Standing not Sitting - A Dose of Encouragement

     
  There is a seaside resort called Portrush on the northern coastline of Northern Ireland, which has a headland jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean.  This area is called Ramore Head and all along the shore are beautiful but rugged rocks.

         

When we were living in the State of Delaware in America many years ago we took a trip to visit seven of the north-eastern states; and there in the smallest state of Rhode Island, in the picturesque town of Newport, we found the same type of rugged shoreline as at Ramore Head.  

         We stood on the rocks, sat on the rocks, took photographs, and laughed in the breeze that was blowing in from over the ocean - we felt "at home" on these rocks.

            Perhaps it was because of these memories, that a picture the Lord gave me a few months later in church one Sunday morning, seemed to really touch me deeply.  

I saw a figure of a man, tall and dark, standing on a rock facing out over the ocean. Even though the wind was blowing strongly, this person was standing firm. 

I was sure this man felt secure as he stood on that rock.

              

There is only one rock that we can be secure on and that is the Lord our God.  

Several times in the bible we read that God is our rock. 

I like the personal touch in 2 Samuel 22 v 2 where David started his song of praise to God (after he was delivered from Saul) with the phrase:

                                    “The Lord is my rock”   

and also in Psalm 31 v 3  where he says

                        “Yea Thou art my rock and my fortress”.  (RSV)

          So what type of a rock is our God?  

Well in the picture I saw a large, firmly placed rock that gave a good foothold.  There was no fear of stumbling or sliding off; the rock was good enough for the man to stand steady and at peace in the wind. 

I believe that illustrates the type of rock our God is!  He’s dependable, solid, firm, sure and steadfast; we need have no fear of anything else when we have such a foundation to stand on.

As I considered the picture, I sensed the most important thing was that this man was not sitting, but standing on the rock.    He was standing firm, standing boldly, not being swayed by the wind; not sitting/crouching scared of the wind.  

In Ephesians ch. 6 we read about the armour of God, each part of it is important but Paul stresses three times that we must not only put on the armour but we must also stand

·         We need to be able to stand against the devil’s schemes v.11

·         We need to be able to stand our ground and after we've done everything else to still stand v. 13

·         We must stand firm v. 14             

            We are exhorted to stand not sit, perhaps because sitting might lead us to relax (let our minds wander and not be alert) when God is really saying:

                        “Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.”

                                                                                                1 Cor. 16 v 13   

           

The man in the picture I saw definitely seemed to feel "at home" on the rock. 

Do you feel "at home" on the rock?

Are you putting all your trust in God?

Why We Worship 23

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship"

This is Pentecost Sunday

                so there is no doubt as to what we should consider today.

  

This is probably one of the hardest things for us to comprehend.

We are so used to everybody having a physical being 

but God is not a physical being 

He is a Spirit.

We can't see a spirit, we can't reach out and touch a spirit, 

we cannot fully understand what a spirit is.

But something we do know is God's Word and in the Bible it clearly states that we must

                                             

Worship God in Spirit and in Truth.

We must worship Him in line with these two attributes that belong to Him.

From this we can know that we have a spirit too because if we were only a physical being God could not require this of us.  

              

What a great privilege we have to be like God and be 

invited to worship Him.

Did you worship God today?

In Sickness & In Health - A Dose of Encouragement

My post today is late because

                I have a sick husband.

Monday morning after a long night's sleep of approx 11 hours hubby gets up feeling ok but the hint of a headache which could simply be from him having had a long sleep after such a short sleep the previous night between two flights on his way home to Northern Ireland from Azerbaijan.

Photo Credit Wikimedia

He makes the usual breakfast of tea, toast and banana, sits down at the table, takes one bite and a sip of tea and suddenly pushes the chair back and says I feel awful.  After taking an advil for his head and starting to feel shaky he heads back to bed.  About half an hour later he feels extremely hot when I touch his forehead but he claims he is so so cold.  He doesn't even want a drink or some paracetamol because he feels sick.

He just wants to lie flat in bed.

Later  -  No lunch.

The thought of food makes him feel sick and then he vomits and also has diarrhea.

By 2.00pm he has a temperature of 99.86 and then vomits again so I think the temperature will have gone down but no at 2.30pm it is 103.1.

We continue with paracetamol and frequent sips of water but there are several more bouts of this 'double sickness' with his temperature ranging from 101 to 103 all day long.

