Month: March 2019

Raspberry roses lay at my feet.
I bring the fragrance of the petals to my chest and breathe in the aroma of God’s love.
I take His shinning fruit to my lips and as the taste burst on my tongue the juice drips from my mouth.
I imagine I’m in a field of golden hay.
The kind that glows like deep honey in the sun.
Lily’s whiter than snow-capped mountains drip vaporous dew along the edges.
Bells are heard in the warm wind as love from the Son pours down like spring rain.
Father you tickle my imagination with your creation.
And all this came to be from raspberry roses

~For more words of inspiration, check out my book Visions of Celestial Love.

Top photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Written by: Candy Thomas

~All scriptural quotations are taken from the NIV

As I was reading Luke 7:18-28, I became particularly intrigued by Jesus’ interaction with the disciples of John the Baptist. John, held in prison by Herod, sent his disciples to ask Jesus the following, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” Luke 7:18.

Jesus, in their eyesight, performed the miracles of the Isaiah 61:1 Messianic prophecy. After quoting the scripture aloud, Jesus told them to go back and report to John all they had seen and heard. But Jesus added this caveat to His scriptural quotation, “… Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” (vs. 23). I pondered why Jesus felt it necessary to add that comment, but I knew one thing for certain, Jesus never casually threw away His words. Jesus is the word made flesh and when He walked this earth, everything He both said and did had deep spiritual insight and purpose. I also knew that nothing any man ever said in His hearing slipped past Jesus. He knew both the spoken and unspoken secrets in the heart of every person.  

While sitting alone in that prison, John most likely thought carefully about what he wanted his disciples to say to Jesus for him. He didn’t choose to send them to make certain Jesus knew that he was being held a prisoner. Instead, he sent them on a rather odd inquisition to confirm Jesus’ identity AGAIN. I questioned why John did that. Before he was arrested, he had boldly declared Christ’s messianic assignment to a crowd and the only thing that had changed since then was his imprisonment. No doubt Jesus recognized that John even sending them to question something he already knew the answer to was telling in itself. But John’s adding, “or should we expect someone else?” to his unnecessary question about whether He was the one, had a much deeper implication. The sarcastic edge of those six words spoke to the condition of John’s heart as he sat languishing in that dank, dark prison. Jesus knew John very well.

They were not strangers. They were family…. cousins being only 6 months apart in age. No doubt, John knew Jesus well, also most likely having heard stories about Him his whole life from his mother and his entire family.  Those stories, telling all the many unusual events in Jesus’ life ranging back even before His birth, were probably repeated over and over at family gatherings. John had always known who Jesus was. He even gave a nonverbal testimony to the newly pregnant Mary while he was yet in his own mother Elizabeth’s womb that Jesus was surely the one.  

I acknowledge scripture is silent on details about Jesus and John’s familial relationship and I admit I may be reading between the lines but ……. I’m curious. Did John possibly ever struggle during his youth with all the fuss family made when it came to Jesus? I can only imagine the things John might have seen and heard as they grew up. I wonder what John thought about all the confusion that occurred the day Jesus wandered into the temple to discuss the scriptures with the experts of the law and was accidentally left behind by the family caravan. I can almost hear the reprimand of the family asking John how it was that he hadn’t kept track of his “special” younger cousin. What might John’s early life have been like if all his actions were constantly being compared to a sinless Jesus?

You may argue that I’m stretching too far with this train of thought but in my defense, I just want to make the point that John the Baptist lived a real life. He at times might also have occasionally felt insecure or unappreciated by his family because these kinds of feelings are normal for humans and happen in real people’s lives. Yes, yes, yes… John was powerfully called and perfectly anointed by the Spirit but he certainly wasn’t a perfect human. He was known by the crowds for his uniqueness and some curiosity seekers inevitably followed him purely for the spectacle. I don’t know if he was knowingly patterning himself after the prophet Elijah or if his eccentricity was possibly drawn out by a need to differentiate himself from the legalistic religious leaders of his day or maybe even from his own perfect cousin. Perhaps none of these things applied or contributed to who he was. 

In any event, neither his unusual fashion sense, weird diet or fiery persona mattered to Jesus. He well knew John’s heart and His opinion of him was unmoved by his reputation among the people. Jesus spoke supportively about John in Luke 7:28, calling him the greatest naturally born prophet of all time. Yet, almost in the same breath Jesus added, “he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” His statement reminded me of the scripture that says all sin and fall short of the glory of God. This undeniable truth is as applicable to today’s everyday Christian as it was to someone as anointed and purposed in God’s redemptive plan as John the Baptist.

