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by Lori Henson
The Mystery of a mom’s great love In Order of it all What a Treasure she is indeed, always and forever on call I give her Honor for who she is She Elevates my soul A Rhythm from above
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by Donna Butler
Luke 9:23-24 - Then He said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will save it.” Following Jesus is a daily sacrifice of all that we are…spirit, soul, and body. In past times, the slaying of an animal was given as an offering. Grains, fruits, and incense as well were graciously offered in gratitude as an offering to God. Our Creator set the ultimate example by sending His one and only Son as the Gift of love. Jesus willingly gave all that He was, spirit, soul and body, as a price for all that we are - a spirit controlled by a self-centered, sinful soul, and a flesh-satisfying, flawed body. So to be asked to give Him our filthy, tattered, war-battered vessel for a robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10) and a pure, clean heart (Ezekiel 36:25-27) is a no brainer! We are a spirit, who God created to intimately communicate with Him. He loves us that much! There is nowhere on, above, or below this earth, or in the spiritual realm, that His Spirit can’t reach us (Psalm 139:7-12). Our souls (mind, will, emotions) need direction or they will run-a-muck! Have you ever seen the movie “Inside Out”? It is a hilarious, artistic vision of the reality of our souls. It’s also a sobering reminder of why we need to be led and guided by the directorship of the Holy Spirit. We need a Helper who will speak truth and wisdom (John 16:12-13), a Counselor who teaches us all things pertaining to life and godliness, and a Comforter that intercedes for us. The One who gives us gifts to operate in that benefits the whole Body of Christ. Our bodies are the amazing handiwork of God. Same and different in tandem. We all have organs, bones, blood, skin, etc. All this is orchestrated by individual cells with a spark of our Creator in each one! His breath of life flows through our veins! Yet, each outer covering is a uniquely and expertly crafted piece of art. So, when Jesus says in order to follow Him, we must deny ourselves, He’s talking about making a choice in our souls. A daily decision to allow the Holy Spirit to lead and guide our spirit. Our soul and body must align with the wisdom of the Creator of the universe. To buck up against that kind of logic is to declare that we know better and can do better without His counsel! Let me know how that’s been working for you. Here’s an alternate choice: “In You, O LORD, do I put my trust and confidently take refuge; let me never be put to shame or confusion.” Psalm 71:1 Written by Susan Stedman
Easter means many things to many people. To some, it represents the Earth coming back to life with spring. Many pagans celebrate fertility goddesses with eggs representing new birth. Some put no religious connotation to it at all and just take their kids to Easter egg hunts with no thought to the meaning. Then there are Christians, who have in recent times, begun to call this day “Resurrection Sunday” because it is the day which we celebrate Jesus having risen from his tomb three days after the Crucifixion. I used to wonder why people said three days because if you counted Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon, you got one day, then till Sunday morning, that was about another half day. When I was older, I looked into this question and found an answer. Jewish people counted any part of a day as a whole day, so Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were considered three days. With insatiable curiosity about almost everything, I once spent a day researching historical records that would prove or disprove that Jesus the man actually lived. I was pleasantly surprised at what I found. There were several contemporaries in the time of Christ whose written works still exist. The most important was a first-century Jewish historian (he was not Jewish, he was Roman, he just wrote histories of the Jewish people) named Flavius Josephus. He wrote in his “Testimonium Flavianum” about the reputation of Jesus, whom he called a Jewish wise man. He specifically noted that “Pilate condemned him to a cross but he appeared to them (ones who first came to love Jesus), spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold…” I don’t have room to go into all the others but:
I was satisfied, so I moved on to wondering what I could find about the Tomb of Jesus. There are several spots that have been considered to be the actual Tomb of Christ. The most celebrated and plausible is The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is built not only at the supposed tomb but also over the area called Golgotha. The belief that this is the actual tomb dates back to the fourth century. There is another contender called The Garden Tomb which is a rock-cut tomb in Jerusalem that was unearthed in 1867. It only dates back to the 8th-7th centuries BC. There are three others but not in serious contention, especially since one is in China and they all seem tiny, which would seem to indicate they were not the tomb purchased by a wealthy merchant named Joseph of Arimathea. They all have one thing in common, which is the most wonderful thing I can think of. They are all empty. Let’s look at some other prominent world religious leaders and find out what is known about their burial places:
And a few who claimed they were prophets or messiahs:
So here are my conclusions on the whole matter: There was only one leader who said he would die and return. “I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve.” 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 NLT There was only one who was seen after his death by many with a transformed body. “Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” John 20:11-17 NIV Later, “After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.” 1 Corinthians 15:6-7 NIV There was only one who was seen ascending to Heaven. “After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Acts 1:9-11 NIV There was only one who sent a Comforter/Advocate to care for us until His return. “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” John 14:26 KJV There was only one who said He would return for His people. “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 ESV There was only one who said He would never leave us or forsake us. “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10 ESV For me, there is only one choice. I believe The Only One. Written by Clare Chapman
