be thankful and count my blessing.  I no longer worry about age, because it does not determine me nor my health, looks, or my mentality. I learn to live life to the fullest and count my blessing continuously .  I no longer let life situations cause me to loose my joy.

"The Joy of the Lord is my Strength."   Neh.8:10

Be True in your Heart

On earth we have nothing to do with success or its results, but only being true to God and for God; for it is sincerity and not success which is the sweet savor before God.Frederick W. Robertson
Topics: Success

Cast Your Cares

God can be trusted with our anxieties and concerns. Here, we're invited to hand our worries and problems over to God, who can handle them better than we can. He'll never let you down.

"Blessings and Trails"

Our life circumstances can change in an instant. A car crash, a fire, a diagnosis: it doesn’t take much to make us feel like we’ve gone from a life of blessing to a life filled with trials. Our Daily Walk reminds us that despite our circumstances, God deserves our gratitude:

We too may look at the troubles of others and think that it could never happen to us. Especially if our life journey has led to a measure of success, financial security, and family harmony. In a moment of vanity and self-sufficiency, King David admitted to falling into the trap of feeling invulnerable: “Now in my prosperity I said, ‘I shall never be moved’” (Ps. 30:6). But David quickly caught himself and redirected his heart away from self-sufficiency. He remembered that he had known adversity in the past and God had delivered him: “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing” (v.11).

Are you going through a time of trial or a time of blessing? How have you expressed gratitude and trust to God despite your circumstances?

"Put Yourself on the List"

As women today, we live in such a great time in history! We can enjoy so many more freedoms and take advantage of many opportunities that women in the past couldn't. Because of this, we also seem to wear more "hats" than ever before, too—employee or employer, mother, companion, friend, chef, counselor, housekeeper, investor, and the list goes on and on. It's so easy to get wrapped up in all that we are doing, that we don't stop to take care of ourselves...

That truth plays out off the airplane as well. We have to take care of ourselves if we are going to take care of anyone else properly. I heard someone say you have to "show up" for yourself before you can "show up" for others. Think about it—if you are empty, how will you have anything to give? If you are constantly giving and never replenishing, you will be left drained. We are God's creation, and we have a responsibility to keep ourselves at our best. A hundred years ago, the main cause of illness was infection. Today the main cause of illnesses is stress. God never planned for us to live stressed-out and overbooked. He created the world and all that is in it, and then He took a day off. When is the last time you took the day off or took some time to recharge your battery?

"When Nothing's Happening"

I seem to vaguely remember this old nursery rhyme from when I was a kid. It went like this: "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?" If you asked our grandsons that question, they'd probably say, "Real slow!" Maybe that's why Mary was so contrary. Last spring, the boys worked with their Dad to clear a little area in the yard where they could have a vegetable garden. And they were all excited about planting those seeds in the ground: tomato seeds, green beans, carrots, and lettuce. They went out the next day to look at what they had planted. Nothing. Then the next week, and the next week, and the week after that. They watered the garden when it didn't rain. They pulled up weeds. For the longest time, they went out to that garden to see what was happening and nothing was happening - or so it looked. Had they tried to dig up the seeds to see if anything was happening, they would have ruined everything. But you know the story. It finally happened: The tomatoes and beans and carrots and lettuce. It just took a little while.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When Nothing's Happening."

Something had been happening all along to those seeds. Just because you can't see what God is doing doesn't mean He's not doing anything! In fact, that may be something important for you to remember right now. You've been praying about that need, that situation, that person for a long time and it looks like nothing's happening. Key words: looks like. When a seed's been planted, it looks like there's nothing going on for some time until that plant breaks through and ultimately produces some wonderful fruit. When a new life has begun in a woman's body, it doesn't look like anything's happened for quite a while. But every day, that life is growing where we cannot see it grow. Until it first reshapes that mother's body and ultimately appears as that precious little baby being born.

The problem is that when it looks like nothing's happening, we tend to say, "Well then, I've got to do something!" And most often, it's the wrong thing; like digging up the seed to see if it's growing or plowing up the garden because it looks like nothing's happening. In 1 Samuel 13 , beginning with verse 7, our word for today from the Word of God, we have got a sobering example of how much we have to lose when we can't wait for God to do it His way. Saul, Israel's first king, has been told by God's man Samuel, "Go down ahead of me to Gilgal. I will surely come down to you to sacrifice burnt offerings...but you must wait seven days until I come to you and tell you what you are to do."

With the Philistine forces massing against them, the Bible says, "Saul remained at Gilgal, and all the troops with him were quaking with fear. He waited seven days, the time set by Samuel, but Saul did not come to Gilgal, and Saul's men began to scatter." Saul panicked, and he did what no king was allowed by God to do: he offered the burnt offering himself and he crossed a sacred line. And "just as he finished making the offering, (the Bible says) Samuel arrived." And Samuel asks, "What have you done?" Saul answers by talking about what "I saw" ... "I thought" ... "I felt." Samuel says, "You acted foolishly. You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you...now your kingdom will not endure."