During the night we seldom get it below 102 and I stay awake checking him every half hour  -  I have never seen him so ill.

In the morning at 8am it is 103 again and I ring the doctor as soon as surgery is open.

By this time our children who are all in different parts of the world (keeping in touch with us via Kakaotalk) have discovered that Malaria is increasing again in Azerbaijan and that dad should get checked for that.


Now we live in a small town

The view from our bedroom window

and the doctors here probably do not have people ringing up often saying

"just back from a country that has a risk of Malaria and I've a temp of 103 

with vomiting and diarrhea"

 but trying to be calm our doctor checks his manual and yes he sees about malaria and Azerbaijan but the symptoms could also be for any infection so he can't prescribe until Fred gets blood tests etc. done.

So he has to get out of bed, washed, dressed, and I drive him to the surgery.

Doctor checks everything about him including his heart and sends him to the treatment room where at least he is allowed to be seen before the 15 or more people already sitting waiting.

During blood tests for a variety of things which they don't even name to him, they are not sure which type of container the blood for the malaria test should go into.

So here is the proof that in Banbridge, Northern Ireland 

they don't take blood for Malaria testing
 every day or week or year.

I am very tired by this stage but don't want to sleep because I still don't like the state of him even if the doctor said his temperature was normal.  And it certainly doesn't stay normal as he goes through more bouts of this awful sickness through the day.

Later that evening Fred tells me they said the results of all the tests should be back by Friday morning - this was Tuesday.  I am not too happy about this as he is so sick and weak and such a bad colour.

He wants to sleep and insists that I sleep during the night so I only check on him every 2 hours and sleep on the couch downstairs where I would hear him if he called.  Temp is around 101 all night.

THEN
Doctor rings the house at 8.30am  to ask how he is and is obviously concerned when he hears the vomiting and diarrhea is not any less frequent but still doesn't want to prescribe anything until the results are through which he hopes might be Thursday instead.

Then at 9.30am the temperature goes to 102 again followed by another bout of sickness.

2 more bouts later and then he asks me when I think he will be able to fly out to Morocco (which is his next business trip and he should have been leaving today) as he sits up in the bed to make a phone call to change his flight.

If that was me in the bed having gone through all of that there is no way I would be asking when I should fly out I would simply be saying I have to cancel that trip altogether.

Sometimes I am so proud of my husband and sometimes I just shake my head at him but on this occasion I didn't know which way to be.


Then at 4pm the doctor rings again  -  some results are back.

Not Malaria

It's Food Poisoning.

Antibiotic to be collected and the Environmental Health authorities will be ringing us
 because it is a notifiable illness.

Off I go to get the antibiotics and get the first dose into him.

A little later as I lie at the foot of the bed and he is sitting up for a few minutes.

He says

And I just smile as I think, yes I suppose it is, 

but I had just done what he needed; 

I didn't consider it a duty.

What do people do in these situations where for a few days or much longer, they are very ill and the doctors don't know what is wrong straight away?

How do they cope when they see temperatures that are high and their loved ones iller than they have ever been before?


I don't know.


I only know what we do.

We pray.

We pray because we trust God to hear us 
and know he cares about us.

We pray because there is no-one else who can do more for us than God can.

I hope you turn to God in all circumstances too.

Why We Worship 22

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship"

A chorus that we sing and a memory verse we learn as children tells us that

  Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

And today I want to think about truth.

Perhaps one way to think about it is to consider the opposite of true which is false. 

So we can say that God is not false.

God has no lies in Him

          God has no deceit in Him

                    God has no evil in Him

                                             

Also it means that God is not a false God.

God is not an imitation God

          God is not an idol or image

                    God is not the wrong God

God is the right God

God is the true, living God.

When Jesus was praying to His Father (in John chapter 17) on behalf of the ones who would trust in Him He described God the Father as the only true God.

The verse above also tells us that knowing God, the only true God is what it means to have Eternal life.

We mostly tend to talk about Eternal life as the life we have after we die and that living forever is the main goal or reward for a Christian but here Jesus is saying that

it is not 

living forever that we should be looking forward to 

but  

instead it is knowing God

and 

surely that must start 

in this life

Do you know this one true living God?

Do you know the right God?

Distorted or Beautiful? - A Dose of Encouragement

Anyone who knows me personally or has read a lot of my blog posts will know that I absolutely adore my iPad
 (I wish they would pay me for saying that - I would be rich by now).

