The Journey

The Journey Message - The Front Row

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:33:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Message</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div><h1 class="center">The Front Row</h1> We watched the Kennedy Center Awards show recently featuring five special people, two of which are my favorites, Meryl Streep and Neil Diamond. They weren’t exactly in the front row, but they were definitely in honored seats up in the balcony, front row and center there. What a wonderful tribute to their life’s work, and the other three people chosen for this award. There are times in our lives when front row seats are awesome, when we are excited to be so up close and personal to the happenings….and there are times in our lives when we want anything BUT front row seats…as we recently witnessed at a graveside service. As I settled into bed last night after a long drive back from honoring a person’s life who is now no longer with us on this earth, I thought of his mom and his twin brother sitting in the front row there at the cemetery, wanting to be anywhere else but there. They sat staring at a casket containing the person they were closest to in life, because that’s how we get front row seats at a funeral, by being the immediate family. Everyone else at a graveside service pretty much stands, gathers around, remembers, and leaves to go back to their lives. The family, they sit in covered chairs, usually under a canopy, and they remember the years spent with their loved one. Afterwards, they go home to live on without them, one minute at a time in the beginning, and they think of the many years they had together and the many years they will now be apart. We count those days, those weeks, months and years…almost anyone missing someone can tell you—it’s been eleven months, or three years, or seven years, or 22 years…we know. We know all too well. After having sat in the front row at our own son’s service, I certainly know those are not the seats we would ever choose because we don’t want to say good-bye. In the front row, we all struggle a bit with how we might have better spent the time we did have together. Did we value it enough? We will think about so many of these things, and in most cases we will want more time. We will want nothing more than to have that person back here with us so we can love on them a little bit longer, a little bit better, a little bit kinder perhaps. This may seem like a very drab, very sad, very dismal first message from me in the year 2012, but hang with me here because hopefully it will get better as God allows me to pour out my heart through this time of writing. There is Good News in all of this, and we all need good news every day in this New Year!! We don’t want to miss what God has waiting for us as this year begins!! Just like the olden days when the young newspaper boy would stand on the corner shouting out, “Get your paper! Hear about the….!!” We need to be shouting about the Good News of Jesus Christ as this New Year begins, and live in that Good News every day of our lives! Succinctly put, the Good News is Jesus. We can complicate it if we want to, but there really is no need. It’s as plain and simple as my friend recently explained to her friend about forgiveness—“When we think we’re not good enough, that we’ve done too much wrong to get into Heaven, the Good News is there for all of us who will embrace it!!” Jesus took on our sins so we can take on the eternal life offered to us in Heaven. When we say “Yes” to Jesus, we say yes to being forgiven, and yes to living in Heaven forever and ever in the place that God has prepared for those who love Him. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? John 14:2 (NIV) Don’t we wish we could have been in the “front row” watching when Jesus walked this earth and spoke those words? Wouldn’t it have been awesome to have been one of His followers, to maybe even have been one of His twelve chosen—to sit with Jesus, to talk with Jesus, to walk the dusty roads with Him listening to His heart on how this world works? Recently, we watched a movie on NetFlix called, “The Encounter.” I didn’t know what to expect, and I can’t say as it was a high-budget film, but it was a high-impact film on my mind and spirit. A small group of people end up in a diner called, “The Last Chance Diner,” where only one person is working. His name is Jesus. Not pronounced the Spanish way as in, “Hey-suess,” but in the Biblical way of Jesus. He was an unassuming man with a scruffy beard, a warm smile and bright eyes. He told the five people gathered there that he was there to “serve” them. They had stopped in because the road had been closed up ahead. It wasn’t long until they begin to understand that this Jesus who was serving them was there to teach them about His loving and forgiving ways. He knew all about them, their thoughts, their needs, their likes and their opinion of Him. It made me wonder what I would have really thought about Jesus had I been alive when He walked this earth. Would I have believed it was really Him, really the Son of God, come to earth to share the Good News with all of us? As the Jesus in this movie served these people, He told stories about their lives, and he loved on them, and He amazed them with just who He was…all but one man who continued to reject what was being offered—one man not willing to admit that he needed a Savior, not willing to receive the free gift he was being offered. This person wanted to do things in his own way, and he was being given that opportunity by Jesus because our Lord never forces anyone to love Him, but this man was also being given the opportunity to accept Jesus’ love too. As we recently watched the “Airplane” movie again, our beloved “June Cleaver” put it this way, “Chump don’t want no help….chump don’t get no help.” We are free to walk away…free to be…and also free to receive if we are willing to embrace the Good News of an eternity spent in the loving presence of our God. When we sit in the front row, in the covered chairs reserved for family, and that coffin sits before us with a person in it that we have probably known since the day we were born, or they were born, it is a humbling place to sit. Maybe for the first time we really listen to the pastor give a sermon about eternity; maybe for the first time those words about God’s grace and forgiveness really start to sink in. Maybe for the first time we think it might be time to consider the love that is being offered to us unconditionally. Maybe we haven’t felt that love as yet, but we do come up against the stark realization that we hope the person we are saying good-bye to did, because their time to make that decision has come and gone…they walked out of “The Last Chance Diner” and on into eternity. We hope and pray at that point that they were welcomed Home into Heaven and are enjoying the loving embrace of God. Sometimes we know, as best as anyone can, what our loved one believed, but sometimes we don’t know about those things in their lives because we never talked with them about it—but maybe there were others that did, and we would be grateful if they had. How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” Isaiah 52:7 (NIV) Hope is what we cling to most when we are seated in the front row remembering our loved ones. With Hope in Jesus and the eternal life we gain in knowing Him, we are assured of more time together in Heaven, that is what we all long for as we sit there saying good-bye. When we think of all the things we might not have done, we can hope for all the things that will await us to do when we meet again. Jesus gives us that Hope. The mom who sat in the front row had just called her son hours before she got the news that he was gone. She had been told that he was sleeping…two hours later she was told the devastating news of his departure. Forty-six years old, cause of death unknown as of now. The brevity of life is so shocking in those moments, and the days and weeks and months to follow continue to pound that into our hearts and our minds…where did the time go? It’s was Christmas after all….a time of joy and merriment for so many, but not for some… The true meaning of Christmas, the, “I’ll be Home for Christmas” tunes taking on a different meaning all together. I know, I’ve been there, I’ve walked in those shoes when grief was fresh during the Holidays…when that little Baby Boy born on Christmas day was truly the greatest gift there could ever be because there was nothing else to really think about that mattered. There’s a song called, “Mary Did You Know.” It’s a beautiful song by Mark Lowry about a mother and a son, Mary and Jesus. Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water Mary, did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new This Child that you delivered…will soon deliver you Mary, did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations Did you know that your baby boy is Heaven’s perfect Lamb This sleeping child you’re holding is the great I AM Many times we complicate the Good News, we make it more difficult than it has to be, not living in the simplicity that Jesus has offered us. The thief on the cross hanging next to Jesus simply turned to Him and said, “Remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.” And Jesus answered back, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Jesus isn’t asking us to jump through hoops to reach Him, He is simply asking us to turn to Him and receive the gift He is offering to us. Perhaps that is part of our difficulty, the receiving part. Most of us would much rather give a Christmas gift than receive one. It is easier to help someone else than to be helped much of the time. Pride gets in the way as we grow up, unlike children on Christmas morning who are just waiting to unwrap whatever gift has their name on it! Why are we so unwilling sometimes in our adultness to unwrap the gift of salvation? Where is the excitement for what we have been offered? No wonder Jesus used children as an example for how we should be. Maybe that’s why God chose to have Him enter into this world as a baby boy, because the simplicity of a child is so very precious to our God. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Mark 10:14 (NIV) As “Jesus” served those in the “The Last Chance Diner” in the film we watched, I wonder, would we be willing to receive the Savior if He lived today? Would it be any easier if we actually met Him face to face and heard His words in person? Would we quickly reject that He is the One True Messiah just like some did who walked and talked with Him in person? Maybe the same who accept Him today, though we have not seen His physical presence, are the same who would have accepted Him then when they did—for one simple reason, because those who receive Him are willing to take that step of faith, to believe Jesus is the Son of God, and to put our trust in His promises. Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:29 (NIV) Each morning now I have what I call a Bible Buddy. My friend and I make a brief phone call to each other, we pray a simple prayer, and we read through a small part of Scripture, first her translation, then mine, or vice-versa. We talk about what we have read, we discuss anything new or confusing or applicable to our lives in that moment, and then we pray and say good-bye. If you don’t have a Bible Buddy, may I suggest you find one in the coming New Year! It is amazing how God blesses that short time together in His Word. After our time on the phone it is so fresh on our hearts and minds that as the day unfolds, what we have read and discussed weaves itself in and out of our lives in amazing ways. By “meeting” with Jesus every day together, by believing in what He tells us in His Word and then walking it out with Him through the ups and downs of the day, we learn and grow a little bit each day. “One small step” for two women, one giant leap of joy in the Kingdom of Heaven! Will you not learn a lesson and obey my words?’ declares the LORD. Jeremiah 35:13b (NIV) My Bible Buddy and I had just read in Galatians 3:26, “So you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” It wasn’t long after that that I listened to the pastor at the service we went to speak about the children of God, and how we cannot know the relationship another person has with God through Jesus Christ, but we can know that God cares for His children, and we can trust Him in that. Each day, we can be comforted in God’s Word, and we can find the guidance and the wisdom we need for all the things we go through in this life. It’s not hard to have a Bible Buddy, but it is hard to get through life without the love we find in God’s Word. A Bible Buddy is our “traveling companion,” through this life. We need our traveling companions as I just heard taught at church, and I know why…friends and family show up when we are honored at the Kennedy Center for our life’s work—sitting there with tears of joy running down our cheeks—but when tears of sorrow fill our eyes we most definitely need our traveling companions to be there to comfort us with words of Hope. It’s fun going through the highs together, it’s imperative that we go through the lows together. Not only did my family sit with me in that front row when we said good-bye to our son, but my best friend was also by my side, as well as other very special friends who surrounded me during that front row experience ten years ago. I was encouraged by their great love, as well as the love of Mary’s Baby Boy Jesus. There are no words to say to a mother and a brother who are sitting in the front row seats at a graveside service other than, “I’m so sorry…” But there are words that are needed to endure what follows, they are found in God’s Word. Let’s go there often and meet with Jesus. He may not be physically with us today, meeting with us at a diner, walking with us down a dusty road, or eating dinner at our house, but He is with us in Spirit and in Truth, and we will see Him one day face to face as a grown man sitting at the right hand of His Father. I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. Deuteronomy 30:19b (NIV) Let our New Year’s Resolution be that we won’t live one more day in this New Year without the Good News of Jesus Christ being front and center in our lives, and let us be the very feet of Jesus as He lives through us sharing that same Good News with everyone we meet!! We can start that daily journey each morning with a friend, with a Bible Buddy. Get yours today! Until we meet again, Diane

