Peace in the Valley

Trust


It takes Time to develop.

It requires Resting your soul on the source of your life.

It means knowing you are Under the care of someone greater than you.

It means your life is Sustained.

It means total Commitment.

Only then can you have peace in the valley of life.

The Filter of Grace

I have already talked about hearing God through the filter of religion. Man-made rules and traditions limit what God can do through us and for us because we don't hear what He is really saying. We listen through tainted spiritual ears.

Grace is God's unlimited supply of love, healing, prosperity, wholeness, mercy, and deliverance. Grace is Jesus.

He is a gift given to us through no effort of ours because we couldn't obtain anything from God no matter how much we tried. Also, because He has given all things of Himself to us, we cannot stop Him from giving. We can only refuse to receive.

God's Word came to us untainted, unfiltered, and eternal. He doesn't change, so what He said to the early church still applies to His church today. His grace is ours so we can live abundant lives and spread His goodness to the world.

Read the Bible as if you have never read it before. Forget about what you learned in Sunday School or heard someone else say over the  years. Start over with a fresh slate.

What do you hear?

Don't Forget To Remember

Have we forgotten the horrors? Have we forgotten the fear? Have we forgotten the threat?

On September 11, 2001, I was attending a ladies Bible study at my church. Someone from the office came in and announced to us that the twin towers had fallen and the Pentagon had been bombed. I immediately left and went home to see if I had missed any phone calls. My husband was in the Navy Reserve at the time and he was stationed in Saudi Arabia. In my mind if the Pentagon had been bombed, then other military installations could have been also.

People were afraid and that week many who hadn't been to church in years, or had never gone before were thronging to centers of worship. But in about two weeks, it all changed.

When it looked as if we were going to survive this, they went back to their routines and decided to let the government save us.

Some blamed God and said, “why did He allow this to happen?” Well, He didn't.

Then how could it happen, you say, if God didn't allow it?

He gives us free choice. He doesn't control us unless we invite Him in to do the controlling. Demon possessed religious fanatics chose to be evil, follow evil, and do evil.

When our government decided to throw God out of all things public they were in effect throwing out our protection. Policies that say, “you can't pray, you can't show a Bible, you can't wear a cross or display a nativity scene,” are telling God we don't want you.

For example, If I walk outside in the rain and put up an umbrella, it protects me from the weather. But if I decide to throw the umbrella away, then look up at the sky, shake my fist, and say, “why are you allowing me to get wet?”, isn't that a little ridiculous?

The same liberals in our government who a few days after the attack stood on the Capital steps and sang in their hypocritical voices, “God Bless America,” are the same ones who now want to embrace Islam, roll out the red carpet, and invite it in. We are told to be tolerant.

Well, you don't make friends with rattlesnakes and expect to not get bitten.

We need to remember September 11, 2001 and not become complacent by closing our eyes again to the threat. We need to remain vigilant, we need to seek God, and we need to remember those who died and those who saved so many.

May God bless you and may God bless America. May we return to our roots and the reason we were founded as a nation. As we do this, we will be the shining light to the world and able to share the blessings God has given us.

Where were you on 9/11 and how has it impacted your life?

Looking Through A Religious Filter

“Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?” Matthew 15:3

It's important for us to use God's Word as the filter for our minds to prevent us from absorbing the negative attitudes of the world. But have you ever thought about how harmful religion can be to your thinking?

Religion? How can that be negative?

We all know there are many different religions in the world each with its own interpretation of how to appease God or in some cases many gods. We don't think about the fact that even Christianity has its “religions”.

When the church (Christ's body) was born after Jesus' ascension, the Bible says they were all of one accord. (Acts 2:1, 2:46, 4:24, 5:12,Philippians 2:2). All through the New Testament the believers all had the same mind set. They were followers of Christ doing what He taught them.

Over the centuries, the devil blinded people and tried to put out the light of the gospel. People stopped believing the truth and replaced it with human thinking and reasoning. But no matter how hard evil tried, the Word of God cannot be snuffed out. Men, such as Martin Luther, came to be enlightened and the traditional teachings passed down for years were questioned. This started the Reformation.

However, men's hearts continue to try to reason and twist the scriptures to make it fit into their mold. Many denominations have formed since the Middle Ages because their founders took a few scriptures out of context and built an entire doctrine on them.

Sometimes generations have passed without anyone questioning whether some belief is really the truth of the Bible. It's accepted because “that is the way we have always done it.”

Or we are told some things passed away with the apostles and it is not for today.

This is how our thinking is filtered by religion. When we accept teaching because it is from a certain denomination or person and not the Word, our thinking is going through a “religious filter”. It is keeping us from hearing what God is actually saying because our minds have been programmed for years thinking that just because a church believes a certain way it must be of God.

To hear God, we need to remove the filter that prevents His truth from being revealed.

Have you had any “religious filters” in your life?

A Holiday for Labor

Most of us enjoy the last holiday of summer with barbecues, shopping, and sleeping late because we don't have to go to work. But why do we have this holiday?

The industrial revolution brought many manufacturing jobs into existence. This caused a lot of abuse in the workforce from long hours, low wages, and unsafe conditions.

This video explains how wage earners changed the face of labor in
America.

 

What does Labor Day mean to you?