If hurricanes bring us together—Just Imagine what Christians praying could do!

I pray every morning for all those in authority in our country. Why do I do this? Because it is how the Lord instructs us to begin our prayers. Before I pray for anything else or anyone else, this Word brings into focus what is of most importance. It doesn’t matter what else I’m asking of the Lord, if I don’t live in a Godly Nation, my life will not be the same.

Every day the possibilities of America becoming even further away from the principles and faith that it was established upon is growing. As I prayed this morning, I thought about all those in authority who are Christians. Did they get up this morning and start their day in prayer? Are they asking God to help them take the responsibility they have been given to govern this country seriously? And even more, do they realize that they cannot do it without God’s help? But I couldn’t stop there. This is what God has to say to all of us who are Christians.

2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

So, this morning I asked myself, what if every Christian no matter where they are or what they are doing this morning, would stop, turn their total attention on God, and come together and pray—what would God do?

He's already told us what He would do. The question is what will we do concerning this instruction in the Word?

We’ve just seen four major hurricanes sweep through our states. And because people come together in times of need to support one another, then what if Christians were to come together to do the most beneficial thing, we as Christians could do for our country?

PRAY—act upon our faith and do what God says to do and see then what He will do. There have been other times when Christians have gathered as one unit and prayed together. Maybe because of the serious state of chaos our country is in right now, we will do it again. I think we are standing at a crucial point in the history of America. 

I close this posting with my first line—Imagine what we could do if we all came together and prayed.

I bless this wonderful Nation we live in.

I bless you.

 

There’s no GOOD hurricane—certainly not Milton.

I have been in North Florida for five months and have been concerned about three hurricanes. Two of them came right through where I live. Milton’s path took its toll on the middle of the state.

Once again, we wake to the devastation wind and waves can do to the landscape. What took years to develop is destroyed in a matter of hours or minutes. The most precious loss is that of lives. There is nothing good about that loss or any loss.

It always leaves me with a deep sadness that I can’t even put into words when I watch the coverage of the possessions of people that they worked to acquire now sitting alongside the road. It’s heartbreaking. I have been through many hurricanes and for some reason, I have been spared what these dear souls are experiencing. The most I have had to endure is the loss of power for several days. Times like these make you look at life in a whole new light.

While still being alive is of the utmost blessing, having to stand and survey at the moment everything you own in this world floating around your feet has to be a close second.

I always utter these same words, “How does anyone survive the loss? Where do you even start?” And then I can’t even imagine what these people are going through.

I’ve said to others while watching these events unfold, that I would hope with all my heart that anyone who woke up to their lives having been spared such tragedy would be grateful! I hate to have lost everything and think that some people who didn’t even have a disruption of anything weren’t being anything but grateful.

And yet, today there will be people who will complain about the smallest, most stupid inconvenience. These people who have been affected would give their right arms to have their lives back intact.

I am thankful this morning that my life is intact in every way. I’ll go about today and days moving forward being cautious about uttering a single word of complaint.

My prayers are with those from the two other hurricanes as well and now Milton who are still trying to piece their lives back together.

As a Christian I take my heart to the Lord and am reminded that the Word doesn’t say that ALL things are good—clearly, they are not.

But what it does say is that it gives us the hope that in whatever situation we find ourselves that God will take it and WORK it together for our good.

I’ve had other events in my life that I have found great comfort in this Word. I hope that the world will be kind and gentle with the feelings of those who have lost everything.

I hope those of us who know the Lord and our lives have been spared will be thankful today and lift those less fortunate up in prayer.

I bless you.

  Hurricane Helene

I’m sitting in North Florida right now awaiting Hurricane Helene. It’s strange to look out my second-floor window at the trees across from me that are barely moving. It is an overcast grey day but other than that it looks like any other normal rainy Florida day.

If it weren’t for the barrage of weather reports one would never know what is looming just miles away. A storm with a magnitude of over 120 mile-an-hour angry winds accompanied by a deluge of water ready to be dumped upon our coastline is imminent.

We know that it’s coming. It will not be a surprise to anyone once it reaches our state.

It’s making me think about the proverbial calm before the storm right this moment or other times in my life when there was an approaching personal storm that I didn’t see coming. Life has a way of doing that to all of us. The last one I went through was health-related. But as you can see—I’m still here.