The Journey Devotional - The Front Row

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:29:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Devotional</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">The Front Row</h1> My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? John 14:2 (NIV) We watched the Kennedy Center Award show recently featuring five special people, two of which are my favorites, Meryl Streep and Neil Diamond. They weren’t exactly in the front row, but they were definitely in honored seats up in the balcony, front row and center there. What a wonderful tribute to their life’s work, and the other three people chosen for this award. There are times in our lives when front row seats are awesome, when we are excited to be so up close and personal to the happenings….and there are times in our lives when we want anything BUT front row seats…as we recently witnessed at a graveside service. Everyone else at a graveside service pretty much stands, gathers around, remembers, and leaves to go back to their lives. The family, they sit in covered chairs, usually under a canopy, and they remember the years spent with their loved one. Afterwards, they go home to live on without them, one minute at a time in the beginning, and they think of the many years they had together and the many years they will now be apart. We count those days, those weeks, months and years…almost anyone missing someone can tell you just how long it has been. This may seem like a very drab, very sad, very dismal first message from me in the year 2012, but hang with me here because there is Good News in all of this, and we all need good news every day in this new year!! We don’t want to miss what God has waiting for us as this year begins!! Just like the olden days when the young newspaper boy would stand on the corner shouting out, “Get your paper! Hear about the….!!” We need to be shouting about the Good News of Jesus Christ as this New Year begins and live in that Good News every day of our lives! Succinctly put, the Good News is Jesus. We can complicate it if we want to, but there really is no need. When we say “Yes” to Jesus, we say yes to being forgiven, and yes to living in Heaven forever in the place that God has prepared for those who love Him. Don’t we wish we could have been in the “front row” watching as Jesus walked this earth? Wouldn’t it have been awesome to have been one of His followers, or maybe even to have been one of His twelve chosen? When we sit in the front row, in the covered chairs reserved for family, maybe we haven’t felt the love of God yet, but we do come up against the stark realization that we hope the person we are saying good-bye to did because their time to make that decision has come and gone. We hope and pray at that point that they were welcomed Home into Heaven and are enjoying the loving embrace of God and are sitting front and center with Jesus because those are the best seats any of us will ever occupy! Let our New Year’s Resolution be that we won’t live one more day without the Good News of Jesus Christ being front and center in our lives each and every day!

The Journey Message - God Lovers

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:07:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Message</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">God Lovers</h1> There are bumper stickers out there that say, “God is my Co-pilot.” Although I like that God is an important part of the driver’s life, I prefer the ones that say, “If God is your Co-pilot, you’re in the wrong seat.” And then there are the ones that say, “Dog is my co-pilot.” That is supposed to be good for a chuckle, and it is sort of funny, although making fun of having God first in our lives is actually a very serious matter. But this message is not really about bumper stickers, so you may be wondering why I began writing about them? Actually, I was sitting here asking God what might be a good title for this message considering what I have on my heart right now, and this came to mind…so there it is—instead of dog lovers, let’s be God Lovers. And what exactly do I have on my heart right now? Well, dogs, yes, but mainly children, and mainly a sweet five-year-old boy named Jackson, who just happens to be my grandson. And why am I thinking about Jackson and dogs? Because yesterday when I arrived at Jackson’s house and knocked on the door, he came to the door and peered out through the window which is low enough for him to see through. As I bent over to his height to get face to face with him, he greeted me with the biggest, happiest smile a grandma could ever hope for. As his face met mine on the other side of that window he kissed me on the glass, and I kissed him back, and then he opened the door and I got my usual long hug!! Life doesn’t get much better than that!! The Bible talks about doors too: Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Revelation 3:20 (NIV) And what exactly does all this have to do with dogs? Well, since I am not really an animal lover I don’t get the “excitement” of dogs, cats, horses, etc…but, what I’m thinking about is if what animal lovers feel when they return home and are greeted with the unconditional love of their pet is anything like what I feel like when I am greeted with such unconditional love from my grandchild, then I see why having a pet is so great!! And what exactly does all of this have to do with our God? Because you know that is what all my messages eventually get around to…our walk with God each day. Well, the of course it’s the unconditional love God has for each of His children, and how excited He is to see us too! I read the other day: Love is more than attraction and more than arousal. It’s also more than sentimentality, like so many of today’s songs suggest. By this standard, is love dead when the emotion is gone? No — not at all — because love is an action, and a behavior. Over and over again in the Bible, God commands us to love each other, and you can’t command an emotion. If I told you right now, “Be sad!” you couldn’t be sad on cue. Just like an actor, you can fake it, but you’re not wired for your emotions to change on command. If love were just an emotion, then God couldn’t command it. But love is something you do. It can produce emotion, but love is an action. (Rick Warren) Right now, maybe God’s love feels a bit distant in the busyness of our days, maybe it’s sort of like Jackson’s kiss from his side of the window, and mine in return to him…a cold piece of glass separated us. We could see each other, and we wanted to be with each other, but something stood in our way. The door needed to be opened, an action needed to be taken for our love to be enjoyed to its fullest extent. Maybe what we need to do when we are feeling distant from our God is open up that door between us and get that real “hug” of unconditional love that is waiting behind it. The enemy will put up barriers that can make God seem distant, when in fact, God has not gone anywhere. Emotionally, He may seem far away but in reality He is with us just as He promised He would be always. After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” Revelation 4:1 (NIV) God pursues us even when we are running away from Him. I’ve seen this up close and personal in the last week, and it’s been faith-building for me. I know of a woman who is having some trouble in her life, and in the midst of it, she turned away from God. She wasn’t interested in her Bible, and she wasn’t interested in visiting a church. She wanted to be left alone in the difficulties and just sort of sit in them for now. But God loves us too much to leave us alone. On the very day she needed it, God brought a pastor to the place we were, and she was able to sit and talk with him. She didn’t want to at first, she wanted to resist the help that God was bringing her way, she thought there would be no good in talking her troubles over with him, but she was amazed at the words of wisdom God had waiting for her through this man. It reminds me of the story I heard of a person stranded on the roof of their home during a flood. They prayed for God to save them. A man in a boat came by but they declined the help. A helicopter hovered overhead, wanting to let down a rope, but they declined. A neighbor threw them a life preserver, but they let it float away. When they died in the flood and arrived in Heaven, they asked God why He hadn’t answered their prayer and saved them? God said, “Well, I sent you a boat, a helicopter and a life preserver.” I watched as God reached out to this woman in many ways, and even though she probably didn’t really want to respond to God’s acts of love towards her, she didn’t completely resist them either. God’s love actions are very powerful, and they are happening all the time. In a very short time I have seen the dark cloud lifted off of her, and God’s light begin to shine through her. It’s not that all the things she was struggling with suddenly went away, it’s that she stopped focusing on the troubles and stopped sitting with the mess, and instead started focusing on God and walking out of the mess and into His house of praise and worship. In that, her burden was lifted off her shoulders and onto the shoulders of her Savior. She said to me, “I’ve given my heart back to God!” In watching her do that, it has strengthened my faith for sure!! See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. Hebrews 3:12 (NIV) In thinking about her situation recently, and the change that has been taking place in her heart and in her life, I wanted to share that news with the pastor who had been “sent” to talk with her. I thought maybe I should e-mail him with an update. Lo and behold, before I got a chance to do that, who should I run into in the grocery store parking lot? That very person! I didn’t need to work hard to give him the good news, and together we praised God for His amazing love in our lives! I read in one of my devotionals this morning: “…if you ask God to take control of your life and will, your life will vastly improve!  It is also by seeing the beauty that surrounds us in this World, and how perfectly everything works together, and knowing that all of this could not have happened by accident!” Seriously, the timing in some of the situations surrounding her story definitely had the imprint of God on them! I love watching that happen! Sometimes when we are in the midst of our own pain and suffering, it can get difficult to see God at work. We need others around us pointing Him out, showing us His hand in things, and rejoicing with us when His magnificent love and attention in the details of our lives start to change things for the better! O LORD my God, I cried to You for help, and You healed me. Psalm 30:2 (NASB) Behold, God is my helper; The Lord is the sustainer of my soul. Psalm 54:4 (NASB) Our oldest son, Jimm, has been working very hard these last eight years to make a better life for his family. He has been on a fulltime job for eight years, and he has been going to school fulltime for the last four-and-a half years getting his B.A. degree in Information Technology. In the midst of all this, he has been blessed with three children, now ages six, four, and one! If that isn’t a lot for Jimm and his wife Cami, I don’t know what is! One troublesome thing along the way was a bit of frustration at work, there seemed to have been a misunderstanding some years back, and it had held up some promotions that he could have gotten. Cami convinced Jimm that it was time to go to H.R. and get to the bottom of it all, which Jimm didn’t look forward to doing. When Jimm finally did speak with H.R., it brought to light that not only was there not a problem with his work ethics but that he has been an outstanding employee over the last eight years—always on time, never calling in sick, always doing a great job! Because Jimm had to go in to clear up his record, his name became known to those in charge. It wasn’t but two weeks later an employee in the I.T. department gave their two-week notice, and suddenly that department was in need of a replacement! Since Jimm’s name was now “known,” and his work record was also “known” to the powers that be…the manager in the I.T. department came to ask Jimm if he would come and interview for the job! God’s timing? Or coincidence? God’s providence? I believe it’s God’s loving hand reaching out and helping Jimm along the course of a life that can be heavy, and difficult, and full of struggles at times. Jimm is graduating from college during a time when jobs are not easy to come by with the present-day economy. Jimm did interview for the job, and he has now been transferred to the I.T. department and is enjoying his new career! Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10 (NASB) All of our lives are filled with people and their stories, stories similar to the ones I have been able to share here. The thing is, do we look for God in our stories or do we get buried under a mound of fear, under a hill of frustration, beneath a mountain of desperation? Or do we stand on top of all the trials of this life and claim our victory in God even during the times when we don’t see God working the way we’d like Him to? That’s when we need others to help us along, to encourage us and listen to us, and pray with us, and laugh with us, yes, even laugh! Recently I read, “Laughing is like taking a mini vacation.” So, my friend and I encourage each other often to take a mini vacation! Don’t we all need it? Isn’t life hard enough? We need to be able to laugh more, and stress out less, and trust God more! How do we laugh more, stress less and trust more? It’s not easy! But we can embrace the smile of a child, the wagging tail of a dog that’s so happy to see us, and most important of all, the unconditional love that is being offered to us every day by our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ! God doesn’t want us separated from Him, not even a separation as thin as the piece of glass Jackson kissed me through. God wants us to be with Him, to sit with Him and talk with Him and tell Him about our day, about our struggles, and also about all the things we are grateful for. When Jack opened the door we hugged and kissed face to face. Then we sat down and talked about Jack’s day in Kindergarten, about the Mystery Box that was his to bring home that day from school. We talked about the things he just saw at Disneyland and his favorite video game. Jack is still small enough to sit on my lap and curl into my arms, and tell me about his life. One day he will be too big for that, and I will miss those days, but the important thing is to build a relationship with him now…one that will last throughout our life and on into eternity. That is exactly what God wants with all of us. And yes, sometimes we won’t always understand—just as I don’t understand a lot of Jack’s talk of video games, or even understand everything he is telling me about school—but it really doesn’t matter, what matters is that we are together, sharing life, and loving one another. We may not always understand what God is doing, and why things are taking so long, and why things don’t always turn out in ways that we think are the best, but we can’t know what God has planned. Jimm couldn’t know that after years of being passed over for certain promotions, it was leading him to the day when he would need to talk with someone about his employee record. In God’s perfect timing, his name would then be known to the people in charge of hiring someone for a job in his field of study. As Jimm’s wife Cami says, “God is Great! God is Grand! He always has a plan!” God knows what He’s doing, we can trust Him for that. And His unconditional love is simply amazing!! Open the door and let God in, crawl into His arms, and tell Him everything that is on your heart. He will be happy to listen to all your cares, all your worries, and all the things you would like to thank Him for!! Sometimes it’s hard to focus, but let’s remember back to what we might have learned in Kindergarten, things like Jackson is learning. He told me this on our visit: Jackson: When you do your homework, you should think only about your homework. A few minutes later…. Jackson: When you are playing soccer, you should think only about soccer. I thought about “Angry Birds” a little bit, but just a little bit… Thank you Lord for the sweet and unconditional love of a child, and thank you Lord, for Your sweet and unconditional love that never fails. Help us focus on You and think about You each day! Help us to be God Lovers! Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Colossians 3:1 (NLT) Until we meet again, Diane

