Five Benefits God intends for every one of His children...

OK here are the five benefits we are learning in Bible Study this week that God wants for each one of His children.

1. He wants us to know and believe Him.
2. To glorify Him.
3. To find satisfaction in him
4. To experience His peace.
5. To Enjoy His presence.

Without going into this entire week's Bible study (because its around 20 pages long) and you just meditating a few moments on these benefits listed above, would you please share with us some of the ways you personally experience these five benefits.

What a way to grow in the Lord by hearing how God is growing and teaching others!

I am praying for you as God leads you what to share with all of us and I pray for God to use you to teach me even more....through your experiences

Our Two "Peas in a Pod"

Ok for those of you who read this blog and don't know my daughter and son-in-law and didn't get to attend the wedding.

Here is one of the wedding photos from her beautiful wedding/reception.

"Our two peas in a pod"

Matthew & Kelly Brown (May 2nd 2009)

We love ya'll.........Mamma and Diddy

So that you may know Him......

Let me share my new memory verse with you that I'm learning this week:

"You are my witnesses, declares the Lord and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before me no god was formed nor will there be one after me". Isaiah 43:10

Let me pick out a portion of this verse that God has laid on my life heavily (that you may know me). Yes Lord, that is exactly where God is taking me each day. I DESIRE to KNOW Him more than I did yesterday and God is paving some great paths to help me do that. (my Tuesday night Bible Study group---oh man what a class!!!!) and one of the most recent is I'm going back to Bible College (soon, haven't actually started yet but the plans are in motion as I seek the right place where God would have me to go.)

.....so I may KNOW Him....yeah
if I don't know Him then I can't share Him, I can't teach about Him, I can't show others how to know Him and love Him and receive Him.

What about you "You wanna KNOW Him.......

Bondage...is it holding you?

We've started a new Bible Study last week and God has taught me so much in just one week. Whew! It's so exciting....

How about this one word bondage? Anybody know what this word means?

Well for anyone who doesn't, it means "slavery" We are a slave to something that we are holding on to, hand cuffed to, chained to that we don't want to give up so we can be in complete surrender and service to our Lord Jesus.

If you sit down and really do some deep thinking about this word and what things in your life you are in bondage to, you might be very surprised at some things that are keeping you a slave. I did some soul searching during this week's Bible Study and especially last night as I was sharing with a friend God spoke to me and said "Aha Beverly there's one thing" and I said no God are you sure and again He said yes.

He showed me one area in my life that I was holding back from giving to Him to control, instead I've just been trying to keep it in my pocket and deal with it in the way I saw and felt best and now He is showing me oh no, give that to me too and watch how I can "release" you.
Here's an example to help bring it to some simple terms: think about when you have air in a water line and you have to turn on a valve to relief the pressure on the pipes so everything can begin to flow properly again. Hey ya'll its the same with God, when we give Him the stuff backed up in our lives, He can relieve our pressures, and release us from the captivity of bondage and we can be free.

I don't know about you but I can use a pressure relief valve daily, and my valve is Almighty God.

I don't wanna be a Christian who is held captive by bondage, instead I wanna be a Christian who is HELD by my God and helping me to be an effective Spirit filled woman who wants to learn all she can about Him, serve Him, know Him, believe Him, Glorify Him, experience Him, enjoy Him, witness for Him, take a stand for Him boldly. I wanna be able to always recognize what's missing so with Him He can help me fix it.

Bondage can be broken....and He can be the one to set us free from it.

How about you today, are you in bondage? is there something you have that is holding you or are you ready to let Christ hold you?

Here's all you have to do to let Him "Hold" you and "release" you from the bondages you may have:
1. acknowledge you are a sinner and you cannot save yourself
2. acknowledge that Christ is the Son of God and only He can save you
3. Believe His Crucifixion was for your personal sins and His death was in your behalf
4. Give Him your life and ask Him to be your Lord and Savior.

