Joy and Strength (Christian life and music)

We all need direction in life.  We want to know the future, our destination, where we are going. What better help could we ask for than an all-knowing compass in the Holy Spirit?  The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity and is equal to God and Jesus.  They are one and the same Being. So how are we led by the Holy Spirit?  We let Him!  To be a follower, we must be willing to be led.  It may seem a simple explanation, but unless we lay down our "rights" and also the belief that we know best, we cannot truly follow Christ via the Holy Spirit. The Spirit testifies to Truth.  Always.  He will never steer you wrong. But how do we know when it's the Holy Spirit leading us, and not someone else or even ourselves? Practice. As we listen to the Holy Spirit, at first it may be hit or miss.  And that's ok.  You hear among Christians all the time, "I thought God told me..."  I'm not sure why this happens.  To keep us humble?...

  There is a huge price to pay when we truly follow Jesus all the way.  We will be misunderstood, mocked, ostracized, even persecuted.  There will be trials and tribulations.  So why bother?  Because He is worth it.  And what He offers - true peace, joy, comfort, redemption, being His daughter, faithfulness, wisdom, and oh, so much more - trumps anything this ol' world has to offer.   It pretty much boils down to having a longterm view of things.  Will we give up some worldly kudos for His present and eternal blessings?  Or will we strive to make sense of this life without a longterm, eternal view knowing deep down that it all flies by in a flash only to face Him in eternity anyway?  Oh, and being a "good person" won't fly in the end.  It is only by His precious blood shed for us that any of us can know His salvation. What we give up for His sake is nothing compared to the treasures we have in Him both now and forever.  An...

"Jesus has a great plan for your life!" How many of you have heard this statement before?  I believe it is a uniquely American perspective.  However, I do not believe that it is God's perspective. Am I saying that God has a miserable plan for your life?  No. I am saying that following Jesus is hard.  His "great plans," if we are truly willing to obey Him fully, include our pruning, refining, the wilderness (at times), and many more trials and tribulations than we bargained for. I have experienced that the "great life" is more an inner job than outer blessings.  The life of Christ, via His Holy Spirit, comes to live inside our hearts when we receive Christ as our personal Savior.  Now, if we pay attention to Him, our interests have changed.   The accomplishments of this world don't matter as much to us, and if they still do, the Lord has ways of changing the course of our lives so that we are not anywhere near accomplishing what the world deems as ...

Did you know that as Christians, we do not have it in ourselves to win spiritual battles?  We are no match for the devil. Now this should not scare you because when we are in Christ, He has the power to beat the foe.  Every Time. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 2:14 that Christ always  leads us in triumph.   Always.  That means always! So why, then, do we still fail in our attempts to live a godly life? Simple.  At that moment, we are not following Jesus. We call ourselves followers of Christ.  And overall, we are. But in the heat of the battle, when we are suffering, when others are upsetting us, or whatever the case may be, are we following Christ then? He always leads us  in triumph.  So that tells me that triumph, or victory, is not a given.  We must do  something.  And that something is not what we think!  It is not to fight back in our own strength.  We lose when we do this because our battles our spiritual,...

What is it that you think you need to make you whole?  What piece is missing in your life? "If only I had ______, I know I could make it."   When life doesn't turn out as planned, where to we turn? Or when we reach a certain age where we thought we should have "arrived" by now but aren't there at all, then what?  Give up?  Stop dreaming?  Stop living? No one tells you that you wake up one day and you're 20 years older in a flash.   Oh sure, people talk about how quickly time flies.  But we don't really feel  it when we're young.  It's only as we get older that we realize how short life really is. And boy, it  - time, life - whizzes by at breakneck speed. Maybe you are a goal-setter and your life is so carefully planned out, to the smallest detail, that you are  exactly where you planned to be in life, where you wanted to be, and doing what you thought you would be doing at your age.   For me, it's like the Lord w...