I weathered the storm of a year’s worth of winds and rain assaulting my body. As we often view the results of the aftermath of hurricanes, there is always widespread damage, and the landscape is sometimes permanently altered.

Life events that come upon us unawares can also leave us permanently altered, but they can also leave us better for their coming. That’s my case. I learned about the close abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. I knew His voice and had experienced His comfort numerous times before. But there’s an even closer awareness one experiences in times of complete dependency.

I’m a needy person. I admit that with no shame. I understand the Word in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 where Paul says that his weakness is really his greatest strength. I know that might sound confusing but until you experience it personally it does sound like a contradiction.

There’s nothing like waking up in the middle of the night feeling so overwhelmed that you can hardly breathe, and the Holy Spirit softly comforts you enabling you to fall back to sleep. The truth is that no matter if we are facing an external weather-induced storm or a personal physical, mental, or emotional storm that seems that it will overtake us—there is a place of refuge in God.

Few people know that until something hits their life. Some people will never take advantage of the reality of a loving God who longs to embrace their life. I don’t know what their thoughts could be to turn down the promise of Eternal life and the comforter coming to abide within us.

But sadly, the landscape of Florida and other states will be altered in a few short hours. And there will be reports of people who didn’t take this storm seriously and suffered loss, some even their lives.

My viewers are few, but I still feel the need to offer a lifeline that is sure and secure. May God watch over Florida today and protect all that call upon His name.

I bless you

 

 Muddy Faith

This might sound like a strange thing to compare your faith in the Lord with—mud.

But that’s where mine was attached to when I went through my health issue over two years ago. I wish that I could say that I had the “Just speak the Word,” kind of faith but I’m not there.

But thank God that even if we can’t have faith so strong to just believe the Word of healing over our lives, we still can be healed. 

That was my path to healing. The Lord spoke to me very clearly that I was to trust Him and that he would overrule all the systems of the world on my behalf. I held to the example of Jesus putting mud on the eyes of the blind man and telling him to go to the pool of Siloam and wash it off. This man had to walk a distance in faith to receive his healing.

I believed that I was healed the minute the Lord spoke to me the night my issue started. But I had to walk to my pool of healing. I believe that it was due to the Lord knowing my level of faith.

I want to encourage anyone reading here, that God knows where you are in your faith. He also knows if you haven’t yet accepted the Gift of salvation through believing in the Blood of Jesus who died for your sins and have asked Him to come into your life as Lord and Savior.

Of everything I could post here, that’s the greatest thing I can offer you. If you are alive and breathing, it doesn’t take a great deal of common sense on anyone’s part to know that the world is in a mess. I haven’t known a time like this in my seventy-five years that I woke up every day wondering what tragic event had happened overnight. It would be alarming if it wasn’t for my trust in the Lord. Even if it’s a muddy faith.

God loves us so much that He lives within us at the level of faith we have. He spoke something to my spirit the other day while I was praying about the current matters at hand that really made me stop and think about what He said.

I had read a devotional about not giving up on prayer. Even when it doesn’t seem that God is working it doesn’t mean that He isn’t. This scripture came to mind. 2 Timothy 2:13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful (true to His word and His righteous character) for He cannot deny Himself.

God spoke very softly to me, “I have too much invested in you to give up on you; not that that will ever happen anyway.”

Maybe you don’t believe that you can have a real conversation with Almighty God. I know, it’s an amazing thing to even think about. But that’s the mystery and beauty of knowing God as your Savior, Friend, Lord, and Lover of your soul.

I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t accept this incredible gift of God. But sadly, many won’t.

If you are interested in reading about my Muddy Faith. You can buy a copy here.

I bless you.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2SCNWCX?ref_=ast_author_ofdp

Ever been in a boat on a lake?

You might answer yes to the title question but if you read further, the question isn’t finished yet.

And the dark clouds have gathered quicker than you expected, and you are in the middle of the lake open to the elements?

I have been in such a situation. We had gone fishing early in the morning. The sky was showing off its beautiful Florida dawn colors. The lake was like glass.  We had hot coffee in each of our cups and headed our small boat out across the lake. It was a picture-perfect day.

Our anticipation of having a good day fishing was the only thing on our minds. We anchored near a clump of low-hanging tree branches and cast in the first of many worms. Within seconds, I had pulled in a beautiful largemouth bass. My excitement was evident. I’d learned how to cast a perfect cast under the branches. The bass were bedding, and they hated to have anything invade their beds.