Saul forfeits the major legacy of his life because of disobedience that disqualified him; a disobedience that came because he couldn't wait for God to do it His way. You and I are so prone to making that same kind of mistake. Nothing seems to be happening, things are starting to fall apart, and it looks like we're at the point of no return. So we take matters into our own hands and, in so doing, we ruin what God was going to do.

God is so often the God of the eleventh hour. He waits until the moment when everyone will know it had to be Him. He waits so our faith can stretch farther than its ever stretched before so He can do greater things for us than He's ever done before.

God is working in ways we can't see, so ultimately something beautiful will be born for all to see. So, as the Psalmist says: "Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will do this...be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him" (Psalm 37:5 , 7).

"Enduring Faith"

These essays and curriculum's are designed so that you might understand the basics of faith as determined from the precepts of the Bible. By understanding faith and what Christ has done for you, you will be able to hear His call and put into action real, effective believers growth and action, by faith, for His glory and Kingdom! In pastoral ministry, there will be times of stress, uncertainty, and failure. We will be tired, tried, tested and go though setbacks, difficulties, and suffering. We need to understand faith in a real, heartfelt way so we can keep our eyes fixed upon our Lord. Faith will become even stronger and better though the afflictions we face. Faith must not be just an idea or a plan; it must be a reality. It must be working in you before you can be effectively used by our Lord. Although this study is aimed at pastors and church leaders, any Believer desiring to grow deeper in the faith will find it impacting and convicting because it is from the precepts of Scripture.

"Letting Bitterness Go"

Inherent in this Enlightenment minon in our day as well, is the assumption that knowledge is good, certain, and objective. We often uncritically accept this Enlightenment idea as we look at Christian faith today, and we leave little room for ways of knowing that go beyond the rational or the scientific. As Blaise Pascal once said, “The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know.” But Christians do well to re-think this Enlightenment assumption, for we acknowledge that the fall of humanity impacted the whole self–including the mind.

Without jettisoning intellectual rigor and study, or succumbing to a faith without content, we must make room for the concept of “mystery” and be cautious about assuming an Enlightenment way of viewing knowledge and truth. Sometimes we simply do not know. Our minds are limited and God is infinite. We must reject the hubris tic optimism of the endless, upward progress of human rationality to attain to omniscience. Moreover, our faith cannot be “reduced” to a set of fixed doctrines, even while it surely contains them. Rather, we must acknowledge “that the fundamental reality of God transcends human rationality” and “the heart of being a Christian is a personal encounter with God in Christ, who shapes us and molds us.” We come to know in and through personal encounter–both with God and with God’s people in community–and we must reject the notion that we are ultimately and only autonomous, thinking selves. We are reminded by the apostle John that Truth is ultimately and completely revealed in a person–”The Word (logos) became flesh and dwelt among us”–and it is as a result of this person that we come to know anything that is worth knowing at all.

Does your faith ever feel overly-quantified? Have the doctrines that define your faith ever started to feel less like proclamations of our savior Jesus Christ, and more like a laundry list of lifeless rules and annotations? Maybe it’s time to step back and reclaim the mystery and personal relationship that lie at the heart of Christianity.

Joseph’s life was filled with evil actions that he had no control over. His brother’s—jealous of their father’s favor—faked his death and sold him into slavery. Later, he would be falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife of rape and thrown into prison. Joseph had much to be angry about, but he didn’t give into bitterness. Instead, he let God turn his horrible circumstances into something great.
We can learn a lot from how Joseph reacted to each new challenge in his life. At every step of the way he had to make a decision whether to give into the temptation to despair, or to move forward. This devotional from Day by Day points out that holding onto bitterness often ends up hurting us and making us miss out on the good that God has for us:

For many of us, we would sooner withdraw than to seek to find greater purpose in our place. We victimize ourselves and consider ourselves deserving of the bitterness we harbor, all the while ignoring how the bitterness is only hurting us and making matters worse. We turn our entire situation inward and grow more angry with each passing day, and then we convince ourselves that no one could possibly understand, and that no one is worthy of identifying with the pain we have felt. Granted, the pain was real and the hurt very personal. But, the bottom line is that we have a choice as to what that pain and hurt becomes. It can either be evil that remains evil—or it can be turned around by God to bring something that is good.
There is so much in this world meant for evil, and there is so much we will suffer as a result of that evil. But there is a God who is far greater, and there is a potential for good to be brought out from all things. We do not have to allow the evil to hurt us to the point of permanently stealing our joy. We do not have to allow the evil to imprison us in an eternal withdrawal and disillusionment. There is a victory that can come out of the worse circumstances, and a joy that can radiate from a wounded heart. All because God can take what some mean for evil, and use it to accomplish greater things.

Are you holding onto bitterness? What would it take for you to let go of it and trust God?

Grilled Chicken Recipes

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Make Holiday plans and Invite family and friends to come over and create something special that the whole family will love.  They would be amazed at the delicious recipes that you have chosen to prepare, that makes the holidays even more special.  Try your hand and become creative this holiday, your family and friends will be surprised at what you can accomplish.

The Holidays are so filled with many recipes that makes being re-united with family memorable.  We all gather around the table in prayer and giving thanks for the protection,love.strength that the family has been blessed with.