TRUTH or CONSEQUENCES

To suffer...to experience pain, illness, or injury; : to experience something unpleasant (such as defeat, loss, or damage) : to become worse because of being badly affected by something This is not a word that any of us would like to be a regular part of our vocabulary!  As a Christian, I want to walk in the VICTORY of the cross and be enabled to overcome everything, in every way.  I don't want to accept pain, illness or injury, because I know the word says... "BY HIS STRIPES I AM HEALED."  I totally believe that Jesus healed ALL who came to Him.  I believe that God is a good, good Father and He cares totally about my well being.  He does not put sickness on me or cause me to be injured because He loves me! God is good!  The devil is bad! So when I experience something unpleasant it is from my own choices or the enemy trying to discourage or defeat me.  The scripture does say that he prowls around like a roa...

I read this question this morning in a book I am reading, "What can I accomplish on His behalf now that I have permission to live as though I'd never sinned?"  What a great thing our Father has gifted us with!  He now looks at me, and treats me, as if I've never sinned.  A clean slate!  Does that mean that I now can live anyway I want and keep on sinning?  Absolutely not!  What it should say to me is I have received the greatest gift in the world and I need to treat it as the most precious thing in the world.  When you love someone, you treat them with love and respect, offering them your best foot forward.  So how much more should I want to please Father God, who has given so much for me. If I continue to deliberately live in sin, keep embracing it and do what I want to do, I need to question if I really stepped into a life changing encounter with God?  My relationship with Him should move me to become like Him, look like Him, ...

Have you heard the song "How He Loves"?  I love the imagery painted in the first verse... "He is jealous for me;  Love's like a hurricane, and I am a tree ;  Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy;  When all of a sudden,  I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory;  And I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me.   And oh  How He loves us oh Oh how He loves us  how He loves us oh. I have been through a few hurricanes now, living in Florida. There is tremendous wind that touches everything in its path.  It is swirling and twirling so it gets into every crevice.  This song describes God's love for us as a hurricane, touching every place in my soul, heart, mind and spirit.  That His love completely touches every part of my life.  I love the verse in 1 John 4:16..." And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love. Whoever liv...

Guess what day today is? It is my 42nd Birthday!  My born again Birthday.  It was March 8, 1974 at 3AM that I finally bent my knees and asked Jesus to begin a relationship with me.  I was a freshman in college, University of Maine at Presque Isle, and only 19 years old.  I lived in Emerson Hall on the third floor.  At the top of the stairs there were at least 4 rooms that were occupied by "Jesus freaks" (as we called them).  They were all upper classmen.  A lot of us freshmen were on this floor and they had strategically asked for those rooms to have influence in our lives!  Freshmen tend to sow their wild oats, away from parental controls, flapping their new found wings of freedom.  After the first semester three quarters of my class were failing their courses, as they were more interested in partying then studying.  I was sowing my oats too, but school had always been easy for me, so my grades were good.  But I too had settled ...