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To Old To Be About Gods Kingdom?
I’m old, yes, but I’m not going to tell you how old. Old enough that my children are all grown and have families of their own. Old enough to remember when I was my children’s age, how crazy busy it was working in the church, raising our family, working a full time job, volunteering, and well…being busy! I remember at one point being on the church’s nominating committee. I remember hearing reports of the older people in our church, my age now, refuse the invitation to be a servant in the church. I remember one particular comment, “I’ve paid my dues.” I thought it was sad then and think it is…
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What about those Spiritual Gifts?
“Based on the gift each one has received, use it to serve others, as good managers of the varied grace of God. If anyone speaks, it should be as one who speaks God’s words; if anyone serves, it should be from the strength God provides, so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything. To Him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.” 1 Peter 4:10-11 HCSB https://bible.com/bible/72/1pe.4.10-11.HCSB The Spiritual Gifts are Gifts from God to His children to be used to glorify God. There are so many avenues to explore on this subject. First I wanted to touch on our expectations. When we are…
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Not a Victim #9 The Egg, the Carrot, and the Coffee Bean
Taken the end of 2020…in Yosemite area…during a pandemic, after wild fires, wind storms, and insect infestation. Sad, yet new life and beauty begins again… There’s this object lesson that I’ve held on to for years. In fact I’m sure I’ve written about it in my previous blogs. This object lesson is a very popular story. The first time I heard this story was when I was teaching our youth group at our church, years ago. As a teacher, I think I learned more from this lesson than the youth did. In fact, I would be surprised if any of them even remembered this particular lesson. But it is an…
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Not a victim #8 Knowing who you are In Christ
Psalms 139:14 “I will praise You because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and I know this very well.” In my last post I mentioned I was going to blog about how to live with a narcissistic personality type, not change them. First let me clarify here that I am not an expert! God is! He made each of us! He’s the only one who can change any of us. He’s ruler over the physical AND spiritual realms! With that being said, let me first emphasize the importance of this first step… And the reason I can share this with authority is because it comes…
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Truth
Our world seems to be spinning out of control. We don’t know who or what to believe. We can’t tell who is trustworthy and who is not. We hear what we thought was truth being torn apart as false. We are told things that seem comical, in that we think how can anybody believe those lies?! Yet we hear the lies so often we question them ourself. Mark 13:22 For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and will perform signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, the elect. | Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) We are a people full of anxiety, fear and depression. We are taught…
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Leaning on God in a Narcissistic World Not a victim #7
Psalms 56:13 For You delivered me from death, even my feet from stumbling, to walk before God in the light of life. | Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) As I’m reading/listening to my devotions this morning, this scripture comes alive in my mind. It reminds me of what is going on in our world today. It reminds me of what happens when I get all flustered and start questioning myself when interacting with a narcissistic person. My mind was awakened by these words. This is a prayer by David in the bible. He was being hunted down. He was hated by the people who were threatened and wanted to be…
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Happy New Year 2022
1 Corinthians 14:1 Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, and above all that you may prophesy. | Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) | Download The Bible App Now This past year, 2021, the JVR Prayer blogs were about the Fruits of the Spirit. For 2022 I feel led to blog about the Spiritual Gifts. While all of the Fruits of the Spirit are for all believers of Jesus Christ, the Spiritual Gifts are more specialized gifts for Gods chosen people. This subject has always been an interest to me, and there’s a lifetime of information on the subject. There are many different types of tests to determine what your Spiritual…
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WARNING!!! DANGER!!!
I’ve just cleaned up my website blogs! 40,000 spam comments throughout all 218 blogs! First, let me apologize if any of these spam comments caused any of you discomfort or inconvenience! AND let me apologize because IF you did leave a comment on the website it did get deleted. I now have a program in place to keep away the spam, however the 40,000 were approved so I manually took them off. Needless to say all of the comments got deleted. Most of the spam were ads or junk, but quite a few were nasty and offensive. This being said, I’ve spent some time looking over my blogs these past…
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Reflect on Thanks Giving!!!
https://bible.com/bible/72/1co.1.7.HCSB As we come to the last couple of months of 2021 and the end of the Fruit of the Spirit Blog series, I wanted to bring the fruits all together. A beautiful basket of fruit, a gift of gifts. A basket of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faith, Gentleness and self control. What a Basket! What a way to celebrate Thanksgiving! Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. These past couple of years have been times of turmoil and challenges beyond challenges for most every person on earth. On top…
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Not a Victim Blog #6
Since my last post I’ve been researching narcissism and what God has to say about the subject in His Word. The book, “The First Will Be Last” (DC Robertsson) was recommended to me by a Facebook writing group member. Here’s a link for research, https://biblicalperspectivesonnarcissism.com/category/5-dealing-with-narcissists/5-practical-actions/ I also found a couple of books at Barns and Noble on the subject. I’m not going to reference them here because I’ve not yet researched the authors or reading material to be able to comment either way. But if you are doing your own research, they are located in the Psychology genre section under Narcissists and Gaslighting. As noted in the book mentioned earlier,…