The Journey Devotional - God Lovers

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:04:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Devotional</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">God Lovers</h1> Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Revelation 3:20 (NIV) Yesterday when I arrived at my grandson’s house and knocked on the door, he came and peered out through the window in the door—which is low enough for him to see through. As I bent over to his height to get face to face with him, he greeted me with the biggest, happiest smile a grandma could ever hope for. As his face met mine on the other side of that window he kissed me on the glass, and I kissed him back, and then he opened the door and I got my usual long hug!! Life doesn’t get much better than that, and that’s how excited God is to meet with us! Right now maybe God’s love feels a bit distant in the busyness of our days, maybe it’s sort of like Jackson’s kiss from his side of the window, and mine in return to him…a cold piece of glass separated us. We could see each other, and we wanted to be with each other, but something stood in our way. The door needed to be opened, an action needed to be taken for our love to be enjoyed to its fullest extent. Maybe what we need to do when we are feeling distant from our God is open up that door between us and get that real “hug” of unconditional love that is waiting behind it. The enemy will put up barriers that can make God seem distant, when in fact, God has not gone anywhere. Emotionally, He may seem far away but in reality He is with us, just as He promised He would be always. God pursues us even when we are running away from Him. All of our lives are filled with stories of how God has worked in and through the happenings of our days. The thing is, do we look for God in our stories or do we get buried under a mound of fear, under a hill of frustration, beneath a mountain of desperation, or do we stand on top of all the trials of this life and claim our victory in God even during the times when we don’t see God working the way we’d like Him to? That’s when we need others to help us along, to encourage us and listen to us, and pray with us, and laugh with us, yes, even laugh! Recently I read, “Laughing is like taking a mini vacation.” So, my friend and I encourage each other often to take a mini vacation! Don’t we all need it? Isn’t life hard enough? We need to be able to laugh more, and stress out less, and trust God more! How do we laugh more, stress less and trust more? It’s not easy! But we can embrace the smile of a child, the wagging tail of a dog that’s so happy to see us, and most important of all, the unconditional love that is being offered to us every day by our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ! God doesn’t want us separated from Him, not even a separation as thin as the piece of glass Jackson kissed me through. God wants us to be with Him, to sit with Him and talk with Him and tell Him about our day, about our struggles, and also about all the things we are grateful for. Open the door and let God in, crawl into His arms, and tell Him everything that is on your heart. He will be happy to listen to all your cares, all your worries, and all the things you would like to thank Him for!!

Hi Daddy!