God mightily used all our favorite biblical heroes but we must never forget they were still only flesh and blood. The sin nature inherited from Adam and Eve puts them, along with each of us, on a level playing field. Only Christ was sinless and not even the most powerfully anointed person can be declared righteous unless he or she is found in Christ. Not even John the Baptist who Jesus enthusiastically called, “the greatest prophet born of a woman,” would try to claim for himself a high place of worthiness in the kingdom of God.

This same John who proclaimed to the crowds that Jesus was, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” later doubted his own proclamation. This John who baptized Jesus and experienced the miracle of the heavens being opened up and the Spirit of God descending like a dove upon Him according to Matthew 3:16-17, openly questioned the very truth he had been confident about his entire life.

This John who heard God speak as a voice out of the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” suddenly needed additional confirmation. I doubt there was any other man alive at that time who knew more than he that Jesus was the one. God had sent John before Jesus as, “the voice crying out in the wilderness,” and John knew that his calling was “to prepare Christ’s way and make His paths straight.” (Isaiah 40:3). But the fiery furnace of persecution has always tested the souls of men and it is no stretch to consider it also tested John’s soul. The trial of his unfair imprisonment for speaking the truth about Herod likely played a part in him questioning what he already knew about Jesus. I can clearly picture John sitting there in prison as the days drug on, wondering why his powerful cousin hadn’t come to see or help him. After all the magnificent miracles he was hearing that Jesus performed, surely, He could have come into that prison and instantly delivered him, couldn’t He?

Maybe it matters little exactly what John was thinking or what led him to send his disciples on that last mission. What does matter is that his questions proved that he was just a man who needed a savior as much as any other sinner. The imperfection and need for salvation of this fiery prophet was made clear to all the moment he verbalized his insulting public question of doubt about Christ’s identity.

John, who had not too much earlier given bold testimony about Jesus, momentarily allowed the dark circumstances he was experiencing to cause him to stumble. He missed the opportunity to once more publicly recognize Jesus as the one they had all been waiting for, the Messiah.

Studying God’s word is so amazing! I love how God revealed the frailties as well as the strengths in the lives of the people He sovereignly chose to use for His glory. I also love how forgiving and gracious Christ’s response was to John’s challenging amnesia attack. Jesus provided indisputable evidence of His fulfillment of prophecy then sent a message back as subtle as the one He had received. He warned John that in order for him to expect or look for someone else he would first have to “stumble over” Him. I have no doubt that John instantly repented when Christ’s response reached him and his faith was fully restored. He realized he had completed his assignment and his part to play had come to an end. His prison sentence became the fulfillment of his prophecy to the people, “He must become greater. I must become less.” John 3:30. Not much longer after that John the Baptist’s life was brutally brought to an end at the young age of 30.

I’ve read this section of scripture numerous times but have never seen it in this light before. It was made crystal clear to me that if John the Baptist could stumble, so can any of us.

There is an old saying that familiarity breeds contempt. Sitting up on our lofty spiritual perch, it’s easy to accuse and dismiss unbelievers for stumbling over Jesus. They take offense of Him because they can’t get pass the familiarity of His humanity. They see it as a weakness because they can’t comprehend how or even why God would possibly cloth Himself in human flesh. They are blinded to the fact that the light of incarnation was God’s precise plan for redeeming man from the darkness of sin. Jesus was God made flesh so that He could die as a man in our place to satisfy our sin debt, raise Himself to life again for our justification and take the sting out of death. When unbelievers stumble over Christ’s deity and take offense, they disqualify themselves for the very salvation and eternal life He came to deliver.

But what about us? It is humbling to realize that if prison could result in someone as anointed as John the Baptist stumbling, we certainly must take care to watch our step. In unsettling times of tribulation, our faith can be tested in ways we may not anticipate. When a test goes deeper and longer than we want, when God doesn’t answer a tearfully offered prayer in the way we had hoped…will we endure to the very end of our assignment? At the height of intense suffering will we question if Jesus is the one or if we should expect someone else? These are very sobering questions to consider. Even mature believers sometimes tremble at the thought of suddenly facing their greatest weaknesses and fears but thank God for the reassurances found in His word. Jesus promised that He would never, ever leave us or forsakes us. Just as He showed grace and mercy to John the Baptist in his time of testing, He comforts us with words of affirmation in our times of weakness: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

As I completed my study of Luke 7:18-28, I felt close to John the Baptist in a way I never had before. John’s weakness and stumbling exposed by Jesus’s response to his insulting questions made him much more real to me. His emotional struggle both encouraged me and acted as a sober warning. The fact that God knowing all things, still chose John from birth and used him so powerfully to accomplish His plan acted as a reminder that God isn’t looking for perfect people to anoint and use. He is looking for surrendered vessels who will humbly yield to the Spirit’s power and willingly obey His commands.