We trolled casually around the edge of the lake getting further from the boat ramp. Because the situation was so advantageous to fishing we lost sight of the clouds gathering over our heads. I glanced up a time or two but because the fishing had taken my entire attention off those slightly darkening clouds, I missed the still small voice within me cautioning us to begin to slowly make our way back toward where we had parked the truck.

Calamity often strikes us quickly. Sometimes we have warnings but most of the really devastating events in our lives come out of the blue. A very appropriate description of our fishing trip.

One minute the sky was blue and inviting and the next it had quickly darkened, and the wind had begun to whip up around our boat. It became apparent that we might be in trouble.

Our small outboard motor was doing its best to get us back to shore. I knew that we were in trouble. Why hadn’t I kept my eye on the clouds around us? I had seen them getting a bit dark, but my mind was so fixed on fishing that I ignored the clouds changing.

Sure enough, the wind grew stronger pushing against us as we crossed the open lake. Halfway across, those luminous dark clouds unzipped, and a torrent of rain began to sting our faces. Streaks of lightning zig-zagged a few hundred feet from the lake.

I prayed. I really prayed. Not one of my daily, “thank you for all your blessings” type of prayers. I pulled out the deep prayers I’d prayed over my lifetime when I not only was in the midst of darkness, but I had seen it coming kind of prayers.

There’s a difference between “saying we know God” and KNOWING God. And because there is such a lifestyle, you can readily see it in others.

There’s something about seeing that glint in someone’s eye and hearing the strength of conviction in their voice when they AMEN to what you have just said. It’s encouraging, unlike Elijah who thought he was the only one when you see others share your faith.

I pray that you are one of those people who don’t just give lip service to knowing about God. I pray that you truly know Him by having a rich trusting relationship with the King of Kings. That you hear His voice and obey His instructions. So that when He says, “ head to the shore,” you will listen.

I bless you.

 It’s already done.

Note: this is a little long but please read to the end.

This is an amazing scripture. First, read it slowly and let it sink in. Maybe even read it a couple of times before you go on.

“I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers!” – Isaiah 65:24 

Reading this today I was taken back to an incident in my life that I’ll share with you here. First, I’ll give you a little background.

From the moment my mother knew that she was going to have another child and told my father—still in the womb—my life started down a path, not of my choosing. Upon hearing the news, my father spoke these words. “I don’t want another child. You could get rid of it. You could abort it. They do things like that.”

Because I’ve lived with the consequences of those words spoken over my life, no one can tell me otherwise. My father’s words went into my mother and landed in me. I came into this world with a death wish for my own life. From the earliest moment I can remember I hated myself. I found nothing good, no redeemable quality about me and certainly didn’t have any hope of ever seeing myself deserving to live.

Therefore, every moment of every single day I lived without hope of seeing the next five minutes. Do you know what that is like? You watch the world making plans for vacations, or having a five-year plan or where they would see themselves in ten years—I couldn’t see myself being here in the next five minutes. I even acted on those feelings and took the internal threat seriously one day and it failed. As you see, I’m still here.

But it wasn’t enough just to have failed to take my own life—something had to change. When I realized that I had failed and was still facing everything I wanted to get away from, the depression and self-loathing were even greater. What was I to do now? The next part that I feel I must share with you if I’m going to be completely honest is that I was a Christian at the time.

So how did this happen? Where was God? I’d accepted Him as my savior. I was walking in a newness of life. I was going to church regularly. I was reading my Bible. My life had drastically changed. I did see significant changes. I wasn’t the same person I had always been. So why this?

When the Holy Spirit comes into us at the moment of rebirth we step into a lifestyle that is so foreign to us. It’s as if we have been dropped down into another country not knowing the language, or the customs, and certainly don’t know where to go or what to do.

This is what stepping into the Kingdom of God is like. It’s so totally different than how we have been living since the moment we came into this world. The good news is God already knew this would happen. He knew that what He would ask us to do now that we took the first step would be utterly impossible for us to do. Seems strange, doesn’t it?

Why would God ask us to do things, even give us commandments to do certain things, knowing that we couldn’t do them? Doesn’t seem like a kind thing to me. There are so many promises about spiritual weapons that we use on the outside of us but what I want to express in this posting is that we need to examine not the attacks that come to us from the outside but the internal war that is already within us.