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 18:25:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Message</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">Hi Daddy!</h1> We, as the children of God, can be this familiar with our Father in Heaven. We can say, “Hi Daddy!” Our Abba Father, our Daddy loves that! He loves it when we are excited to be in His presence, to love on Him and direct our focus on all that He is and all that He is doing in our daily lives. The thing is, many times, we don’t focus on our Daddy…many times we neglect our relationship with our Daddy and we withdraw from Him. We don’t listen to Him, we don’t speak to Him, and we are in our own world doing our own thing. Recently a friend sent me a song to listen to. The lyrics said this: “I don’t want to talk about You like you’re not in the room. I want to look right at You, I want to sing right to You.” (You Won’t Relent – Jesus Culture) That made me stop and think, I do that don’t I Lord? Sometimes I talk about You like You’re not listening, like You can’t hear me, like You’re not there at all. Sadly, sometimes we do that with special people in our lives too. And sadly, sometimes they do that with us. Recently, I had an interesting experience with my four-year-old granddaughter, Maren. I was in Oregon visiting my son and his wife and their three children. Maren is Autistic, and Maren lives in her own world much of the time. She is highly intelligent, and can put puzzles together like no other four year old I have seen. Most times it “seems” that Maren isn’t aware of what is going on around her, or what is being said about her, or anything else we are talking about—but I think she is much more aware than we might give her credit for. One of my favorite things to do with Maren is to sing right to her, and to have her look right at me. This is a special time between us. I start to sing, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands,” and she looks at me, and she waits, and then she claps with me. This time I tried the “stomp your feet,” and she would do that with me too. So far, it is only with this song that I can get her undivided attention. Here is a sweet song that captures the heart of Autism: <a href="http://www.godsrainbows.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104:qrainbowq-a-song-for-autism-spectrum-disorders&catid=37:miscellaneous&Itemid=61">Rainbow, a Song for Autism Spectrum Disorders</a> On this recent visit to Oregon, I noticed something very interesting with Maren. She is smart enough to know when to “tune in” and when to stay tuned out. But how does she know that, and just how does the mind of an autistic child work? There are so many questions still to be answered about Autism. The ponderings for this writing came to light while attending a new church with my daughter-in-law Cami, and my other granddaughter, Kylie, who will be six in a couple of weeks. The speaker that morning was talking about the times when we ignore God. Times when we want to do what we want to do, and we aren’t listening to God because we don’t want to. Now some may say that autistic people are unable to do some of the things I am about to talk about, and that may very well be true. I am no expert on autism, but for me, my autistic granddaughter helped to open my eyes to how we relate to our God, our Daddy, our Lord. I watched Maren for the few days that I was with her. My heart longed to know her more and for her to know me as her Oma. I would love our relationship to grow and blossom as it is with my other grandchildren, but it is more challenging with a child who has autism. It is hard to get Maren’s attention and it hard to keep her attention for any length of time. With autistic children there is a lack of eye contact, sometimes a lack of physical contact, and usually a lack of verbal communication. I have learned a bit about autism because of Maren, but I have a lot more to learn to be able to understand what she might be experiencing in her mind. Even the medical experts are trying to figure out not only the cause of autism, but also how to treat it in the best way possible so that these children can be helped to live to their full potential in life. As Cami and I were sitting in church, I started to think about the times we ignore God and really don’t hear Him. Is it because we aren’t listening to Him, thinking it’s just not that important to us a lot of the time? I know that if my mind is elsewhere, I don’t hear the birds chirping outside my window. But if I focus on them, their chirping comes in loud and clear. It’s not that they hadn’t been singing, it’s that I wasn’t paying attention to them. With Maren, I noticed that she doesn’t pay much attention to the people or events around her. She is a busy little girl, but she is usually involved in her own activity, quite satisfied to be by herself. But then my son started to make some chocolate chip cookies, he said to me, “Watch Maren,” so I did. She came alive, she became more aware, and she went over to him and I heard her say, “Hi Daddy!” It was the first and only time I had heard her say that during my visit. She was more than willing to say, “Please” when requesting a cookie. She was more than willing to say, “Thank you.” What had happened? Why was she suddenly so in tune to her surroundings? Because she wanted something very badly, so she focused on it instead of just doing her own thing. Her mind worked, and it worked very well when it was something that she really wanted. Now, I’m not saying that chocolate chip cookies are the cure to autism, or that Maren is faking her autism, or that she is even capable of communicating like this all the time even if she really wanted to. I’ve gathered enough information on autism to know that there are physical things going on in the brain that are different and that make it very difficult, if not near impossible, for autistic people to communicate like non-autistic people. But still, something clicked in Maren, and something clicked in me also…she was modeling for me much of the human race who ignores a Father who loves us very much until we want something from Him…and then, we are quite willing to focus and say, “Hi Daddy! Please!?” And our loving Father is always there for us, quite willing to love us no matter how long we have been away from Him doing our own thing. “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” Isaiah 49:15 (NIV) When children with special needs are around, sometimes we forget that they can hear us, and sometimes we might even forget that they can understand us. Recently I was with a young woman with special needs, and while I was attending to her, another person was attending to her prayer needs. When she was asked what her prayer request might be, I was surprised to hear her answer. She didn’t request healing and being able to walk again, leaving behind a wheelchair that had been with her since she was a small child. No. Her request was that her mother would listen to her. Listen to her… She felt unheard by the one person who loves her the most, her mother. When I was done cutting her hair, she looked me right in the eye and tried to verbalize three times, “Thank you.” It was a struggle to voice the words, they were not easy to understand, but her heart was pure and her thanks came through loud and clear. Like Maren, she lives in a body that makes communication with others difficult. Thank You God, You listen to us without any problem understanding our thoughts and our needs. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. Psalm 139:2 (NIV) Our Daddy in Heaven always listens to us, He knows our thoughts, but we may not know Him or feel close to Him if we are not paying attention to Him. When there is no communication, there is no closeness. I try hard to “be” with Maren, to sit with her while she does puzzles and talk with her about them, whether she answers me or not. Usually she seems unaware that I am there. There are glimpses of a relationship there, but it takes work. I want to know her, and I would like her to know me, but only time will tell how that develops. Since my job is cutting hair, I always take my scissors to Oregon when I go. The whole family gets a trim, including Maren. She doesn’t like it much and I usually stand behind her when she is doing a puzzle and cut without her realizing fully what is going on. But as she gets older, she’s realizing what I’m doing. The other day at work a young boy of about six or seven came in to get his hair cut. I asked his mother if he had special needs, and she told me he was autistic. He sat in the chair pretty well, and I worked fast, but he was even faster. He saw my shiny clippers hanging on the hook in front of him and he reached out for them with the speed of lightening! But, his mother was even faster and got them from him. I commented on how quick she was, and she commented back—basically, she knows her son, she knows his interests, and she watches him closely. In their own way, they have a close relationship. Many of us would like a close relationship with our Father in Heaven, and Heaven knows He surely would like to have one with us—but if we are going through our day wandering down our own paths, living in our own world seemingly oblivious to any conversation He might be having with us, or any acts of kindness He might be showing to us, then we are missing out on a beautiful relationship that is being offered. We become the “Autistic” children of God when we live our lives separated from God physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Maren may not be able to sit and read a book with me yet, but we as adult children of God are fully capable of sitting and reading the Good Book with our Father. Are we doing it? Often? It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully… Deuteronomy 17:19 (NIV) In talking with my brother about all this recently, I told him I was looking for a word for “Autistic” children of God, maybe some new word that might describe how we are when we are not paying attention to our Daddy. He gave me a word, and an Acronym for it, and even though it is not a new word, it is a perfect word in describing what we are doing. He said it this way for those of us who do believe: S –Sense of I – Identity N – Neglect And I thought of: S – Serious I – Identity N – Neglect That hit the mark I was searching for. I didn’t need a new word, the word God has used all along surely captures it. SIN. When I go through my day and I’m not focusing on my relationship with my Daddy in Heaven, I am neglecting my identity as a child of God. Maren goes through her days living with her family, singing with me when I am there, playing with her siblings as best she can, but does she have a sense of being part of the family, or knowing their relationship with each other? Perhaps she does, perhaps there again it’s one of those things she understands as much as any four year old can, but being autistic she cannot express? But as children of God, we need to not SIN—we need to pay attention to our Daddy and His involvement in our going out and coming in—to sense His presence in our day, and to remember that we are part of the family of God always. …whenever anyone turns to the Lord, then the veil is taken away. 2 Corinthians 3:16 (NLT) Once again, out of the mouth of babes….My other daughter-in-law, Holly, was giving final instructions to our grandson, Jack, recently. He and his sister, Laila, were going to be picked up by their aunt to spend the night with her family. Holly ran through the typical instructions we all give our children, “Be good, remember your manners, and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’” Jack answers back, “Okay, I’ll be good, I’ll remember to say please and thank you and I won’t sin.” Jack had been in a Vacation Bible School all week…it seems he was paying attention! Oswald Chambers writes: “Whatever our circumstances may be, that holy, innocent, and eternal Child must be in contact with His Father.” But later he writes, “Am I simple enough to identify myself with my Lord in this way?...or have I carefully pushed Him to one side?” (Aug. 8th, My Utmost for His Highest) Even as believers, sometimes we push our Lord to one side and just get on with the business at hand, doing what we want to do in our own little world…forgetting who we are and the God we serve. Now for those who do not believe, my brother writes the Acronym for SIN this way: S – Saying I – I N – Need Not God Whatever form SIN comes in, it is still SIN, and it still needs to be dealt with. It is what stands between us and a wonderful relationship with our Daddy. Jesus has made a way for us to be as close to our Father in Heaven by making us His brothers and sisters. Let’s be aware of the Heavenly Family that is ours! God was showing me so many things through Maren. Not only does autism cut her off from those she loves, but it also cuts those who love her off from her—not only are we missing out on a beautiful relationship with our Daddy in Heaven when we pay no attention to the fact that He is in the room, but it is painful for Him also. Our God wanted children, just as my son and his wife did. Our God wanted children so that He could have a relationship with us, and the really cool thing is, it doesn’t matter to our Daddy in Heaven if we can speak, if our mind is 100 percent able, if our body is fully functioning, because He already knows our thoughts and He is able to have a relationship with people even with the most severe cases of autism or whatever else the case might be. But with those of us who live each day with so-called fully functioning minds and bodies, and yet are choosing to ignore our Daddy…there is a separation in our relationship with Him because we have chosen it. We have to realize that even if we haven’t chosen it, even a non-choice is a choice. “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…” Joshua 24:15 (NIV) We all choose how to spend our time, and who to spend our time with every day. By not choosing time with our Daddy, we have made a choice. And honestly, don’t we all feel closer to those who look us in the eye, who talk to us, who spend time with us, who ask us questions about our day and who share their day with us too? That is what having a relationship is all about. That is what our God; our Daddy in Heaven would like to have with us. If we are not feeling close to Him, it has been asked, “Who moved?” It’s not that there aren’t times when we feel distant from our God, and times when we struggle in our relationship with Him, but when we truly know God and the character that He has, we will know that He is there, always, whether we feel Him or not. The ebb and flow of life will happen, but the Rock we stand on is Solid when it is our Lord. While in Oregon, Cami and I went to see the play, “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.” It is a courtroom drama that attempts to render an innocent or guilty verdict about Judas’ participation in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Many people are put on the stand during the play including Mother Teresa, Freud, Caiaphas, Pontius Pilot, and even Satan himself. It’s very well done although the language was hard to take at times. The point of the play seems to be to get us to think about things in a way we may never have before. It brings up discussions between people, instigates conversations that otherwise might never be had. During intermission, I overheard two women close by discussing the difficult subject of suicide. (Judas hung himself after he sold Jesus’ whereabouts for 30 pieces of silver.) The one woman revealed that her 19 year old son had committed suicide, and the other woman was quite taken aback. They spent the entire intermission talking about this very difficult subject, and I was intrigued by what the play had brought out in their discussion. The play was long, and by eleven o’clock at night our eyes were very droopy, but it was well worth the late evening because we too had even more to talk about when it was finished. Communication, a sharing of ideas, new thoughts, spending time together, this is what makes life what God meant for it to be. And this is what will make our relationship with God what He desires it to be, not only for us, but for Him also! Maren has taught me to pay more attention to my Daddy. To always remember that in any conversation, God is in the room, and He can hear me, and what I say affects Him. Since I have returned home from Oregon, many times in my day I am drawn back into a conversation with God, not wanting to have SIN: Serious Identity Neglect. I don’t want my Daddy to be sad because of my neglect of Him, of not calling out to Him and realizing He is there! It reminds me of a young man who used to visit our home; he was one of our son’s friends. He would come in and always be exclaiming, “Jesus Christ!” Whenever I would hear him, I would ask him, “Are you talking to Jesus? Because if you’re not, don’t be using His name.” Jesus is a real Person, He can hear us, He is in the room, He lives in the heart of believers. When we’re using His name, let’s make it personal. One who loves a pure heart and who speaks with grace will have the king for a friend. Proverbs 22:11 (NIV) We can’t understand fully yet the mind of an autistic person, but we can pay attention to our own minds, and use them to draw close to God. Temple Grandin, a highly functioning autistic person, helped me understand more about how the mind of an autistic person works. You can hear her speak at: <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html">Temple Grandin, The World Needs All Kinds of Minds</a> Just because an autistic person doesn’t communicate as easily as some, it doesn’t mean they don’t know exactly what is going on, and that what they are feeling is very important to them. That’s why there is a level of frustration that comes out in crying and screaming, because they can’t get their feelings out in any other way. I was watching anther program about autism and there was a young boy in the documentary. He had NEVER communicated one sentence to his parents; they had no idea what he thought about day in and day out. There was a teacher who was able to get the children to point to letters with a pencil, and with great difficulty they were able to express themselves for the first time. His first thought shared with his parents? “I would like to play the piano. I’ve always had songs in my head from very young.” That doesn’t sound like a child who doesn’t know what’s going on in the world around him to me!! Even if he couldn’t communicate his thoughts and desires, they were still very much there! …God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything. 1 John 3:20 (NLT) There are times when Maren gets very frustrated because she can’t communicate what her needs are, but the better we can get to know her, the easier that makes it for her. Her mom and dad can understand things she is saying much better than I can because I am not able to be with her a great deal of the time—and Maren knows what she wants! She likes to play a particular video game, but she can’t get through the first part of it, it is too hard for her. When it gets to a certain point and she can press the buttons to move the shapes into their right places, she loves that part of the game. She knows she needs help to move through the first part of the game, and she will come and hand the game to her sister and have her do it for her, and then when the first level is accomplished, she wants it back so she can do the shapes part. She cannot voice any of this, but she certainly can think it and act on it!! Cami just found this acronym for Autism. She said it does describe Maren: Always Unique Totally Interesting Sometimes Mysterious Our responsibility is to understand Maren and others like her as best we can, and to help them do the things they can do and to learn what they can learn in the best way they can absorb it. Like Temple Grandin’s amazing brain, we need to appreciate the magnificent mind that autistic children have been given, and realize that even if they go about this life differently than most, it is still their life, and it is the way that God designed them, and He understands them perfectly and loves them with His perfect love. Our other responsibility is to not SIN, to not be Autistic children of God. Some children are born autistic, and some even grow out of it in time. Perhaps when we are born into the family of God, we are all somewhat autistic in the early years, but the difference is, we can choose to grow out of it by making the choice to daily focus on our Daddy and build that relationship with Him. Maren does not yet comprehend how much we want to know her. She doesn’t understand fully how much it means to her parents when she says one simple sentence, or how her daddy lights up when she sees him making cookies and he knows he’s going to have her full attention, even if it is just for a brief amount of time. She doesn’t know how my heart thrills when she looks me in the eye and waits to clap her hands along with me as I sing to her…because that is our moment of connection, and they are few and far between. In the same way, we can’t know the thrill and the joy that our Daddy in Heaven feels when our eyes meet His for even just a brief moment, when our thoughts are turned towards Him without distraction. We can’t know how He must smile when we say, “Hi Daddy” and spend a few moments with Him in our day. We can’t know the longing He has in His heart for us to know Him more, but as His children, we can remind each other along the way that He is there, and He loves us, and He wants a relationship with us more than anything else in the world. That’s why He created us. Let’s not run to Him and give Him our full attention just because He has a cookie waiting there for us….let’s do it merely because we know He is there, and we are His—because the love between our Daddy and us is more precious than gold. In telling some about the play concerning Judas, I have been asked, was he found guilty? Well, yes he was, but the juror who came to tell him so also told him a story about his own life, and the mistakes that he had made along the way and the precious things he had lost because of it. He ended by telling Judas that Judas had given up the silver, but this juror had given away gold in his life. Judas felt beyond redemption, but as the stage lights went out we watched Jesus take off Judas’ shoes and wash his feet. We as the audience saw that Judas was loved by a God who knows all, and loves us anyway. The least we can do with a God who loves us that much is to realize He is in the room when we are speaking, that He desires a relationship with us, and to focus on our loving Daddy in our day as much as possible. God has designed us so that we can communicate with Him…let’s not give away that precious thread of gold! Until we meet again, Diane

Devotional - Hi Daddy!

