Do you remember the house you were brought up in? Do you remember it looking this run-down? When I lived in my home in Weleetka, Oklahoma, it was not this run-down. When I saw what it looked like about three decades after I lived in it, I brooded over it for awhile. There were good memories, and there were bad memories, but they were a part of my family … my past … my being. It was sad.
Continue reading Brooding Over the Past?
“In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as [it is] in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.” Matthew 6:9-12
Our Father in heaven, You have blessed us by looking at us as Your children. We honor Your name and ask that You cause Your name to be revered throughout the heavens and upon earth. We ask that Your kingdom reign in our lives and that our will is transformed into Your will on earth. You are our Provider; give us our daily needs, both spiritually and physically. Continue reading From Debt to Forgiveness
Jesus beaten. Jesus nailed. Jesus suffering. Jesus forgiving. Jesus saving. Jesus providing. Jesus forsaken. Jesus thirsty. Jesus paid. Jesus died. Jesus pierced. Jesus entombed.
Good Friday.
Hiding in the Light reveals the life of one young Muslim woman as God takes her by the hand and leads her through the valley of the shadow of death in the presence of her enemies and ushers her into His pure Light.
God worked in a child’s life, and she trusted that He would protect her and keep her whatever came her way. With each trial, God proved Himself to her, and her faith grew to an uncommon depth.
Rifqa Bary leaned on Scripture in times of trials and terror.
“The LORD will give strength unto His people; the LORD will bless His people with peace.” Psalm 29:11
Bary pursued freedom … freedom from abuse and freedom to worship God. “Jesus is freedom and forgiveness, hope and love, peace and purpose, plain and simple.”
With God’s help, she came to know the freedom to forgive.
May you know the healing that comes with the freedom of forgiveness, hope, love, peace, and purpose that comes only through a deep faith in Jesus.
This book is an inspiring testimony of God reaching into an unlikely person’s life and using that person to capture the world’s attention and challenge an easy-faith approach to Christianity.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for my honest review.
Father, thank You so much for Riqfa Bary and her faithfulness to Your Word and leading. Thank You, for the brave Christians who helped her as You sent them to You. Thank You for Your guidance as you led everyone in Your will. Father, we pray for Riqfa and other young women like her. Fill them with Your Presence. Thank You, Father, for this inspiring story. We love you.
“Please forgive, I beg you, the transgression of your brothers and their sin, for they did you wrong.”’ And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. …
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. Genesis 50:17-20
Dreamed of the future
Thrown into a pit
Sold in slavery
Accused of rape
Forgotten in prison
Remembered in the palace
Advised because of the dream
Elevated to authority
Destined for preservation
Forgave in love
Healing in family
Foreordained by God.
When your life seems out of control, think of Joseph and thank God that He is in control. Like Joseph, through your trials, you may preserve the life of one or the lives of many. Only God knows now.
Father, thank You for Your plans for our lives. Thank You for using our troubles to work good for others. Thank You that in our weaknesses, Your power is manifested. Give us the grace to forgive others as You have forgiven us. We love You Lord!
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’; or to say, ‘Get up, and pick up your pallet and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the paralytic, “I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home.” Mark 2:9-11
Jesus meets us where we are when we come to Him. He told the paralytic that His sins were forgiven. That’s what the paralytic needed to address first.
Jesus also knew what the teachers of the Law were thinking … only God has authority to forgive sins. They were right.
Jesus met their thinking with a question:
Which is easier, to forgive or to heal?
A former guard at the Ravensbruck concentration camp where Corrie Ten Boom and her sister had been held approached her after she spoke at a Munich church:
I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein,’ again the hand came out—’will you forgive me?’“ …
Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘… Help!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’ …
‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’
“For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then”
Corrie Ten Boom chose to lift her hand towards the man. She also chose to pray, asking God to give her the emotion of forgiveness that she could not stir up within her. God met Corrie Ten Boom where she was when she took action to forgive as the Word of God commands. At that moment, I believe that Corrie Ten Boom was healed of her past hurts, as God’s intense love coursed through her veins.
Which was easier for Corrie Ten Boom to do, speak about forgiveness in a Munich church or to lift her hand to her former guard?
Jesus came to teach, to heal, to disciple His followers and ultimately to die on the cross, taking on the wrath of God as payment for the world’s sins–my sins, your sins–so that we could obtain forgiveness.
Jesus chose to allow sinful men to beat Him, to scourge Him, to nail Him to the cross. As Jesus hung on that cross, He took on the sins of those who lived before Him, the sins of those who lived in His time, and the sins of those who would live in the future. Jesus chose to pay the consequences of those sins by taking on the wrath of His Father. He paid the price for the world’s sins, for my sins, for your sins.
Which was easier for Jesus to do … heal the paralytic or hang on the cross and become sin for the paralytic?
His question was an either/or question to the crowd in a Capernaum house that day. Jesus chose to heal the paralytic to demonstrate His power over the world’s natural laws, and He chose to forgive the paralytic’s sins to demonstrate the power of the Son of Man, the One who paid the price for sin, the One who brought forgiveness to man.
My prayer for you:
Merciful Father, may we understand the cost of our sins and the depth of Your love. We do not understand that kind of sacrifice, a sacrifice that necessitated Jesus becoming our sins, a sacrifice of You pouring out Your wrath upon Your own dear Son. All because You desire to be with Your children for eternity. What an awesome God You are! We fall down at Your feet and glorify Your name!
What choices are you making to forgive others?
What healing are you experiencing from that forgiveness?