Four easy, simple steps to be released from bondage and to "Be Held".

Remember those times when you were growing up and being held by your mama who comforted you when you were needing some love, Well you know what God wants to hold you like this every day, every moment! Won't you let Him......

Talk about faith....WOW..should've been with me tonite

Tonite I was called to go meet a friend who needed to have a listening ear.

The faith this lady exhibited was yep that's right AWESOME!

God is really moving in her life through her trials right now. Here she was calling on me to hear her struggles and trials and to help her understand the why's about all of it and WOW was she ever lifting me up to hear what God is doing in her life.

Here's what she said to me that is getting her through her trials. She said the Lord showed her in His Word "I have a future for you", and she is holding tight to that promise and continuing to remind herself often during the day of what God showed her.

You know that each of us have trials that we are facing and hardships we are going through.
Are we going to God's Word to find "the answer" like she did and like she found?

Thank you Lord for allowing me to listen and share with her tonite and thanks for how You spoke to me through what you've taught her these last few days.

Friends helping friends. Ain't that what it's all about. God you teach us so we can help teach others. I love you Lord!

X-Ray of our heart....

Have you ever wondered what your heart looks like?
I don't mean the physical heart, I'm talking about the spiritual heart.

Have you ever wondered if you could go into the hospital and take an X-ray of the inside of your heart, what it would look like.

The place where everything you say or have said or do or have done is stored. What would the X-Ray look like?

Would it be clear nothing there to clog it up, all sin confessed?

or would it be clogged up with pits of black spots covering it up? Is it completely full of black spots of unconfessed sin? is it half full?

What is keeping us from getting a clean clear X-Ray. Jesus is waiting on us to come to Him for forgiveness.

We want a good clean X-Ray at the doctor when there is a problem with our heart don't we?

What about for Jesus? Do we also want a clear one?

No we can't take a physical X-Ray of our heart to see what it looks like spiritually, but we know personally what it looks like and feels like. If it doesn't look like it should what are we doing about it?

"If Only" I had....

Have you ever said those two little words "if only"......
You hear people say "if only I had said that instead"......"if only I had done that instead of this".....
"if only I had not gotten angry".....if only, if only, if only........

I talked a little bit about these little words last night at our Bible Study but you know what in doing more thinking today I had to really search more in my heart about these two words, and here are my thoughts.

Why do I think these two little words can change something?
These two little words keeps me looking backwards at things I no longer have control over instead of looking forward at the future things that I can affect by my decisions and choices.

These two little words keep me caught up, unfocused, unplugged, wastes my thoughts, keeps me at a barricade that hinders my growth.

I have made mistakes, made bad decisions and choices and maybe you have as well, but you know what? These two little words don't have to be the end of everything.

We need to think of these two little words as a computer virus, once it gets into your computer it messes everything up, "if onlys" do the same we can't get past the virus and move on if we continue to let the virus fester up in our thoughts all the time.

So how do we get rid of these two little words in our life and move on? We need to move our thoughts from "what was" to "what is".

We need to totally get rid of these two words from our vocabulary, our mouths, our thoughts and instead use words like "next time I will".

When we stop saying “if only” and start saying “next time I will” then we begin to push back the barricade of regret. We instead begin to move forward, and hold onto what can be in our future. We begin living in a way that is productive and working our lives the way God needs them to be rather than allowing defeat from our past "if onlys".

God will guide our way!
First John 1:9 says that "if you acknowledge your sins and failures (the things you have said and done and now regret), God will wipe them out as though they never even existed, and guide you every step of the way toward a promising future".

If our life is dominated by “if onlys,” let's throw those two little words away and let God teach us how to say “next time I will.”

After all my thoughts when I returned from Bible Study last night on these two little words I'm truly going to "try this" and watch how God can change me by changing these two "little words", and I challenge each of you to try the same and I hope to hear from you as to how God changes you by changing two "little words" in your life.