But, here is the even better news—He gave us the Holy Spirit abiding within us to DO everything God asks through Him. The Word says that the Holy Spirit is sent to be our helper. Comforter. Guide. Teacher. And most of all to tell us exactly what He hears the Father saying and relay it to us. Whew, what a relief. We don’t have to go it alone anymore in this world. We don’t have to try and figure out life. So my next question is why then do we keep trying to navigate life on our own even when we have the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us?

That was the introduction, now I’ll get to the example. Because I never saw a future this meant that I never planned for anything. I lived within every day. I was raising a child by myself and worked tirelessly every day just to make ends meet.

I had a car that looked and ran like it wouldn’t make it back into my driveway. It had reached a point where I didn’t know when I would get in it, and it was done for. I was lying on my mother’s couch feeling so overwhelmed with life anyway that having to even think about getting another car was catastrophic. I was literally physically ill thinking about it. Even my mother noticed that something was wrong with me. She asked me if I was alright and at the same time I heard the voice I had come to recognize as the Holy Spirit telling me to get up and take my car to a local car dealership.

At that moment I thought I had sincerely lost it. Somehow, with some physical strength enabling me to move off the couch, I stood up and walked out the door. All the way to the car lot I was screaming inside. What was I doing?! Why was I purposely doing this to myself! What did I even think would come from this insane act!?

At this point, everything I was doing had to have been God in me. When I got out of my car and a smiling eager salesman walked out to greet me I almost threw up in his face. Of course, he greeted me with, “Hello, what can I do for you today?”

I wanted to say, “Just shoot me now and get it over with.” But thankfully I didn’t. Somehow the rest of the conversation led me to a Blue 1992 Pontiac Sunbird. Thank God that he only left me just long enough to get the key to it or else I would have bolted and ran.

He handed me the key and told me to take it for a drive and see what I thought. Again in my mind, I was screaming, “WHAT I THINK ABOUT IT?!! I MUST BE CRAZIER THAN I THOUGHT TO BE DOING THIS!!”

But again, I got in the car and found myself driving down the street wondering when the man with the padded jacket would be zipping me up. I remember willing myself not to cry the whole time. To keep what little sanity I had left and just take the car back, thank him, and leave as soon as I could.

When he asked me what I thought, again I had a laundry list of thoughts that should have come spewing out of my mouth. “What I think is that my credit score is zero, I have nothing but a car that is a wreck not worth the dollars’ worth of gas I put in it. My life can't afford this car and why would you or anyone even think to give me a car?” But once again, those words didn’t come out. Instead, he led me into his office, and I sat down like a bag of rocks.

I’d been through this humiliation many times before. Trying to get a small loan from loan officers who lean back in their chairs, tapping a pencil against the desk and finally telling me that they are sorry, but they can’t or won’t loan me a dime. Getting up and slinking out of the bank once again seeing what you already feel about yourself—you are nothing and never will be worthy of anyone ever giving or doing anything for you.

As he tapped on his calculator at this point I was sinking even further beneath the waves of total humiliation and despair. Why was I doing this to myself? WHY? Hadn’t I suffered enough already?

His next question must have shocked me back to the moment when He asked me what year my current car was. It’s a wonder I could remember. The conversation went on and when he reached for his phone I knew that the final knife was about to be thrust into my heart. He was calling to check on my credit. Why I didn’t burst into flames at that moment or fill his office with insane laughter had to only be the Holy Spirit lovingly controlling me.

This is what happened next. He asked the secretary to come in, he asked me for my keys, he asked me if I had anything in my car that I needed to get out, and finally told the secretary to tell the mechanic in the back to get the 1992 Pontiac detailed for Miss Todd.

I thought, “What is this man doing? Has he gone nuts? Doesn’t he know who I am?” I’ll spare you any further anticipation. Within the next ten minutes, I had signed my name, we had exchanged keys, he walked me outside, shook my hand, and thanked ME for doing business WITH him!

God had gotten me off the couch and now he had seated me in a new car and helped me drive it off the lot. I must have come to my senses by then because I kept looking in the rearview mirror thinking that at any moment the salesman would realize what he had done and was sending the police after me.

When I pulled back into my mother’s yard and shut the car off. I heard the Holy Spirit. “Susan, I had already told that man to give my child a car.”