I asked God, “What are you trying to do in my life?” He answered…“Make you understand that the answer is Me. When you search for meaning and direction I Am your answer. Seek Me with all your heart. You chase after meaningless things. Your affections should be on Me. I Am the one who truly loves you. You go, go, go…when are you going to STOP for Me? Wake up and come to Me. Don’t sleep through life. I Am pure joy and the answer to all you are looking for. I Am the real deal, not your busy life. Slow down and get with Me. You do need refreshing. I Am a well of living water.” God help me. Give me a burning desire for your Word and intimate time with You. Help me to put my relationship with You above all my other relationships. If I spend time with You, I can be a refreshment to many. I can trust You. Written by Donna Butler
Why do we doubt God? Why don’t we trust what He says and actually take it as “the gospel truth”? The world uses that phrase as an idiom, but it is based on what is known to be true. The Gospel is THE Truth. The Word of God, His promises, His declarations have been established through the blood covenant with Jesus Christ. So why are we second guessing the very words that He staked the sacrifice of His one and only Son on? Since the beginning, God has continued to create, renew, restore, and uphold us in His promises! So, is it really God that we doubt, mistrust, and second guess? Or, is it our own selves we don’t have enough confidence in? We doubt our own worth to God, even though He calls us the “apple of His eye” (Psalm 17:8) or that His thoughts of us are more than the grains of sand (Psalm 139:18). And if that’s not enough, we often skip over the very beginning of one of the most quoted verses, John 3:16. “For God so loved the world…”. Let’s just park right there for a minute. God loved (welcomed, to be fond of, to be well pleased, to be contented with) even with all the sin already established before us! He loved! He loved what? The world! All of it! From His very creation and arrangement to the inhabitants which Strong’s defines as “the ungodly multitude”. From the world's affairs to the earthly goods that often draw us away from Him. Yet, He loved us enough to send His Son as a payment for what we so freely take for granted. We also do not trust that we are who He says that we are. Yet, God created us in His image (Genesis 1:27). In 1 Corinthians 2:16, it says that we have the mind of Christ. God trusts us so much that He calls us His temple and sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in us. Would you give a part of yourself to a person that you do not trust? We second guess something that we know in our hearts to be true. We just don’t want to believe or accept that it is actually for us and not just for someone else more deserving. Or we are talking ourselves out of something because of the cost or sacrifice of commitment. Either way, James 1:8 says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Therefore, if we can’t make up our minds, should we expect God to do it for us? And, if He did, would we honor Him for it or rebel like a toddler being told no? This is why God lays it all out before us and allows us to make that choice. So, what is holding back? Regardless of what we’ve been through or going through, God has not and will not change (Psalm 33:11). He will never leave nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). He is our Shepherd, our fortress, our Deliverer, and we also have Jesus as our advocate (John 17:15). He is faithful, loving, gentle, patient, and kind. He is a good, good Father. Let’s take Him at His Word. Written by Susan Stedman
Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis and a famous Austrian neurologist. He regarded God as an illusion and believed that religion should be set aside in favor of reason and science. He noted the likeness between faith and neurotic obsession and called the belief in God a “collective neurosis”. Most people will look at you in a weird way if you even mention hearing voices because in our society today, that is taken as a sure sign of mental illness. Imagine Paul telling his therapist, “And I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, ‘Woe, woe, woe to the inhabiters of the earth!’” Would anyone have taken him seriously in our culture? I have seen street preachers doing the same kind of thing. Do you ever wonder if we’ve missed something important because of the jaded way we think of experiences like this? Many civilizations – past and present – especially the less civilized ones - consider these people holy, not crazy. They were viewed as more aware, closer to the divine, or even touched by the gods. The Lakota Sioux have a word for that kind of holy contrary – heyoka. Their role is to make people see things differently, challenging the norms. It always made me wonder, do these people live in delusional states or could they be experiencing things that are beyond the capacity of normal people? Think about people born with Down’s Syndrome. They are almost always the happiest, most loving, sweetest people you could ever hope to meet. They treat everyone equally with kindness and never think badly about anyone they know. They exude enthusiasm and always trust in the best. Isn’t this the way God has called us all to be? He also says we must be as little children to enter the kingdom. So, does that make them closer to Him? Their obvious difference from us lies in their brains. Because of diminished cerebral functions, they don’t notice all the distractions around them the way we do. They don’t get stuck on “what if’s” because all they perceive is what’s happening “now”. They don’t focus on themselves or their feelings which means they don’t remember wrongs done to them or hold grudges. They don’t ascribe malicious motives to people whom we “normal” people can clearly see as malicious. They show love to all. This is something we could learn lessons from…it’s the epitome of “The Love Chapter”, 1 Corinthians 13. Researchers who look at how our brains process religious beliefs fall into one of two categories. They either