My Father's Voice

As we approach the sacred season of the ressurection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, my heart leads me to share a piece I wrote many years ago.  The study of this event continues to captivate me and ever increases my love and devotion to my loving Redeemer. Grace & Peace  I remember attending an Easter play several years ago and I was quite disturbed by the portrayal of Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane the night he was taken captive.   This particular actor made Jesus seem like a wimpy, sniveling whiner who was mainly concerned about how he was going to suffer and how much pain he was going to experience.   His blubbering about what was going to happen to him sent my spirit man into orbit because Jesus was depicted as being primarily focused on his physical torture.   Not to minimize the agony of his passion and the gruesome crucifixion, but I don’t believe his anguish was entirely over physical pain. I left that evening grieved at h...

One day as my husband and I were praying and asking the Lord to meet a specific need, I heard in my spirit, 'Speak the Word only'.  Then the Holy Spirit reminded me of Matt 8:8, when the Roman centurion told Jesus to 'speak the word only, and my servant will be healed.' He recognized Jesus' authority over time, distance and circumstances.  The Lord reminded me of the scriptures, Ezekiel 43:2b and Revelation 1:15b which tell us that the voice of God is as the sound of many waters,  I had just recently viewed a video clip that described how water from the Great Lakes feeding into Niagara  created the Niagara Falls. The falls were formed when melting glaciers began to form the large freshwater lakes now known as the Great Lakes. The water in Lake Erie ran downhill toward Lake Ontario, forming a river. This river crosses a ridge known as the Niagara Escarpment. The area where this river falls over the cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment is known as Niagara Falls. N...

Have you ever energetically waved to someone you thought was waving to you, only to realize to your chagrin, they were not waving to you? There have been times that I could sense someone looking at me, and especially if I did not know the person, I felt uneasy, and uncomfortable, even defensive, until I discovered they were not looking at me, but past me to someone else! This is what God does regarding our sin, salvation and redemption.  He is not looking at us.  He is looking past us to the One who represents us, Jesus. Jesus made a declaration as He hung on the cross.  The last thing He uttered was, "It is finished!" The demands of a Holy God had been satisfied.  The full weight of sin, poured out, was laid on Him as He willingly took our place.  That was so we could be with Him in the presence of God forever.  Judgment had been meted out, the price has been paid, once for all; and grace has been released to all mankind.  The barrier between G...

(Thank God for Your Life) Love, love, love.  Love makes the world go round... or so they say.  People are always falling in and out of love.  The passionate love today can turn into venomous hatred in what seems like an unbelievable short period.  What is this?  We have many different kinds of love; Eros ( physical love ; sexual desire), phileo ( meaning a deep, emotional feeling), fraternal (brotherly affection), and agape ( Christianity: Love as revealed in Jesus, seen as spiritual and selfless and a model for humanity).  Each word describes a type of love, but in our English language the word love is tossed around to apply to everything from pizza, our pets, a car, our family, our mates, and of course, God. God loves us with supernatural love, Agape.  He has called us to love the same way and has given us the ability to do so through His Holy Spirit. (Rom 5:5). Supernatural love (Agape) is unconditonal, while ...

I attended my cousin's funeral yesterday, Nov 22, 2011.  She and I had been close as children, but because my dad was in the army we, unfortunately, did not grow up together.  Of all my many cousins she, her sister and I were the closest.  I remember spending summers with the girls and their two brothers out in the country in New Castle, Pennsylvania.  We played in the barn and out among the grape arbor, romping in the huge back yard, and the fields beyond.  We picked fruit from a large cherry tree and captured butterflies and bumble bees in jars. Watched and caught lightning bugs in the summer nights. Those were days of carefree laughter.  Later I spent time with them when I was about eighteen.  We were older and had more than picking fruit on our minds.  By this time the family had moved to a small town in Ohio and new adventures awaited us.  My uncle, their father was a Baptist preacher and we...

Do you struggle to understand the who of God?  God is love... God is faithful... God is merciful.  We hear these words and most of us process and assimilate them on a natural level.  We know people who are loving or kind.  We know people who are trustworthy or loyal, although these are attributes of that person, they are only attributes. Those qualities make up the person, but the person does not make up those qualities. These descriptions are not adequate to sum up the person of God.   Attribute defined: An attribute is a quality or characteristic of a person, place or thing. (noun) Intelligence, charm and a sense of humor are each an example of an attribute. A 'loving' person can choose to love or not love, but God is love and cannot not love.  Love is His person.  A mortal person, kind as they may be, can, given the right circumstances, not be kind, but God's goodness flows to the righteous as well as...

Not too long ago I went to a life skills seminar, and our guest speaker was a former rancher/horse trainer.  He said that when we see the pictures of the wild horses we are not seeing the true state of the horses.  We see them running free, the dust clouds swirling around their pounding hooves, tails raised and manes blowing in the wind.  From a distance they are beautiful and majestic.  Truth is, when you catch one, and are able to get close to him, you will see a matted coat, open sores, pest infestation, twisted and deformed hooves, and a myriad of other unsightly conditions.  From a distance, what appears to be beautiful, close up, reality tells a different story.  This horse trainer talked about the first encounter with this once free creature in an enclosed corral.  The horse will run for as long as it takes him to get tired, with his face toward the open range and his rear toward the trainer, who has positioned himself in...