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 18:22:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Devotional</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">Hi Daddy!</h1> “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” Isaiah 49:15 (NIV) We, as the children of God, can be this familiar with our Father in Heaven. We can say, “Hi Daddy!” Our Abba Father, our Daddy loves that! He loves it when we are excited to be in His presence, to love on Him and direct our focus on all that He is and all that He is doing in our daily lives. The thing is, many times, we don’t focus on our Daddy…many times we neglect our relationship with our Daddy and we withdraw from Him. We don’t listen to Him, we don’t speak to Him, and we are in our own world doing our own thing. A lot of the time, we ignore God and really don’t hear Him. If my mind is somewhere else, I don’t hear the birds chirping outside my window. But if I focus on them, their chirping comes in loud and clear. It’s not that they hadn’t been singing all along, it’s that I wasn’t paying attention to them. When we are willing to focus and say, “Hi Daddy,” our loving Father is always there for us, quite willing to love us no matter how long we have been away from Him doing our own thing. Our Daddy in Heaven always listens to us, He knows all our thoughts, but we may not know Him or feel close to Him if we are not paying attention to Him. When there is no communication, there is no closeness. Many of us would like a close relationship with our Father in Heaven, and Heaven knows He surely would like to have one with us—but if we are going through our day wandering down our own paths, living in our own world seemingly oblivious to any conversation He might be having with us, or any acts of kindness He might be showing to us, then we are missing out on a beautiful relationship that is being offered. This could be called SIN, or a Sense of Identity Neglect. When we go through our day not focusing on our relationship with our Daddy in Heaven, we are neglecting our identity as a child of God. Even as believers, sometimes we push our Lord to one side and just get on with the business at hand, doing what we want to do in our own little world…forgetting who we are and the God we serve. As children of God, we need to not SIN—we need to pay attention to our Daddy and His involvement in our going out and coming in—to sense His presence in our day, and to remember that we are part of the family of God always. Jesus has made a way for us to be as close to our Father in Heaven by making us His brothers and sisters. Let’s be aware of the Heavenly Family that is ours! We can’t know the thrill and the joy that our Daddy in Heaven feels when our thoughts are turned towards Him without distraction, but God longs for that from us. The love between our Daddy and us is more precious than gold. The ebb and flow of life will happen, but the Rock we stand on is Solid when it is our Lord. Let’s treasure that relationship each day.

Knowing His Love

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 05:12:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Message</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">Knowing His Love</h1> I’m home today, and it’s a quiet day of rest and prayer. I don’t have many of these days anymore. I don’t need as many quiet days as I did when I first started writing “The Journey” over eleven years ago now. It’s not that I don’t need my times with God as much as I once did, I still do, and I still spend each morning with Him, and then walk through the rest of my day with Him, one day at a time—but, I don’t need the refilling time like I once did. I had many desperate days, times when my heart needed God’s deep loving touch, and when I needed to be alone in His presence just so that His air would fill my lungs again so I could breathe, because the pain was so great I didn’t think I could stand one more minute of it. On this day, I do rest physically, because I need to. I’m finding, like a lot of us, that I’m not as young as I once was. Eleven years of writing does make a difference. The fifties are not the same as the forties, and I’m sure the sixties will teach me a thing or two also! I am loving the fifties, because it’s a good time in life when the kids are grown and have families of their own. Jim and I can stop in for a visit, play with the grandkids, and then drive on home to a peaceful evening with just the two of us, getting to bed early because we get up with the chickens—actually, the chickens are more just birds singing outside my window. Normally, a day at home like this and being alone would mean that I would write—and you may say, well, that’s what you’re doing isn’t it? Yes, but I’m also wondering as I write today…do I keep on doing this after all these years? Is it time to stop, or are there still many things that God would have me share with others about the journey of life? I’m really not sure, and so I write today partly about being “not sure” and partly whatever else God puts on my heart…because I guess that’s what writers do, they write down their thoughts so they’re available if anyone chooses to read them. I know that I do go back from time to time and read my own writings, and sometimes it’s good to do that. I surely can see all that God has brought me through. Perhaps you can see the progress on your own journey while reading what I have been writing. Many of you have been with me from the beginning, and you have shared with me along the way how a message will arrive and speak to your heart in God’s perfect timing. I have always been encouraged by you in that way. (Each message I have sent out is on my website at <a href="http://dcshore.com/">dcshore.com,</a> so if you ever want to reminisce, they are available for you there.) Many of you have gotten to know me through these messages, and I have made some new friends along the way too. I have many memories of our “conversations” through the years. I also have memories of phone calls that came at just the right time to encourage me to keep writing, as many of the early messages were written through the tears as I poured out my heart to anyone who would listen. One thing I have learned in all the writing I have done is that the memory of a child who has left this earth never fades…they will always be on a parent’s heart and mind, they will always be a part of us no matter how long it has been, and no matter how much healing has occurred. In the beginning, most of my writing was about the journey through grief. I eventually moved on to write about other things—but no matter the subject, the child I have living in Heaven and the children I have on earth will always be a part of my soul, and they will always enter into my writing from time to time as God teaches me more and more about His love and provision in all things. I seriously doubt that I ever would have written the thousands of pages that I have over the last eleven years without the impact of my children’s lives on mine. I am grateful that they live, and I am grateful that Jesus lives so that an eternity in Heaven is the Hope we have for each day on this earth. That hope is what keeps me going, it is the hope that brings a smile to my face when I wake each morning to the birds singing outside my window. So, through all these thousands of pages, you have gotten to know me and I hope we have all gotten to know God a little bit more with each message. God has walked me through the fire of loss and then restored my life with His great love, and I know He has done the same with many of you. It’s a process of learning about God, and letting Him lift the heavy load of despair that wants to clamp itself onto all of us in this life. Not all will have a son leave this earth for Heaven, but all of us will go through fiery trials of one sort or another. That’s just life on this earth. That’s just something we might as well get used to because this isn’t Heaven, this is earth, and Satan is alive and well and very, very active in our days wanting to kill, steal and destroy us. From a devotional I recently read: For all the things we don’t know about Judas, there is one thing we know for sure: He had no relationship with the Master. He had seen Jesus, but he did not know him. He had heard Jesus, but he did not understand him. He had a religion but no relationship. As Satan worked his way around the table in the upper room, he needed a special kind of man to betray our Lord. He needed a man who had seen Jesus but who did not know him. He needed a man who knew the actions of Jesus but had missed out on the mission of Jesus. Judas was this man. He knew the empire but had never known the Man. Judas bore the cloak of religion, but he never knew the heart of Christ. We learn this timeless lesson from the betrayer. Satan’s best tools of destruction are not from outside the church; they are within the church. A church will never die from the immorality in Hollywood or the corruption in Washington. But it will die from corrosion within—from those who bear the name of Jesus but have never met him and from those who have religion but no relationship. Judas bore the cloak of religion, but he never knew the heart of Christ. Let’s make it our goal to know… deeply. Max Lucado As we mature in our Christian faith, we begin to understand that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship. That’s why getting to know God is vitally important. But what exactly does that mean, and what exactly does it look and feel like as we get to know God in the personal relationship that we talk about? I know that the LORD is great, that our Lord is greater than all gods. Psalm 135:5 (NIV) Most of us know that the Lord is great, and that the Lord is greater than all gods. We would not argue that for those of us who believe God’s Word, the Bible, but to know that God is great doesn’t really help us to know Him personally, does it? So, how do we get to know Him personally? I heard a story the other day: A person went to the store to buy a drill so they could attach something to the wall at home. The question became, what did they need? The answer I heard was, “They needed a hole in the wall.” It’s a clever answer because naturally our mind goes to the fact that they needed a drill. This answer takes us one step past what seems obvious, to their real need, the hole. In thinking about this, I want to go past the obvious in, “getting to know God,” or “the drill,” to what is really needed in this situation we find ourselves in, building a relationship with God. Maybe it’s in realizing a desire to even get to know God in the first place? And where does that desire even come from? We don’t really want to have a relationship with someone if we have no desire to know them. The desire to know someone is to realize that they even exist in the world. So do we first have to admit to ourselves that there is a God, and that we desire to get to know Him because He is there? When we want to get to know someone we have realized exists in this world, we make it a priority in our life, don’t we? We take some deliberate steps in that direction, either by calling them, or writing to them, or being in the same place they are so that we can talk to them. I remember years ago wanting to get to know a woman I was in a small Bible Study group with. She seemed nice, I was new in town, I desired a friend, and so I asked her to have lunch with me. Little by little, we got to know one another. Now we are great friends! I made an intentional choice to get to know her once I was introduced to her…once I realized she existed. To get to know God, we’ll have to make Him a priority in our life, choose to focus on Him once we’ve been introduced to the possibility that He is there, and invite Him into our life. Choose to spend time with Him. Our priority most days seems to be just making it through the day in one piece—so we’ll attach a prayer onto the beginning and the end of our day just for “good luck.” We’re purchasing the “drill” to get the job done, but what we’re not realizing is the main point of the story is not the drill or the hole in the wall, it’s the attachment that needs to take place. God wants us to know that what needs to be attached is us to Him. By making time with God a priority in our day, we are focusing our thoughts on who He is, and in that we’ll discover His love for us, and when we discover that He loves us because His love is filling us, then we’ll start to want to love Him back. His very Word says that we love, because He first loved us. Being in a relationship with our Father will become the desire of our heart. When we are offered the purest most unconditional kind of love we have ever experienced, who of us would reject that? God’s love is the glue that keeps us attached to Him. Charles Stanley, July 18th: A personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ has the potential to be more intimately satisfying than any earthly connection…Making a firm commitment to know Him is the first step, which takes priority above all other matters…Once we resolve to follow diligently after the Lord, our next step is to spend time in His Word. The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself and His plan for the world…God is pleased by followers who make it their goal to deepen their relationship with Him…Dedicating time to knowing and experiencing God is a critical step toward a satisfying walk with Him. God can always take us deeper than any wisdom of man…past the drill, past the hole, and to the attachment that needs to take place in our lives. God is the cleverest of all, because after all, He created cleverness! Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. John 17:3-4 (NIV) We must remember that our needs will come to an end, but Jesus Christ will remain forever. If our prayers have dealt only with presenting our requests to the Lord, we’ve missed a great opportunity to get to know the One with whom we’ll spend eternity. Let’s invest time in pursuing intimacy with Christ. Then we can enjoy the benefits of that relationship forever. Charles Stanley (May 13th) We’re all so busy praying and trying to drill a hole in the mound of things surrounding us that we can miss the great opportunity we have in prayer to get to know Jesus and His love. Do most of us KNOW that Jesus loves us? Really? And do most of us KNOW that we love Him? Really? I read this in one of Beth Moore’s Bible Studies: “One of the biggest and least addressed obstacles to truly love God: Thinking I already do when, truth be told, I really don’t.” What?!! Yes, she says that when we really love someone, we know it by the way we feel. If we don’t feel the loving relationship we have with God, perhaps it’s not really there. Now, we’re talking about our love for God, not His love for us. He loves us!! Always! But on our side of the equation, we may highly respect God. We may be grateful to God, worship God, serve God, but still not really love Him. This is what Beth Moore was teaching, and I was listening… Beth went on to tell the story of her return home one night after doing a conference. She was wondering why God loved her so much because she was overwhelmed with all the blessings in her life that she was experiencing, and she begin to tell God once again how much she loved Him. God gently told her that from now on when she wanted to tell Him that she loved Him, she was to say, “I love You too,” because whenever she felt moved to tell God she loved Him, it was only because He had first loved her. She was simply returning the love to Him, it wasn’t originating within her. When we realize that we have no capacity to love without the love of God that fills us first, I think we will begin to realize that without God, there is no love. And when we realize that, we will begin to recognize and know His love in a deeper and more impactful way in our lives. We will begin to know Him because it will be His love that draws us into a relationship with Him. He will woo us to Him, and we will begin to trust Him as never before. This is vital in our walk with God, because then no matter how dark it gets, and it will get VERY DARK during certain times in our lives, we will know that our Savior is with us in that darkness, and that His love will never leave us because He is our Best Friend, and He loves us unconditionally at all times. God’s Word, is his love letter to you. You won’t necessarily hear God speak out loud, but you can hear what he has to say through his eternal dialogue with humanity. Max Lucado May 13th When you know someone loves you, and you are discovering that you love them, don’t you thrill to see their written word to you? Don’t you wait for the mail to arrive, or the email to pop up in your inbox, or to see a message personally written to you on FB or your text? We should thrill with God’s love letters to us in His Word in the same way. If we don’t, then perhaps we aren’t taking them personally enough. The other day the verse, “Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I am your God…” was running through my mind and I was starting to get it. The God of the Universe was telling me not to be afraid because He is with me. He is with me! He is watching over me. He is in control. He is. Believe it. And it started to sink even deeper into my soul…puny me has a great God caring for me. I am not to fear… Those are facts that need to be meditated on, to be absorbed, over and over again because this world tries to drown them out under the pressure we can feel in our day. Perhaps we don’t realize that God’s letters are there for us, to speak to our hearts of His love, to heal our churning emotions, to quiet our spirit when it is disturbed. God’s Word was written for us so that we would know Him and know His love. If our Bible has dust on it, it’s been much too long since we’ve opened a letter from the Lord. I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. John 17:20 (NLT) Jesus knew we would be here on this day, looking for His message to us. He knew about the attachment we would need in our lives just to get through each waking day. He felt the frailty of this life in human form, and the temptations, and the loneliness. He stayed connected to His Father during His time on this earth, He prayed often. Jesus was also praying for us when He walked this earth, and He continues to be our voice to the Father in Heaven, pleading on our behalf. He does this because He loves us, as does the Father, and the Holy Spirit that resides within each believer. Let it be the desire of our hearts to love God “too.” Let it be the desire of our heart to read His love letters to us, often, to talk them over with Him, often, and to get to know without a doubt that we are loved. I read once, “How do we not doubt?” The answer was: “Don’t.” I know it seems like we should, I know it seems there are so many questions we should ask, so many rabbit trails that our minds should go down searching for Truth, but haven’t we all done that until we are worn out if we have been a believer for years? Wouldn’t it be easier to just, “Don’t.” To just stop doubting and believe? Sure, we should check it all out when we are a new believer, make some comparisons, line Jesus up with any other god and see that He is the One True God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and then there comes a time to stop all the unrest and just Trust. Put all the doubts aside, shut down the rabbit trails, and stand firm with confidence on God’s solid foundation of Truth. Let’s feel His love flowing into our lives and live in that love, loving Him back intentionally. In that intention, we will come to know our Savior because He will become a priority our life. And what about me continuing to write…? Well, I’ll rest in the Shadow of the Almighty, trusting Him if and when He puts more messages on my heart. It seems He has more to say through these fingers on this keyboard. On this day, at least! Until we meet again, Diane