I pray this blog inspires a refreshing renewal of hope in your heart. If you are experiencing one of those frightening times when you’ve done your very best but feel like you’ve fallen short and are oh so close to stumbling, please trust in the sufficiency of God’s amazing grace. Take a deep cleansing breath, rest in Him and allow Him to perfect His power in your weakness.

May your soul find comfort in this scriptural Doxology…
“To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.” Jude 1:24-25

Image by: Jan Marczuk from Pixabay

And if you had only known what this statement means, ‘I desire compassion [for those in distress], and not [animal] sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.
-Jesus in Matthew 12:7 AMP

When your child is sick, it’s easy to feel like your faith is crumbling around you. I faced one of the biggest scares of my life one early dark morning when my daughter seized up in her crib. She had been battling a virus that had made her feverish. My heart melted like butter when I saw the cloudiness in her grey eyes and heard the sharp cry of pain that came only seconds before her body seized. Her harrowing cry was like a knife to my heart. She was just barely one. I lifted her light body out of the crib and sat her on the bed next to my husband, “wake up!” I sobbed. Eden crumpled up and twitched involuntarily. She didn’t recognize my face or my voice for almost half an hour. Panic came in like a thief in the night and after her rushed trip to the ER (filled with shots and medical scans) she was sent home. My family and I spent days around the clock watching her.

And for days none of the treatment that she had received at the ER seemed to be holding up. Her state was alarmingly erratic. During those tiresome days of attending to her meticulously, I felt the stony weight of condemnation in my soul. Like a rock attempting to divide the roots of my faith…or a hungered weed, attempting to steal the scared places in my heart that only belonged to God. This “feeling” of condemnation came to uproot a little bit of my security in the love of God (Song of Solomon 1:15).

You see, I know it’s hard when the pains of life come unexpectedly. Whenever we go through slicing pain, it can be tempting to harden our hearts in disbelief concerning God’s Word or His nature. The devil doesn’t come donned in an obvious cloak of black and red with a pitchfork. No, he comes with the subtlety of religious philosophy that longs to poison our confidence in Christ and our identity in Him (it only takes a little yeast to leaven the whole loaf Matthew 16:6). He comes to incriminate us and God in our ears. Our “un-graced” mindsets, flare up like crimson algae creating a red tide in the ocean of our conscious. Accusations pop up like smokey fumes. This flare reveals the hidden places of self-blame and shame in us. It unearths the places of self-righteousness that naturally reject grace and denounce the true nature of God. What was in the dark, comes to light when we give in to fear.

For several hours I cried out to God with self-loathing because when I prayed for my daughter, nothing seemed to happen. I had lost touch with the purity of the gospel in those moments of panic (Romans 1:16). When I had prayed for Eden, I was secretly doing it out of self-effort instead of trusting in God’s all consuming grace (Galatians 3:1-2). I was really trusting in my own strength. more than that, I was trusting in my animal sacrifices (holy lifestyle) to earn the healing of God. I was cheapening the gift of faith-righteousness for my own brand of works-righteousness. I was defaming the sacrifice of Jesus for my own sacrifice. (Condemnation is a very slippery and clandestine slope…but I promise you it only comes when we take our eyes off of Jesus for our right-standing with God and put ourselves in His place Romans 5:1).

One morning I woke up to the misty scents of God’s mercy. He came quickly to rescue and reconcile my heart to His love. I realize that throughout all the trails in my life… that it is vitally important to always connect to the Father’s undying love in the midst of the storm. God woke me up to mercy. He showed me His beauty and deep care. In doing so, He effortlessly removed the stone of doubt and guilt that was seeking to grip land in my soul. I felt His love in those moments like fragrant ointment being poured on my skin and shortly after, because of His grace, Eden was divinely healed. She made a full recovery in less than 24 hours. Once I was empowered by His love to receive the truth of His mercy, I was able to breathe in confidence and faith came out like a sighing exhale.

I want to encourage you, that if you can’t get your faith to “work” during a crisis or difficult situation, to not allow condemnation to sneak its way into your soul. Resist all notions of guilt. God’s miracle is not based on your ability to be good enough but on Jesus being your substitute (He is your goodness before the Father). I pray that you will be strengthened by the incredible love of God for you and His immense and glorious grace that is freely given in Christ Jesus. Healing is never earned, deliverance is never earned, salvation is never earned. It’s only by the love of God through Jesus and our faith in that, that we receive His goodness. May you find the simplicity of the Gospel to be sweet salvation in all of your circumstances.

The miracle of that mercy-filled morning for me was not my daughter’s healing. It was that my soul became so captivated with the mercy of God even when the sickness was still present that I worshiped despite the circumstances. I adored Him and the fear so disappeared that I forgot all concern for my daughter. His love for me and my daughter surpassed my love for her, my love for myself and my love for Him.

