Unstained

“Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God is this: to visit the orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” James 1:27

We see it all the time: people who claim to believe in Christ but are numb and bored with Jesus, fading into the world with nothing that sets them apart.
Go and sit in a public place that collects young people and watch. Can you tell which ones are believers? Did you know that about 82% of high school teens claim to be Christians? Why don’t they stand out from among the rest? To be truthful, I can’t tell a difference between the lost and the saved. What’s wrong with us? We all look so…stained by the world.

Polluted and captivated by the world we are.

We have ruined our Christ given clothes of purity, righteousness, and truth, staining them with lust, wickedness, and a lie. Each compromise leaves us a little more dirty, and before we even realize it…we look just like the world. Yes, we fade right in.

But what has God called us to be?

To be separate and clean.

“Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord, and do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters to Me, says the Lord Almighty.” 2 Cor. 6:17-18

We need to come out of the worlds midst and repent of our dirty minds and hearts and be washed clean by God’s forgiveness and faithfulness. (1 John 1:9)

We need to look in the mirror and see if our hearts are stained by the world, and be transformed into the image of a holy and pure God. (2 Cor. 3:18)

We must check and examine our hearts, because the world stains us from the inside out, like a teabag placed in hot water; so slow is the infusion.

Make sure bitterness has not taken root in your heart, or gossip poured forth from it. Guard it at all times or Satan will take it captive.

Let us run to our Father and fall on our face and ask for an unstained life. Let us be separate, let us be clean.

“Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Ps. 51:7
O God give us a clean heart.
Let us be found unstained.

Here Is Love

“By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:9-10

Out of all the loves this world has to offer, no love is like the great love of God.

When earthly love fails, God’s love is unfailing. When earthly love fades, God’s love is everlasting. When earthly love leaves pain, God’s love heals. When earthly love forsakes, God’s love never lets go.

God’s love is not empty words, but demonstrated with action and sacrifice…yes, very great sacrifice. Love had it’s perfect expression among men in the Lord Jesus Christ. Actually, the first use of the word “love” in the Bible is in reference to a father and a son: Abraham and Issac in Genesis 22. In this chapter God is testing Abraham’s love and obedience to Him by asking Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Issac. Abraham was obedient, and God in His great love and knowledge did not require Issac’s life, and greatly blessed Abraham for his love and obedience to God.

And what did God do to show His love for us?

He sacrificed His only Son and payed the price for our sins. Isn’t this a glorious picture? The thing God asked of Abraham to prove his love for God was to sacrifice his son, Issac. God proved His love for us by doing the exact same thing, except God did allow His Son to die - no ram was found caught in the thicket for a substitute, but the blood of the spotless Lamb was shed…for you and me. As Abraham and Issac climbed up Mount Moriah, and little Issac looked up to his father and asked,”Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”, Abraham answered, “God will provide for Himself the lamb of sacrifice, my son.”

And God did provide the Lamb. His name is Jesus.

Feast on God’s great love for you today.

(Romans 5:8, John 3:16, 15:13, Eph. 2:4-5, 5:2, 1 John 3:16)

Our Huge God Cares About You

“Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, “I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself and spreading the earth out all alone.” Isaiah 44:24

What a picture of God’s absolute greatness. He was the One who stretched out the heavens and spread out the earth all by Himself. (Sounds like Someone playing with play-dough!) He made all things. He needed no one’s help, because He is God. He created our massive earth and the never ending skies right by Himself. Wow.

In this verse, God describes Himself as the Lord, our Redeemer, and the One who created you from the womb. That is amazing. To think that this God, our God, created a world and heavens, breathed stars (Ps.33:6), divided a sea and made it stand up in a heap (Ex. 14:21), makes summer and winter (Ps.74:17), created light and darkness (Is.45:7) …. formed you in the womb!

When you were no bigger than your pinkie finger-nail, God was weaving you together and He even knew your name. Doesn’t that make you feel so…special? Loved? Safe?

God is HUGE, but is still intimately involved in the tiniest details of our lives.

A few days ago, my family and I were up at our land enjoying a peaceful afternoon. And as you can see from the picture below, it is a beautiful place to spend an afternoon!



My heart is stirred every time I take in the amazing views around me. My eyes rest in God’s creation far and wide, from the rolling hills that stretch for miles, to the distant mountains, to the valleys so deep no man could replicate. I love to walk through the tall grass and find a place to sit, and just look up. Huge space. Huge God.