Devotional - Knowing His Love

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 05:10:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Devotional</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">Knowing His Love</h1> I know that the LORD is great, that our Lord is greater than all gods. Psalm 135:5 (NIV) As we mature in our Christian faith, we begin to understand that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship. That’s why getting to know God is vitally important. But what exactly does that mean, and what exactly does it look and feel like as we get to know God in the personal relationship that we talk about? Most of us know that the Lord is great, and that the Lord is greater than all gods. We would not argue that for those of us who believe God’s Word, the Bible, but to know that God is great doesn’t really help us to know Him personally, does it? So, how do we get to know Him personally? Maybe it’s in realizing a desire to even get to know God in the first place? And where does that desire even come from? We don’t really want to have a relationship with someone if we have no desire to know them. The desire to know someone is to realize that they even exist in the world. So do we first have to admit to ourselves that there is a God, and that we desire to get to know Him because He is there? When we want to get to know someone we have realized exists in this world, we make it a priority in our life, don’t we? To get to know God, we’ll have to make Him a priority in our life, choose to focus on Him once we’ve been introduced to the possibility that He is there, and invite Him into our life. Choose to spend time with Him. By making time with God a priority in our day, we are focusing our thoughts on who He is, and in that we’ll discover His love for us, and when we discover that He loves us because His love is filling us, then we’ll start to want to love Him back. His very Word says that we love, because He first loved us. Being in a relationship with our Father will become the desire of our heart. When we are offered the purest most unconditional kind of love we have ever experienced, who of us would reject that? God’s love is the glue that keeps us attached to Him. When we realize that we have no capacity to love without the love of God that fills us first, I think we will begin to realize that without God, there is no love. And when we realize that, we will begin to recognize and know His love in a deeper and more impactful way in our lives. We will begin to know Him because it will be His love that draws us into a relationship with Him. He will woo us to Him, and we will begin to trust Him as never before. This is vital in our walk with God, because then no matter how dark it gets, and it will get VERY DARK during certain times in our lives, we will know that our Savior is with us in that darkness, and that His love will never leave us because He is our Best Friend, and He loves us unconditionally at all times. Perhaps we don’t realize that God’s letters are there for us, to speak to our hearts of His love, to heal our churning emotions, to quiet our spirit when it is disturbed. God’s Word was written for us so that we would know Him and know His love. If our Bible has dust on it, it’s been much too long since we’ve opened a letter from the Lord. Let it be the desire of our heart to read His love letters to us and to get to know that we are loved.