Now you might have read this lengthy posting and I truly hope you have. This happened to me. Every word of it is true. I lived through this. I experienced this loving faithful act of God in my life. And this isn’t the only time.

As unimaginable as it seems that God would already answer our prayers even before we pray them is beyond the scope of understanding.

He loves us so much. He longed so much to care about his creation that He came in human form in His Son Jesus.

It’s humbling when it finally hits us that God really is Good. He really does care about every one of us. That’s means—YOU also.

I always want to leave you with a blessing. But my blessing is nothing compared to how much God wants to bless you. But I’ll add mine anyway.

Bless you.

There are Giants in their Land

I don’t think If I lived to be one hundred years old I would ever not go through times of dealing with personal Giants. By that, I mean the things that come into all of our lives that we have to deal with.

Disappointment is one of my biggest giants. Right on the flipside of that is discouragement when things take a turn for the worse in my life. Things that in the back of my mind I knew might happen but hoped that they didn’t.

One of my giants involves a friendship that has gone haywire many times before and yet God keeps resurrecting it over and over. Maybe you have that friend that you love with all your heart, and they keep disappearing from you. I’m a very hands-on kind of gal when it comes to my friends. I text, email daily thoughts, reach out when they have gone silent, and then…Wham! My heart gets a punch that I don’t see coming. I should know by now how it goes but if you are like me you keep thinking, “This time it won’t happen!” And yet it does.

I have to learn to get my cry out of the way and settle back down so I can hear from the Lord. He already knew that this was going to happen again, so He was not caught unaware. I’m the one that feels blindsided.

Ugh! This flesh of mine of just too sensitive for this world. My heart hurts for days, and I have to keep bringing my hurt feelings back for the Lord to apply the Balm of Gilead on it once again.

Today when the problem arose again I ran to the Word! I have to. I can’t let a lot of time go between having the Lord rescue me or I suffer for far too long.

I sat and listened to a Charles Stanley message that came to my attention (it was the Holy Spirit leading me) and it couldn’t have been more perfect.

It came from the book of Numbers the 13^th and 14^th chapters. He began talking about how the children of Israel were knocking on the door of the promised land when the report came of giants being in the land. Of all the spies that went into the land only two, Joshua and Caleb gave a good report. All the rest spewed fear into the people and they became afraid. They began to murmur and complain and cry about wishing that they had stayed in Egypt. EGYPT!!! They had just cried to be delivered out of their life there under all the brick building and suffering and God had heard and here they were now ready to go into a land of milk and honey with God’s promise of going before them and taking care of them.

It’s easy to judge Old Testament characters but when we do, we are no different. I have to admit that right in the middle of being so incredibly happy with moving here into my promised land and seeing my giants, I fell prey to the same humanness. Maybe I should have stayed in Ohio.

Then I snapped myself out of it and ran for the Word. What am I thinking? God is the one who brought me here. He opened the door miraculously, answered one prayer after the next, and here I sit.

One other thing Dr. Stanley said that they neglected to do was to remember everything God had already done for them. I need to have my head examined if I forget even one of the amazing ways in which God has already taken care of me over the years. The fact that I am still alive these two years since my health issue in itself is nothing but a HUGE miracle!

Dr. Stanley went on to say that the fearful report of the other spies not only hurt them but hurt all the other people. So much so that it caused them to wander in the wilderness for forty years and they didn’t get to go into the promised land when they were standing right on the edge of it.

Boy, this Word hit me exactly where I needed it to today. He closed with this other scripture that he said he has lived with since he began to preach.

Joshua 1:9 Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord, thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

If I believed in tattoos I’d have this tattooed on my arm so I could look at it every day; instead, I’ll opt to just print it out and tape it on my desk.

I’m sitting in Florida because this is where I know I belong. I need the grace and help of the Holy Spirit to weather the attack of the giants and continue to trust God. He’s not going to leave or forsake us just because of a few giants. Maybe the giants in your life are screaming at you too and threatening to destroy you but God has already, through Jesus, given us the victory. We just need to keep standing and trusting God.

Giants today…POOF! Gone tomorrow.

I hope this blesses any reader who comes by directed by the Lord whose heart is under attack. Please ponder what you have read, take it into your heart, and stand strong. God has not forsaken you or me; we need to remember this.

I bless you.