And as the sun started to slip away in the tree line, my thoughts were occupied with God and His “biggness”. (like my new word?)

As we prepared to leave Dad realized he had lost his cell phone.

We all began scavenging the 160 acres of pasture and woods (think it’s hopeless, don’t you?) in search for Dad’s much needed cell phone. We spread out to comb through the pastures and as I walked quietly through fields I began thinking again on God. How amazing was it that He, in His greatness, who created the whole world with His words, knew exactly were Dad’s tiny little cell phone was?! And He could guide us to the very place Dad had lost it, if He wanted to.

And He did.

About the time the search party was becoming weary, God allowed Mom to walk right up on it. God knew that it was important to us to find the phone. God knows us, and He knows what is important to us…and He cares. He is amazing! Not just because He showed us where the cell phone was, but because in all things He is teaching us about Himself…if we only listen. He is teaching me to trust in who He is as God, to fully know how powerful and awesome He is…and yet to even trust Him with the smallest details of my life, the silent whispers of my heart. The more I get to know God, the more I trust Him and I pour out my soul before Him.

In my life God has taught me many things, and this is a lesson I won’t forget. God is so big, so great, and yet He cares about every detail of my life. He is intimately acquainted with all my ways. (Ps.139:3) This goes for you too! Don’t ever believe that God is not concerned about the little things in your life. He loves and cares for you so much.

Wow. What a God!

First Day of Autumn

Autumn is my favorite season! So many attributes welcome us after the hot summer; cooler weather, gorgeous fall leaves, harvest time, hot apple cider, the smell of spices, breezy afternoon walks.

Autumn is also a time, for me, of reflecting on the amazing goodness of God. I would like to share with you a beautiful message written by Charles Spurgeon that I love to read when autumn finally rolls around.

“God blesses us richly every hour of every day. When we sleep and we wake, His mercy waits upon us. The sun may leave us a legacy of darkness, but God never ceases to shine upon His children with beams of love. Like a river, His loving kindness always flows with a fullness that is as inexhaustible as His own nature. Like the atmosphere which surrounds the earth and supports the life of man, the benevolence of God surrounds all His creatures.

Rivers are swollen at certain seasons by the rain, and the atmosphere itself is sometimes filled with more fresh, more bracing, or more balmy influences than usual. It is the same with the mercy of God. It has its golden hours and its days of overflowing joy, when the Lord magnifies His grace before the sons of men.

The joyous days of harvest are a special season of favor. The glory of autumn is in the ripe gifts of providence that are abundantly bestowed. It is the mellow season of realization where all before was mere hope and expectation. Great is the joy of the harvest. Happy are the reapers who fill their arms with the liberality of heaven. The psalmist tells us that the harvest is the crowning of the year. Surely these crowning mercies call for crowning thanksgiving!

Let us offer thanks by the inward emotions of gratitude. Let our hearts be warmed, and let our spirits remember and meditate upon the goodness of the Lord. Then, let us praise Him with our lips and magnify His name, from whose bounty all this goodness flows. Let us glorify God by yielding our gifts to Him.”

Wow. This writing warms my heart everytime I read it. Let us remember the goodness of the Lord.

Thirsty?

Is there a thirst in your soul that you cannot seem to quench? A longing for something more? Do you restlessly move from one thing to the next, only to find the state of your soul empty still?

There lived a woman over two thousand years ago that felt this way. Her soul was desperately thirsty, and nothing she did could quench her thirst. She went from relationship to relationship, marriage to marriage, but never felt the satisfaction her heart longed for. Her soul was empty, dry, and dying.

But one day she met the perfect Man. He told her about “living water” and never thirsting again. Could this really be?

“Where do you get this living water?” she asked.(John 4:11) He said He could give it to her. Jesus is the giver of this water.

“…But whoever drinks of the water that I give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” John 4:14

Was her heart singing when she heard these words? Could He be true? Is this what she was looking for?

“Sir, give me this water…” she spoke and believed. He (or she) who believes in Jesus will never thirst. (John 6:35) Jesus was the only One who could give her the water her soul craved.

