God's Roadmap

Now may the Lord Jesus Christ and our Father God, who loved us and in his wonderful grace gave us eternal comfort and a beautiful hope that cannot fail, encourage your hearts and inspire you with strength to always do and speak what is good and beautiful in his eyes (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17 TPT).


Sunday, August 28, 2016

10 Things You Should Do For Disaster Preparedness

by Barbara Latta

Recent flooding in Louisiana has brought to light once again the importance of being
Flooding damages homes and vehicles.
prepared for any kind of emergency.

Thousands of residents had damage to homes and vehicles who did not live in a flood plain. They had no flood insurance because they did not see the need for the coverage. We can see now how helpful a plan covering water damage would have alleviated so much financial ruin.

In the event of a disaster that does not require leaving the home, you may be living for days or weeks without electricity. Pre-planning can avoid scarcity and empty shelves. If homes do not have electrical power, neither will the stores, banks, ATM’s or gas stations.

The following steps can be a start in the preparation process:

Propane stoves are good backup cooking.
  1. Review insurance policies on homes, vehicles, and personal property.
  2. Store a supply of bottled water. Calculate how much you would need for your entire family, including pets, for at least one month. Don’t forget you will need water for washing clothes and yourself at some point.
  3. Keep your vehicle as full of fuel as possible at all times. If your entire community is evacuating, gas lines require long waits. Also, if there is no power, gas pumps will not work.
  4. Put a first aid kit in your vehicle along with flashlights, a blanket or two, and a small compressor for low tires.
  5. Try to keep an amount of cash on hand in a safe, but easily accessible place for you. If ATM’s don’t work, neither will credit card machines in stores.
  6. Pre-packaged food in sealed containers is available for purchase at many outlets. Buying a few month’s supply of this type of nourishment can give you what you need in the event stores are over-run with a stampede of panicky people. These packages only require adding water and could be prepared on an outdoor grill or campfire.
  7. If you have a propane grill or fireplace, keep the fuel levels as high as possible. Extra tanks of fuel for the grill is a good idea. Propane lanterns are safer than candles, last longer and produce brighter light. Also, small propane stoves serve as backups.
  8. Buy a generator.
  9. Refill medications as often as possible to have extra supplies available.
  10. Pack a container such as a large plastic foot locker and keep important papers such as passports, birth certificates and other irreplaceable or hard to replace items inside. Pack your extra medications, water, food, flashlights, and medical kits. The entire container could then be picked up and taken with you if you had to leave in a hurry.

We never know what awaits us in the future and proper planning can save us a lot of headaches and pain. Most of the time we do not think of having emergency items stored away until it is too late to do so.

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What ideas could you add to this list? Are you prepared?

Sunday, August 21, 2016

6 Foundations for Intimacy with God - Week Six, How God Sees Me

by Barbara Latta

This is the sixth and final week of the series on Foundations for Intimacy with God.

We have explored The Love of the Father, Our Spiritual Make-up, Our Identity, God’s Character and our Spiritual Authority. Today we will find out about God’s view of us.

We are gems in the kingdom of our heavenly Father.
The most common view of God is of an overbearing, club wielding being ready to pounce at the first sin anyone commits. We usually try to please God by doing the right things or making up for the bad we did. As we have already seen in other posts, relationship with God does not depend upon our actions, fellowship is possible because of what Jesus did.

Who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before time began (II Timothy 1:9).

When we realize that God sees us the same way He sees Jesus, we will get a new vision of ourselves and self-centeredness will fall away. We will not be sensitive to offense from others because we have become aware of how important we are to God. Things other people do to us won’t matter anymore because we are gems in the kingdom of our heavenly Father.

And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one (John 17:22).

We are one in Christ and have become like Him.

Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world (I John 4:17).

When we see ourselves as God sees us, we will see others differently and be able to respond to their needs the way God does.

Obtaining God’s point of view about ourselves takes time because we are conditioned to
Christ's death and resurrection makes us valuable.
believe what the world feeds us through books, movies, news, talk shows and other people’s opinions. Dwelling in His presence and feeding on His Word will bring our mind into subjection with His. Christ’s death and resurrection makes us valuable when we accept Him into our heart. To disagree with God’s view of us would be to treat the sacrifice Jesus made as insufficient.

I want to agree with God’s opinion. How about you?


Join the conversation.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

6 Foundations for Intimacy with God: Week Five, Our Spiritual Authority

by Barbara Latta

Jesus disarmed powers and authorities of hell.
Did you know after Christ died and before He rose from the grave, He went into hell?
Some people don’t realize that He did, but Acts 2:27 says, For you will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will you allow Your Holy One to see corruption (Acts 2:27).

And having disarmed the powers and authorities he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Colossians 2:15).

Before Jesus arose He accomplished what Colossians 2:15 says; He took away the authority Satan had gained when Adam sinned by giving away what God had bestowed on His creation.

While the demons and powers of hell thought they had won because Jesus died, they may have been having a party. But Jesus rose up, stripped Satan of the keys of death and hell, and came up out of the grave.

Before He ascended Jesus told his disciples, All authority has been given to me, therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and of Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:28).

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7).

Jesus gave us the authority to resist the devil, but most of us are not using what Jesus died to give us.

We have the authority to talk to our circumstances and tell evil influences to leave.
God's armor belongs to us through the cross.
When we stand on the Word of God, the devil cannot cross the blood line of Jesus. His blood cleansed us from sin, but also brought us victory over evil.

We don’t have to sit still and let the devil run over us as if we can do nothing about what is happening.

We, as Christians, are the body of Christ on this earth. Satan was defeated at the cross, but he can still try to deceive people by keeping them blinded to what the word says. When we take our authority we put him in his place and he has no power over us. This requires action on our part. We must use the armor of God and remind the evil one his place is under our feet.

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Share your thoughts about the authority you have as a believer.


(All scripture references are taken from the New King James Version of the Bible.

Sunday, August 7, 2016

6 Foundations for Intimacy with God: Week Four - God's True Character

by Barbara Latta

The Bible gives us two covenants.
The Bible gives us two covenants God made with mankind. The first which we refer to as the Old Testament, or Covenant, and the second is the New Testament.

Despite the fact that the New Testament tells us of Jesus’ life, death, burial and resurrection which gives us victory over sin, many people still refer back to the Old Testament when approaching God.

Hebrews 8:7 tells us, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.” The old covenant was a shadow of things to come and the new covenant is the fulfillment. That is not to say that we need to throw out Genesis to Malachi. These accounts are given for our learning and admonition (1 Corinthians 10:11).

But when we think God is still dealing with our sin and behavior the same way He did during Old Testament times, we are not approaching our heavenly Father using the power Jesus died to give us.