A Strong Heart

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:34:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Message</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">A Strong Heart</h1> My daughter-in-law, Holly, called me the other day. She wanted to share a cute story with me. She said she noticed my grandson, Jackson, age five, hands folded and praying. When she saw him, she said, “Jack, are you praying?” He answered, “Yes. It makes my heart strong.” Can we say, “Out of the mouths of babes?!” It’s cute, of course, but it’s also profound at the same time! As adults we can miss this—prayer changes things, and it starts with our very own hearts! “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NLT) Jack has always been a praying boy, probably from about age two, he has always volunteered to pray before our meals—In fact, he has always insisted on praying for us. For the first couple of years, we didn’t even know what he was saying, and then it started to become a bit clearer. It went something like, “Love you God, thank (unknown), and something, something, something… ” But, he always said the exact same thing. Just recently he changed his prayers, and now we hear him thanking God for his Transformers as well as other things. It certainly pleases my heart to hear him have such a heart for God. I wonder what special call God has on his life, perhaps a pastor, a missionary, or the same and most important call God has on all of our lives, to love God and to love others. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 1 John 4:16 Loving others is not all that easy, in fact, it’s very hard. It takes a strong heart! It would be easier to love others if they would do exactly what we want them to do, and do it exactly when and how we want them to do it, but that is never going to happen—not with our friends, not with our spouse, not with our children, not with anyone. Everyone is going to live their own life, and we are going to live ours, and most times loving each other through it all is going to be hard work. And yet, that is exactly what God calls us to do! Love! “Above all, love each other deeply…” 1 Peter 4:8 Above all? Above all the frustration, and disappointment, and hurt, and confusion, and misunderstanding…Love? It seems really impossible, doesn’t it? But Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost for His Highest: "If Jesus ever commanded us to do something that He was unable to equip us to accomplish, He would be a liar. And if we make our own inability a stumbling block or an excuse not to be obedient, it means that we are telling God that there is something which He has not yet taken into account. Every element of our own self-reliance must be put to death by the power of God. The moment we recognize our complete weakness and our dependence upon Him will be the very moment that the Spirit of God will exhibit His power." Here, Chambers talks about putting our own self-reliance to death by the power of God. Isn’t that what even young Jackson was doing? He was talking to God, recognizing his complete weakness and his dependence upon God, feeling the power of God filling him! Why would a young child feel the need for added strength? I don’t really know, but I know why we old adults do…because we get worn out and tired in this world of frustration, disappointment, hurt, confusion and misunderstandings! Our heart not only beats, but it takes a beating—and when it’s bruised and bloodied we’re not in very good condition to love another human being who also has a bruised and bloodied heart. Every day, bruised and bloodied hearts spend time with other bruised and bloodied hearts, and in the midst of all that hurt and pain, God asks us to love one another! Impossible…without God that is. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13 Maybe Jackson, who lives in a world of Superheroes a lot of the time, understands this better than we adults do! Maybe he sees Ironman gaining extra strength that’s needed, or Optimus Prime and Bumblebee Transformer changing into the Superheroes they need to be to get the job done, and it’s not so out of the question for him to ask for added strength from someone besides himself? I don’t know, I’m just pondering this here. Rick Warren writes: <cite>“You need to pray, deliver us from evil, because God’s answer to our fear is his power. He can deliver.”</cite> I had a young boy in my chair at the shop the other day. He talked almost non-stop about Pokémon. Most of the things he talked about I didn’t understand, I don’t play Pokémon, but he knew it all well. And when I was almost done cutting his hair, he sort of slowed down, and he said, “I didn’t have to take a pill today.” I commented on it being a day off school, and he said it was and that’s why he didn’t have to take a pill. He said, “I have trouble focusing when I don’t take my pill.” That seemed to be a contradiction to me, because he had just focused for the last 15 minutes on Pokeman without any trouble at all. Maybe we all do that, we all think we have trouble focusing on things, when the truth is, we are focused, just on something besides the thing we are really supposed to be focused on, loving God and loving others. Maybe God doesn’t “deliver us from evil,” because we are focused on the evil, and not on God? Maybe we have trouble loving others because we are focused on the things of this world, and not on the love God has for this world, and for us? Maybe we all need to take a moment away from the noise and confusion and pray, and allow God to make our hearts strong by focusing on His love. “Our heavenly Father knows our circumstances, and if we will stay focused on Him, instead of our circumstances, we will grow spiritually—just as ‘the lilies of the field.’” Oswald Chambers Nico, age six, asked his mom, "Mama, do you think Aquaman knows Nemo, and they hang out together?" Kids, living in a world where superpowers are normal, where talking fish are their friends, and where anything is possible when you believe. We all lived there at one time, if only for just a short while. Some have their childhoods cut short when the evil in this world invades it at much too young of an age. I know of such a person, where at a very young age they needed superpower to be delivered from tremendous fear—sadly, the fear was from a parent who was inflicting horrendous abuse upon them. In their memory, they remember reaching up for help from Jesus, and they remember the hands of Jesus reaching down to strengthen them. The abuse continued, as the trials of this life will, but the memory of the love of Jesus in that moment has not left them to this day. Jesus was there for them to make their heart strong when they turned to Him. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1 We are all in the same battle on this earth, the battle between good and evil. We all need Jesus, and we all need each other. If we are fighting against one another, then the devil is having his way with us, we are fighting on the dark side. God is asking us to fight for love, because the devil is certainly not going to love us. He hates us! He wants to harm us! He wants to destroy us! He wants to steal from us! He wants to kill us!! Did you know that the name of Jesus is kryptonite to the devil? It is!! The devil can’t stand hearing the name of our Lord! The devil can’t stand hearing us read scripture out loud! The devil can’t stand our worship songs, or our prayers. It makes the devil weak! Jesus’ name gives us Mighty Superpowers! I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. Luke 10:19 (NIV) I recently was talking with a young adult who truly sensed and, from what she told me, saw a demon in her home. We were talking on Facebook when this started to happen. She yelled out towards what she saw, “No!” I wrote to her, “Go get your Bible and start to read Scripture out loud!” She did just that. It wasn’t long, and she said the demon was gone. I told her to take a look at Matthew 4, about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. When the devil came to Jesus, Jesus said, “No! The Scriptures say….” This young woman and I were both astounded at how Jesus had set the example of what to do when times like this come—and it worked! Now, you may have never had an encounter with a demon, I can’t say as I have, but I can tell you that I have had encounters with thoughts that seem to come right from the pit of Hell. I can tell you that I have been tempted by the devil in many ways, and that my emotions have been plagued with the devil’s darkness as he tries to pull me into pits of self-pity, and depression, and despair. I know that the enemy likes to steal my joy, rob me of my strength and make me fighting mad at people who may mean to harm me, or may not, but sometimes my distorted view of things makes it seem so. My feelings can get hurt and that makes me want to strike back…not love back. Just this past Mother’s Day, driving to church, my mind was tempted to have feelings that weren’t pleasant. It could have ruined my morning; it could have ruined my entire day. But I remembered what I had heard recently when watching a video of a man who claims to have been taken to Hell in a near-death experience. While there, he knew he deserved all that Hell consisted of. He knew that he had not devoted his life to Jesus, in fact, he had been a very ruthless person most of his life because of the pain that had been inflicted upon him as a child. But as the devil came at him in Hell, he remembered back to his childhood—there was one Sunday school teacher who taught him the words to the song, “Jesus Loves Me.” He started to sing out those words as best he could, and the devil started to move away from him when hearing the name of Jesus—and when he came out of that near-death experience, he was a changed man because of the power of Jesus. His heart had definitely been strengthened. As I remembered that story on the way to church on Mother’s Day, I started singing that very same simple song, “Jesus loves me this I know!! For the Bible tells me so. I am weak, but He is strong! Little ones to Him belong…” I sang it out with all my might in my car! And do you know what? My heart was strengthened, my thoughts were renewed, and my day turned out to be absolutely blessed with the good things of God! Yes, the name of Jesus is kryptonite to the devil!! Go Jesus! “By what power, or in whose name, have you done this?...Let me clearly state to you and to all the people of Israel that he was healed in the name and power of Jesus Christ…There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them.” Acts 4:7,10,12 (NLT) Praying like Jack did is vital in our everyday encounters with this world!! We have to call Jesus in so He can kick the devil out before the enemy takes us places we really don’t want to go, both in our thinking and in our actions!! We may think we’ve never had an encounter with the devil, but think again, we do every single day! If we don’t realize our struggles that are physical, emotional, and spiritual come from the devil, then we are blinded to his ways, and we are easy prey! Pray or be Prey!! For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12 (NLT) Charles Stanley writes, <cite>“Meditation is still crucial for believers today. In our culture, we are inundated by worldly values and godless priorities. Unless we guard our hearts, they will slowly begin to accept these unrighteous standards… quiets our spirit and provides an avenue for God to purify our hearts.</cite> If even a small child needs to quiet his heart before God and have it purified, how much more so do we as adults need to do the same? If a child is finding strength in prayer, perhaps he is leading the way for all of us to find that same strength. Jesus taught us all to be more childlike. My other daughter-in-law, Cami, said that our five year old granddaughter turned to her just the other day and said, “Mommy, God rocks!” I’m loving that our grandchildren are loving God so early in life. If not when they are young, then when? It doesn’t get any easier to give our hearts to God as we get older… Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. Luke 18:16 (NLT) Our son, who left this world for Heaven at the age of sixteen, always wanted to remain young at heart. It was interesting to listen to him talk about this—even as his dying day drew closer he was almost comforted by the fact that he would never have to grow into an adult and leave his childhood behind him. I said, “Yes, Phil. You will never have to buy a house, or get a job.” In talking with his good buddy about this years later, it was still on his heart too. He and Phil seemed to have a spoken pact between them that they would never lose their youth on the inside—but Phil’s friend told me that as he was moving into his mid-twenties, it was becoming much more difficult to hold onto those thoughts. It seemed the world was invading his childhood, and his heart was maturing whether he liked it or not. Perhaps that is why most people who are going to take that step of faith towards Jesus do so before they turn 18. It becomes much more difficult to believe in things we have not yet seen when our heart loses the softness of its youth. My husband, Jim, was watching an old Twilight Zone, and I was suddenly aware of the dialogue going on while writing this. A young teenage girl was talking with her father. She asked him, “Everybody is afraid. Everyone dad. Why?” He answered, “People are afraid because they make themselves afraid. They are afraid because they subvert every great thing ever discovered, every fine idea ever thought, every marvelous invention ever conceived. They subvert it Jodie, they make it crooked and devious. Then too late, far too late, they ask themselves the question ‘Why?’ Then it’s too late, everything is too late.” This world crowds in on God’s love in our hearts day by precious day, and it pushes the love out little by little if we are not asking God to guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus, as written about in Philippians 4:7. It does make us all afraid. When fear rises up, we can begin to think that Jesus is still hanging on that cross, dead, and there’s no hope there. But Jesus was taken down off that Cross and laid in a tomb, and three days later He had risen from the dead, and He alive, and He gives us daily Hope! And that Hope can fill our hearts with love, love for Jesus, and love for one another! A friend recently posted this on her Facebook: "There's only so much room in one heart. You can fill it up with love or your can fill it with resentment. But every bit of resentment you hold takes space away from the love." The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds How do we nurture any kind of love that we have in us? Through our times in conversing with and listening to our God! Otherwise the love we had in our hearts as a child will be eaten up by this world, eventually. It might take until our mid-twenties, maybe later, probably for most of us much earlier, but it will happen. This is a dog-eat-dog world, and we are the dogs!! We devour one another because we have probably been devoured ourselves somewhere along the way, leaving us crippled in the love department. We need God’s love to heal us from the inside out. Oswald Chambers writes, <cite>“Am I prepared to be identified so closely with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness will be continually poured out through me? Neither natural love nor God’s divine love will remain and grow in me unless it is nurtured.”</cite> Any power we have to love in this life comes from God, whether we know it or not. And just like Superheroes who have special strengths that they can tap into to get the job done and defeat the evil in this world, we too have that source, only ours comes from an Almighty God who is very real. Ask any child which Transformer they like better…and most will tell you they like the Autobots, not the Decepticons. Why? Because we were made to like the good guys and to want the good guys to win! Autobots are the good guys! And so are we! Let’s not forget which side we’re on, let’s not let the devil deceive us into thinking his power is greater than the Powerful One who lives within us! “…pay attention to the Source, and out of you ‘will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:38) O. Chambers We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. 2 Corinthians 4:7 (NLT) Holly asked Jack how much he loves Jesus? He said, “I love Jesus five million times!” Jack may be mesmerized by Ironman, and Bumblebee Transformer may be his favorite toy, but even in his childlike heart he knows who his True Hero is. Jesus! The Savior of the World! I know that the LORD is great, that our Lord is greater than all gods. Psalm 135:5 (NIV) The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. Isaiah 11:6 (NIV) Until we meet again, Diane

Devotional - A Strong Heart

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:32:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Devotional</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">A Strong Heart</h1> I can do everything through Him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13 Prayer changes things, and it starts with our very own hearts! Loving others is not all that easy, in fact, it’s very hard. It takes a strong heart! It would be easier to love others if they would do exactly what we want them to do, and do it exactly when and how we want them to do it, but that is never going to happen—not with our friends, not with our spouse, not with our children, not with anyone. Everyone is going to live their own life, and we are going to live ours, and most times loving each other through it all is going to be hard work. And yet, that is exactly what God calls us to do! Love! “Above all, love each other deeply…” 1 Peter 4:8 Above all? Above all the frustration, and disappointment, and hurt, and confusion, and misunderstanding…Love? It seems really impossible, doesn’t it? In talking to God, recognizing our complete weakness and our dependence upon God, the power of God will fill us! “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NLT) Our heart not only beats, it takes a beating, and when it’s bruised and bloodied we’re not in very good condition to love another human being who also has a bruised and bloodied heart. Every day bruised and bloodied hearts spend time with other bruised and bloodied hearts, and in the midst of all that hurt and pain, God asks us to love one another! Impossible…without God that is. Maybe we have trouble loving others because we are focused on the things of this world, and not on the love God has for this world, and for us? Maybe we all need to take a moment away from the noise and confusion and pray, and allow God to make our hearts strong by focusing on His love. We are all in the same battle on this earth, the battle between good and evil. We all need Jesus, and we all need each other. If we are fighting against one another, then the devil is having his way with us, and we are victims of Satan’s abuse. That is why God is asking us to love one another, because the devil is certainly not going to love us. The name of Jesus is kryptonite to the devil! The devil can’t stand hearing the name of our Lord! The devil can’t stand hearing us read scripture out loud! The devil can’t stand our worship songs, or our prayers. It makes the devil weak! Jesus’ name gives us Mighty Superpowers! Jesus makes our hearts strong! This world will crowd in on God’s love in our hearts day by precious day, pushing the love out little by little if we are not asking God every day to guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Prayer does change things.