hope their findings will help convince people of the validity of their faith, or they are trying to explain away what they call “an embarrassing relic of our past.” Many of the most well-known scientists believed in God, or at least in an intelligent design. In 1956, Albert Einstein stated, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” In 1979, Freeman Dyson, the English American theoretical physicist said, “I believe in the ancient covenant. It is true that we emerged in the universe by chance, but the idea of chance is itself only a cover for our ignorance. I do not feel like an alien in this universe. The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe, in some sense, must have known that we were coming.” Werner Heisenberg, who is considered the father of Quantum Physics, said, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you.” Isaac Newton had no doubts. “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.” At one time, he believed that gravity was caused by the will and spirit of God, not by any material cause. There is one modern physicist who has made a bold statement, standing out from his peers. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist and string theory pioneer, is quoted as, “I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore. To me, it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.” "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse." (Romans 1:18-20) But we are safe. Psalm 25:1 tells us plainly, "No one whose hope is in You will ever be put to shame." Written by Brenda Johnson
In our bedroom are darkening curtains. The curtains do a great job at keeping the light from coming in. Even in midday we can completely darken our room. It’s great because I love to sleep late, so I miss awakening in the early morning light. When I want to nap in the afternoon, I can shut off all light by closing the drapes. As familiar as I am with the layout of my room, once in a while I will get up only to hit my knee against the bedpost. Instead of picking up my feet as I walk, I will on occasionally trip on the throw rug. Worse yet, sometimes on a trip to the bathroom I will reach for the door but find no knob because I am a few feet away from the door and am reaching on the wall. This reminds me that like my darkened bedroom, we live in a world full of darkness. We become used to it and quite familiar with the way things are. Still, we stumble, stub a toe, or fall. Sometimes I reach for my cell phone which I keep near me and use the flashlight app to guide me to the door. We, in our familiarity with this world we live in, forget to use the Light to guide us through while we are here. Jesus is the Light of the world shining in the Darkness (John 12:46). He illuminates the way for us. We are reminded in John 1:4-5 (NIV) “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” No matter how comfortable or knowledgeable we become with this world we live in, life will be difficult to navigate. Furthermore, we will never, without the Light of Jesus in our lives, overcome this dreary and menacing darkness. Jesus is the true Light available to everyone (John 1:12-13). When we believe and receive Him, we become children of God and our path is made clear. No obstacles can change the course for us. He is our “flashlight.” Do not wander through the darkness without the Light. When we do we stumble, stub our toes, go the wrong direction, open the wrong doors, and fall. Let Jesus show you the way from darkness into the Light. Use your “Light App” today. A Lament Poem Written by Clare Chapman
Written by Donna Butler
God’s steadfast love is in everything! From the beginning of time, throughout creation, and even when sparks fly because of friction between any part of humanity/human relationships…HIS steadfast love for us endures forever! So, what is important to you? What stirs your heart or raises your blood pressure? What distracts you? God’s steadfast love still endures forever! He cares about the small things as well as the big things because He is mindful of us (1 Peter 5:7). Fix your frame of focus! There’s nothing that can separate us from God’s love (Romans 8:38-39) because His steadfast love endures forever! Whether we are in the light, as He is in the light, or in the dark times when we need a developing process to bring forth the proper perspective, His steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 139:7-18 is an amazing passage that details how much God has loved us from our mother’s womb. But, verse 7 starts out with; “Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee to escape Your presence?” We could be living our best life or sprawled out in our worst nightmare! Even then, His steadfast love endures forever! We need to stop blaming God for any circumstance we are in! Fix your frame of focus! Whether we are a beautiful blooming plant producing seeds to multiply or a seed that is buried in the dirt with potential to impact the world, it’s His steadfast love that continually waters us. Without Him, we die. Written by Lori Henson A vice removes the grip of grace It steals the empowerment to run this race The wooing and cunning, it draws indeed Planting a dry harvest with a toxic seed This vice completely straps the heart It plays a very strategic part And you run your life without a chance Of finishing in the freedom dance The vice is called ADDICTION undaunted And it longs to live where you can be haunted It tugs and pulls and drives the stake Then lingers like an unwanted drake But, O’ there IS a God who knows Your every trial, need, and woe He longs to lavish His love on you To set you free- He died for YOU! The Lord, He is the God who heals And places you in HIS eternal seal He WILL restore, He WILL deliver And wash you in His ABUNDANT RIVER Give it all to Him dear soul Let Him take His full control He’ll set you free from vices strength And all that has enticed you at length |
About Rays of Light:Whereas most blogs are from one writer, these posts are from a variety of authors and styles. These scribes all attend our Kingdom Writers group. We pray our passion to share God's love through writing will encourage you today!
kingdom WritersOur writers group meets every 4th Tuesday Night at 7PM in person and/or via zoom. Let us know if you would like to join us. Archives
April 2023
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