Joy and Strength (Christian life and music)

 If you are a Christian, you are probably familiar with the term convicted, or conviction. A conviction from the Holy Spirit is there to protect us from harm.  A conviction from the Holy Spirit is God's way of leading us back to the right path. But I have noticed something that disturbs me about conviction.  I have seen the Spirit move in people's hearts to convict them of sin and what disturbs me is that they ignore it.  How do I know? I see no change in their attitude or behavior. Conviction is nothing at all like shame.  God never, no never, shames us.   So when He convicts us of a bad attitude, outright sin, or whatever else needs convicting in our lives, it is always for our own good.   It doesn't make us feel "bad."  But if not acted on through repentance, the Holy Spirit will give up.  The Holy Spirit never forces Himself on us.  He will not force us to repent, mend our ways, and humble ourselves before Him.  That is up to us.  He leaves the decision up to

Is it easy for you to receive God's personal love for you?  Maybe you see Him as far off, or His love as all-encompassing but not for you personally. Yet Jesus suffered unimaginable pain and agony on the cross not only to make a way to heaven for all of us, but so that we can enter His Presence here and now, in this broken, on-its-way-out world! I admit I have struggled with accepting how much God loves me personally.  Why?  Because I know how unworthy I am of such a vast, deep, permanent, and unconditional love.  When we are honest with ourselves, we know that we can never earn God's love in and of ourselves.  We are all way too sinful for that!  This holds true for even the "best" of us.  We have all  sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, from Mother Theresa to Hitler!  All we like sheep have gond astray, every one to his own way.  I don't make this stuff up!  This is the Word of God. But in His great love for us, God sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Chr

This morning, during my quiet time, I was thinking about how I put the Lord first.  My internal dialogue went something like this. Lord, I put You before my husband.  I felt the Spirit in agreement. Lord, I put You before family.  I felt the Spirit's approval in this, too. Lord, I put You before self.  Crickets. That is where the Spirit stopped me short.  Not so much agreement there. Oh, Lord.  How do I do this?  I do not want to put myself before You!  Help! I felt the Spirit speaking to my heart: You do this every time you don't trust Me about something or someone.  You put your human reasoning first instead of My Omniscience about a person or situation.  This, My beloved is nothing but pride. Ouch.  The deadliest of all sins.  And yet I know the Lord has humbled me through the many years I have known Him - and I let Him humble me. So is pride something we wrestle with as long as we're in this body?  And how do we even know we still wrestle with it?  I didn't have a c

Here's how it happens, pretty much step by step: We get hurt. Instead of turning to Christ, we let the hurt turn into anger. We become apathetic towards God because we are caught up in our own pain (by the way, you can choose to turn to Him instead). Christ can no longer live fully in our hearts because our hearts are full of sin (pride, anger, rebellion, bad attitudes, etc.). Our love for Christ and others grows cold. We build walls around our heart so we won't be hurt again. This is a sad list, indeed.  But there is a way out! There is a way back to God, to sanity, to health,, to the good  life.   Repent.   It's that simple. Admit to God that you messed up, that you're hurting, and that you want to feel His love again and be at peace. When He knows your heart wants to do the right thing, He will meet you right there where you're at. What a wonderful, awesome privilege we have in Christ!  He takes us back!  Every.  Time. Dear Lord, I pray that You keep me close to

I don't know about you, but to say that the Lord has given me a million chances is an understatement, To sin means to miss the mark (the bullseye of the target). To say I have missed the mark a million times in my life - because this includes my thought life, too - may sound exorbitant, but trust me, I am low-balling it! So when I hear the phrase, "He is the God of second chances," I don't understand it.  Why?  Because from personal experience, I know that I know that I know that if God had stopped at my "second chance," I would be toast forevermore! No.  He has given me, and keeps giving me, chance after chance after chance. Let me explain further. How many days have you lived?  Now even if you were to sin only once a day (ha!), how many days is that so far?  It would be at least in the thousands.  But because we know that we all sin more than once a day(!). that's why I put the "second chance" deal into the millions. I rely on God's mercy