Persevere

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 03:08:00 GMT

<div id="header"> <h1> </h1> <h1>The Journey - Message</h1> <h2><a href="http://dcshore.com/">DCShore.com</a></h2> <h3>A Ministry of Sharing and Encouragement</h3> <h1> </h1> <hr /></div> <h1 class="center">Persevere</h1> It was an interesting morning at church here in Concord. For some reason, I felt very small sitting there, waiting for the service to start. I didn’t know if it was the beamed ceilings that made me feel that way, or my emotions…but I felt pea-sized in this great big world, but as those thoughts ran thru my mind, I knew that God could see me sitting there, and I felt His giant-sized love towards me, even if I was only a minute speck in this huge universe. The other interesting thing was, during the sermon, the pastor actually asked us all, “Do you feel small?” I was so surprised! Why on this morning, would he ask that question? How like God! I wonder how many others had felt that smallness before the question was asked? The pastor was relating it to the part of Revelation that we were in. In Revelation 4:8 It says: “…I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my words and have not denied my name.” “Do you feel small?” he had asked, and then he went on to say, “That is not what God is looking at. He is asking, will you keep my name?” It doesn’t matter our size, or even the size of our church, what matters is the size of our heart towards God. I wrote the word “Persevere” at the top of my bulletin, the one I was taking notes on during the service. It seemed I should write about the subject of perseverance later today, which is now, so I jotted it down. Upon returning home, I opened up my large print Bible, and started to read the part of Revelation we were reading at church this morning, and as I read in my New Living Translation Bible, it said, “Because you have obeyed my command to persevere…” What? There’s that word, persevere…I wondered if that is what my Bible said this morning in the New International Version that I used in church? I took a look to see. No, it said it just a bit different. It used these words, “Since you have kept my command to endure patiently…” Interesting! Again I was surprised at God tying things together, leading me to read when I got home, and to spot the word persevere in a different translation…but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised…God works in such amazing ways. I guess this writing could be called, “Endure Patiently.” Or, “Not giving up your faith,” as it’s written in the New Century Version Bible. Or “Passionate patience,” as it says in The Message Bible. It’s all the same, really. Some, who aren’t familiar with so many different translations of the same Word, think there are many different Bibles. There is only one Bible. We can say the same thing in many different ways, as in, “I went to church this morning.” Another might say, “I was in church earlier today.” Another might say, “This morning, I was in church.” The wording may change, but the Truth is the Truth as long as it’s God’s Holy Word. The pastor this morning went on to explain that the church in Philadelphia, talked about in Revelation, was a small church, and that is why it is talked about as having “little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” (3:8 NIV) God was pleased with the faithfulness of this church, small or not, God knows the inner workings of a church, and He knows the inner workings of our hearts. Maybe we all feel small at times, but we can remain faithful even if we only have faith the size of a mustard seed. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20 (NIV) And maybe with all the disasters that are taking place these days, we ought to think more about the things talked about in Revelation too. For those of us who believe in the written Word of God, we can’t deny that the end is coming, that the Day of the Lord is drawing near. Even if it’s another 2,000 years away, it’s still drawing near…that’s a given. And yet even when a huge earthquake happens in Japan, and a huge surge of water like the tsunami wipes out so many cities, it is all very small in size compared to God’s immeasurable size, power, and strength. That’s why even a mustard seed of faith in Him has mighty power, because the power is not ours, it is God’s! If we think a tsunami is powerful, and it is, think of the One who calmed the storm in a boat full of fishermen simply by speaking to the waves. He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.” Luke 8:24b-25 (NIV) Who else has held the oceans in his hand? Who has measured off the heavens with his fingers? Who else knows the weight of the earth or has weighed out the mountain and the hills? Isaiah 40:12 (NLT) What God is asking us to do in this life is not even close to calming storms and having the wind and water obey us like Jesus did. All He is asking us to do is to trust Him to calm the storms. God simply wants us to persevere in believing Him. He’s not even asking us to bear our own burdens, or attempt anything in our own strength except to hold on tightly to Him at all times. And yet, that seems to be our greatest struggle, doesn’t it? We usually try much harder to bear our own burdens then we will try to give them to Him. We usually try much harder to do things in our own strength, than using that very same energy to depend on His strength. We will try much harder to solve the problems plaguing us, then we will try handing them over to God to solve. And so, we get worn out from all this daily living, we get exhausted, frustrated, angry, depleted, not knowing what to do next and forgetting that God is still there, waiting for us, patiently enduring our forgetfulness that He is God, after all, and He’s wanting to help us. Yes, God wants us to work hard, but in a totally different direction than most of us are putting our effort. A simple poem puts this into perspective… Broken Dreams As children bring their broken toy with tears for us to mend, I brought my broken dreams to God because He was my friend! But then instead of leaving Him in peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own. At last I snatched them back and cried, "How can you be so slow?" "My child," He said.  "What could I do? You never did let go." Author Unknown Why is this all so hard? Why is it so hard to just throw up our hands, turn up our face, or fall to our knees, and depend on our Creator? Why do we forget God so quickly, so willingly, and head off on our own trying to make things work? Why do we think we are so much larger, so much stronger, and so much wiser than we are? Why do we think the world revolves around us and our needs, our desires, and our purposes? We are believing much too much in Satan and his lies, much too easily in our enemy’s deception, and much too quickly in worldly reasoning and logic! Without daily focus and perseverance towards the things of God, we will not remain faithful to Him. Oh, our Father still loves us, and He will always forgive us, and for that we are extremely grateful. But God wants more than that for us in this life; He wants the very best for us each and every day! He wants us to know that we are taken care of thru the good times and the bad. On the other hand, Satan wants us to feel forgotten, so he distracts us and woos us towards other priorities, puffing us up way out of proportion, only to be deflated later when things in life start to fall apart. It is better to admit our smallness and total lack of strength and power as human beings, because this ultimately leads us into understanding our significance in the eyes of our God—who loves us beyond measure as He fills us with His power by His indwelling Holy Spirit. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28 (NIV) Oswald Chambers in, “My Utmost for His Highest” writes, “Both God and Satan use the strategy of elevation, but Satan uses it in temptation, and the effect is quite different. When the devil elevates you to a certain place, he causes you to fasten your idea of what holiness is far beyond what flesh and blood could ever bear or achieve. Your life becomes a spiritual acrobatic performance high atop a steeple. You cling to it, trying to maintain your balance and daring not to move. But when God elevates you by His grace into heavenly places, you find a vast plateau where you can move about with ease.” Too many times we are living life on a tight-rope, or as Chambers puts it, “high atop a steeple.” It’s a crazy balancing act of all the things we think we need to do, all the things we think we need to be, all the places we think we need to go… When what God is asking us to do is to, “Be still, and know that He is God.” (Psalm 46:10) And in so doing, we will find that “vast plateau” Chambers talks about. Why did I feel so small in church this morning? Because I am that small, we all are, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s just putting things in the proper perspective. If we can start to see ourselves as God does, as a child in need of a Father, we can start to realize that God is very large, and very capable, and so very loving. We need only be who we are in Him, and in that, we are exactly who we were created to be. We won’t miss out on anything, not a thing, and in all actuality, we will gain so much more, and be so much more, because He is more! "Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things.” C.S. Lewis “First things” must always be God. Period. If we will start with God, everything that comes after that will be in order. Let’s get out of the disciples’ boat—fearing the storm that rages in our lives—and realize that the Savior of the world is right here with us! Jesus isn’t sleeping now; He is sitting at the right hand of the Father, taking care of business, our business, handling anything and everything in our lives. We don’t need to double up on that duty! He’s got it covered! Let’s persevere towards God and His Truth about all this and head in the exact opposite direction of Satan and his deceptive tactics! Satan’s ultimate lie is that you are capable of being the god of your own life—and his ultimate bondage is the attempt to live as though his lie were truth. Satan is out to usurp God’s place in your life. Every temptation is an endeavor by him to get you to live your life independent of God. Whenever you focus on yourself instead of Christ or prefer material and temporal values over spiritual and eternal values, the tempter has succeeded. The message of this fallen world is to inflate the ego while denying God the opportunity to take His rightful place as Lord. Satan couldn’t be more pleased—that was his plan from the beginning (Taken from “The Bondage Breaker by Neil T. Anderson) That’s why it takes perseverance in this world, because there is a battle going on, and in that battle we can end up living in the bondage of Satan’s lies. We end up running hard and using up most of our energy chasing Satan’s schemes, rather than using that very same energy in turning toward God, seeking His Will, and resting in the place He has us at the moment. Perhaps this morning in church, God was letting me experience just how small I really was. Perhaps it was a moment of getting out of the fallen world’s perception of the inflated ego we can have, and enjoy that moment to rest in the security of God’s love for the little beings that He created us to be, all the while being made in His image. Being little isn’t bad, it is simply realizing that we are little, and this universe is immense, as is our God, and that is okay. We are not in charge, we are not in control, it is not all about us, it is all about God, and His plan, and that is a very good thing, and that is a huge weight being lifted off our very small shoulders. Do we really want to carry that weight? Satan keeps trying to convince us that we do, and that we deserve to be in charge, and that we do know all, but Satan is wrong! He even tries to convince us that we can imagine how great and wonderful God is…and we can’t! We really can’t! God is beyond even our imaginings! Why would God create human beings in His image, who can’t really even imagine the vastness of their Creator? I don’t know. A few have gotten glimpses of God’s awesomeness, and their stories are in the Bible, and their stories are in published writings of today. People who have crossed over that line of life and death come back to try and tell us what they have seen, and they try, and they try, but it’s still beyond what they can describe, and what we can understand. Those that have seen Heaven say there are colors there that we don’t have on earth. So whatever we imagine, it lacks color! Sort of like trying to picture what colors are missing from the old black and white TV’s we used to watch! When I was a child, my brother used to go down to a neighbor’s house who had the first color TV on the block. When he would return, we would ask him what the colors were in the NBC Peacock on our screen? Yes, I’m aging myself! But, we tried to imagine colors we know, and it was hard to see them in the black and white of our screens. Trying to imagine colors we’ve never seen…how can we? We can read our Bible every day, and we can study the Scriptures, and read other books about the Scriptures, and listen to sermons, and pray, and still…we can’t come close to knowing all there is to know about what lies beyond this world for all of eternity. And yet, Satan tries to convince us that we are so smart, and so capable, and in doing so he leads us high up onto that “steeple” trying to balance this life on our own—and it gets hard, harder than we can handle, and we want to quit…and still, God calls us to persevere. We have to realize, God is not talking about persevering on our own, but rather in the believing and trusting that He’s got it all under control and we can rest, as children should, in His strong and tender care. I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. Revelation 3:11 (NIV) What we have is God!! A Savior! The Light of the World! I heard recently that there is no hope without the resurrection. Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have nothing…there is nothing to hold on to. There will be no return of a Savior to wait for. There will be no Heaven to look forward to. There will only be this short life….and that is exactly what our enemy, Satan, wants us to believe. “By faith we lay hold of the property in Satan’s clutches which rightfully belongs to God, and we hold on until Satan’s turns loose.” Neil Anderson We must hold tightly to the hope we say we have in Christ Jesus, and we must believe He is coming soon to take us to the place He has prepared for us. Otherwise we must steel ourselves against the tidal waves of this world, the hurt, the pain, the missing, and the hard work that each day can bring, instead of rejoicing in each day that God has made, and being glad in it! Emptiness is huge when Jesus isn’t there to fill it. Loneliness is forever when Jesus isn’t there to end it. Despair is too deep when Jesus isn’t there to lift us out of it. To live this life, it takes perseverance each day. The choice is, what will we persevere in? In Jesus, or in the world and its ways? Will we hold on to what we have, as stated in Revelation? Will we put our time and effort into a relationship with our God, or will we put our time and effort into things that slow us down, wear us out, and cause us strife? Many have given up things during this Lent season. Some struggle to maintain their promise to God in abstaining from certain pleasures they’ve given up, and that causes us to feel the sting of not following thru with those promises. It has caused me to think; if we really want to give up something that we love, why not give up our time? Why not give up not reading the Bible, and spend some time in God’s Word getting to know Him. Why not give up some time not praying, and pray, or give up those first thoughts of the day on other things, and give those first thoughts to God? These “sacrifices” will truly please God! Rest assured! Putting effort in that direction would please God all the more! To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Mark 12:33 (NIV) It is God’s air that we breathe, it is His world that we live on, and we are His creation. Let’s persevere until we experience His vast plateau of ease in this life! Not a life without problems, but a life dependent on our Savior thru them! Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers. 1 Timothy 4:16 (NIV) Until we meet again, Diane