This story has a happy ending, but the more I am in the world the more I see so many unhappy stories. People live their lives never tasting the living water that only Jesus can give them. We drink of one thing, then another, hoping to quench our thirst, but it leaves us dry and…still thirsty.

“For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Jer.2:13

This scripture pierces my heart! This describes so many (including me!) in this world. We go about searching for satisfaction in all sorts of things, and make for ourselves cisterns, but our cisterns are broken! They can’t hold any water!
And every time we try to satisfy ourselves, we forsake God who is the fountain of living waters!
In this dry and weary land where there is no water our souls thirst for God, our flesh yearns for Him. (Ps.63:1) We are like deer panting for water, for the living God. (Ps. 42:1-2)

Where do you get your water?

Devotion to Jesus

“But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” 2 Cor. 11:3

Everyday, Christians are attacked by the lies of our enemy through our contact with this world. Our minds are a battlefield of victory and defeat, in war over one thing: the object of our devotion.

Satan knows that if we don’t daily renew our minds (Eph.4:23) we become weaker in the battle of putting Christ above all. This was Paul’s concern for the Corinthians in the verse above. He was worried that Satan would deceive us by leading our minds astray from our devotion to Jesus. Satan’s lies are flaunted before our eyes through the Internet, TV, billboards, and by those who are deceived around us. You might have heard some of his lies:

“God won’t make you completely happy…but money can.”

“No one will love you unless you look like her.”

“Go ahead…everyone else is doing it. You wouldn’t want to stand out…you’d look like a freak!”

“Have a little fun now…you’ll go to church on Sunday.”

These are LIES…but everyone is believing them. Don’t be led astray! We all know the story of Adam and Eve, and Eve is used as an example in this verse. Satan deceived her by his craftiness. Many times I have wondered, “Why did she listen to him?! The right answer was so obvious!” The simple fact is she chose to believe Satan over God. How many times do I do that?

Satan is crafty! And he never shows us the consequences, only how much fun it would be right now. He didn’t come up to Eve and say, “Hey, try this fruit, even though God said you shouldn’t. You’ll only end up kicked out of the garden, separated from God and true happiness, have a LOT of pain having children, you and I will hate each other, and I’ll end up killing your kids.” No! He only showed her (lied to her) about how much good and profit (yeah right) this fruit would give her right now. Look at what Eve thought of what he said:

“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from it’s fruit and ate…” Gen. 3:6

She believed his lie and was sorely deceived. Satan led them astray, leaving behind God with a broken heart, and true happiness that only God can give. But, praise God, the story doesn’t end here! God sent His Son and gave us a second chance! And that second chance is simple and pure, believe in Jesus. Be devoted to Him.

Don’t let anything get in the way of your devotion to Jesus. In Him is true happiness and ultimate satisfaction forever.

• Jesus loves you and is the only way to true happiness. He only requires one thing: love Him above all else.

• Satan hates you and is the only way to destruction. He only requires one thing: love him above all else.

Be devoted to Christ.

Give My All To Jesus?

“Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it on His head as He reclined at the table” Matthew 26:6-7

The beautiful story of this woman has long inspired me. When I look at her desperate devotion for Jesus I cannot help but examine my own love for the Lord and be transformed by her example. She came before Jesus with such poverty of spirit, trusting and believing He could wash her clean from her many sins.

“…And standing behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume.” Luke 7:38

If you are like me, you might be wondering, “Ok, this is a wonderful story, but how do Igive Jesus my all? I can’t go down to Simon the leper’s house and physically wipe His feet and cry, surrendering everything I have to Him…can I?”

I would like to share a journal entry with you that I wrote about a year ago.

“This morning I closed myself in my room and began reading the Word and praying. As I read, my heart slowly opened and I began to intimately worship God…it was life changing!
I surrendered everything to God; my life, my future - anything I was holding back from God I let Him have permenately.
God is so near…so real!
I can now say with an honest heart that whatever God wants for me, now and in my future, I am content with and will rejoice in His will.
My heart is overflowing with a deep, genuine love for Jesus.”

It is possible, my friend, to fall at the feet of Jesus and give Him your all. I know this with all my heart. Jesus is forever within your reach…and He knows the deepest places of your heart.
What He gave to the woman with the alabaster vial He made available for you.

“Then He said to her, “Your sins have been forgiven”…”Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Luke 7:48.50

Give Jesus your all.
Go in peace.