This poem was birthed through intimacy with God during that tender morning:

Relationship with Him looks like mercy–like deep sweet waters perfumed with grace. This grace is heady, like the whiff of strong aged wine. It is as intoxicating as fragrant floral hills bathed in rainbow colored flowers.

You are as beautiful as Tizrah my God, lovely as Jerusalem my Father, more awesome than an army with bright banners my Husband.

You melt my soul with your eyes of deep love and care. Your compassionate heart soothes my inner worries.

Your very Presence is a vaporous mist vaster than the mountainous clouds that sheet the amazon rainforests.

You are light and beauty.

Water and wine.

You are Living Bread…the substance that makes me whole.

I am enraptured by You.

Romanced by Who You are.

Captivated by your tresses.

I am smitten to my inner core.

I find I am threaded into You by your divine hand. A three fold cord is not easily broken.

You share your heartbeat with me and my eyes are fascinated by You.

I feast at the table in your soul and your banner over me is undying love.

By: Stephen McClelland

Here’s a word from God for one or more of you:

You’ve been looking at the story of Abel and Cain, where Abel’s sacrifice was respected by God and Cain’s sacrifice wasn’t.

You’ve been trying to get God to respect your sacrifice like Abel, trying to figure out what to do to be pleasing to God. You’ve been more conscious of this than God’s sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ whipped, beaten, spit on and hung on a cross for you. Your sacrifice cannot compare.

Instead of focusing on the quality of your own sacrifice, start focusing on the respectability and extravagance of His.

This is literally going to change the way you see God, how you interact with Him and how easy it becomes to get into faith to receive good things from Him.

He loves you.

~For more of Stephen’s encouraging messages visit his website by clicking here.

~Free image taken from here

~By: Danielle Sanders

Joshua 14:12 (NIV) – “Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me…the Anakites [are] there and their cities [are] large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as He said.”

“God helps those who help themselves.” Benjamin Franklin wrote these words in Poor Richard’s Almanac to inspire people to take initiative and do for themselves. I used to loathe this motto for the same reason I dismissed my own father’s words when he, as a believer, would say, “Yes, God will help you, but He also gave you a brain.” I thought I was being encouraged to trust in myself more than in God. Then, for some reason, when I learned about God’s grace, I started to think that I no longer had to work very hard to advance in life. I expected promotion and great wealth to simply overtake me because I am a believer. Not surprisingly, my expectations went unmet, but by the time I realized I needed to revisit my core beliefs, decades had passed me by.

One thing that finally became clear is that there’s a difference between working hard to earn right-standing with God and working hard to earn one’s way in life. You need not do the former because believing in Jesus puts you in right-standing with God. However, you must do the latter because you will get nowhere and accomplish nothing if you don’t, despite your right-standing with God. Somehow, I had conflated the two, but not anymore.

Historians say Benjamin Franklin was a deist. Among deism’s many non-biblical beliefs is the idea that God created the world but does not interact with it. God is seen as “the great clockmaker:” He made the clock, wound it up, and let it go, never to return. While I wholeheartedly disagree with deism, the analogy of the clockmaker got me thinking. What if God, through the finished work of the cross, is indeed like “the great clockmaker” who set the world aright for believers by giving them His own Spirit and placing them in His perfect Kingdom? He then “let it go” or let them go, rather, in the sense that He now expects believers to do for themselves using the supernatural power that is working within them (Ephesians 3:20).

If this is true, then it’s no longer about waiting on God to do something. Rather, it’s about using God’s power to accomplish God’s plan. Which brings me to another distinction I’ve come to understand: there is a difference between working hard and toiling. Hard work can actually be enjoyable and quite satisfying, whereas toiling never is. I think toiling is what happens when we try to accomplish things in our own strength instead of by the power (and wisdom) of God’s Spirit.

So how do we use God’s power within to accomplish things? I think it’s by believing the Word in our hearts, making declarations that align with what we believe, and then doing whatever things need to be done. To paraphrase Caleb’s words to Joshua quoted above, “Give me the mountain God promised me [40 years ago], and with His help, I’ll drive out the enemy like He said I would!” Caleb believed God’s promise, spoke it aloud in declaration, and then did it. I see the same pattern when David defeated Goliath.

God has already given us everything. Now it’s up to us to help ourselves to His provision by not only being fully convinced (at the heart level) about what God has said, but also declaring it for ourselves, from our own mouths, and then doing whatever is needed to accomplish the task. I believe this is how the Lord’s “super” is added to our “natural,” resulting in outcomes that far exceed our expectations.

What do you think? Share your thoughts with me in the comments section below.