Also my family will know that I have far too many apps on my iPad (mostly free ones - I only get paid ones if I cannot find a free one which will do the job).

Well one of the apps I had downloaded one time ages ago was one to have a little fun with photos.  You loaded your photo into the app and then you could get a black and white sketch of a funny kind of outline of the photo.

I played with it once some time in 2012 and just used two photos that I found; quickly one of each of our boys many years ago when they were young. My husband had scanned some negatives and I had those pictures on the ipad so they were handy to use.

 (I can hear our daughter now saying "what about one of me?" 

- she always claims that being the third child was so unfair because we didn't take as many photographs of her as a baby as we did of the boys.)

These are the results of those two experiments

Faces stretched and pulled into strange shapes ending up with a kind of a caricature of each of the boys.  It provided me with a bit of a laugh and then shortly afterwards the pics were transferred to the computer and forgotten about.
In fact it took me quite a while to find them today.


Have you ever had a picture just pop into your mind?

Well you can probably imagine my surprise when suddenly these two pictures popped into my mind during a prayer meeting at church a few weeks ago.  I saw them clearly in my mind's eye and thought this was very strange.

Then God impressed a phrase on me

"I do not distort things I make them more beautiful"

Two of the words in that sentence really stood out to me.

"Distorted"  and  "more"

It was good enough, I felt, that God was telling me or reminding me that He does not distort things - that is the work of the devil.

And it was even better that He was reminding me that He makes things beautiful.

But the thing I felt that was being stressed was the fact that He makes things MORE beautiful.


Perhaps we need to take heed of Psalm 90:17

Now this only shows the first part of the verse but I think it is important that we also consider the next part

And establish the work of our hands for us;

Yes, establish the work of our hands.

God is not making us beautiful so that we can bask in our beauty, He is making us beautiful so that we can work for Him.

With the beauty of God upon us we will be more like Him in all ways filling us with His Holy Spirit and bringing forth the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives.  Our minds, attitudes and feelings will be more aligned to God's and ultimately this will help us to reach others for Him

So can we sit back and just think for a little while today about how we as children of God are not distorted but are made more beautiful by God?

I'm thankful to have a God who can make things MORE beautiful.



Do you want to thank God that He makes us more beautiful than we can imagine?
I do.

When Darkness Falls - Book Review

I love to snap up free ebooks if they look like they are something I will enjoy (especially murder mysteries).


So one day I saw this offer of an ebook in three parts and I downloaded it.

I only got round to reading it over Easter while I was travelling  because I had not got the Agatha Christie mystery that was next on my reading list already on my kindle.


The book is


       When Darkness Falls  

by  James Grippando

About the Author

JAMES GRIPPANDO is a best selling author of several books and lives in Florida, where he was a trial lawyer for 12 years.

Synopsis  from  Amazon.co.uk

In this novel from this bestselling author, lawyer Jack Swyteck tackles a case in which the life of his best friend hangs in the balance - and in which nothing is as it seems. A Miami criminal defense attorney, Swyteck isn't looking for a new client, at least not one who is homeless and in jail for threatening to jump off a bridge. But from the moment Jack is called to defend the man, who goes by the name Falcon, something is amiss. For one thing, Falcon comes up with the $10,000 bail - in cash. Then the body of a brutally murdered woman is found in the trunk of the abandoned car in which he is living. Panicked and on the run, Falcon takes Jack's best friend, Theo, hostage. They end up barricaded in a motel room, and Theo isn't the only one at Falcon's mercy. Jack must work with the cops and their crackerjack negotiator to free Theo and the other captives before Falcon decides he has nothing to lose by killing them all. What Jack doesn't know is that Falcon has a much bigger agenda, and that there are people behind the scenes who will stop at nothing to keep their dangerous secrets. Thus unfolds a riveting, lightning-paced story, as only James Grippando can tell it.

Publisher:  Harper Collins

Date Published:  Feb 2007

Series:  A Jack Swyteck novel

My Opinion

We are teased by attempted suicide, murder, a hostage situation and also trips back in time to another mystery.  A lawyer mixed up with a Homeless man, a man released from Death Row, a blind policeman, disappearing money and the daughter of a mayor definitely would seem to indicate a unique story and James Grippando has delivered a unique mystery here.

The action is quite fast paced in parts and well detailed but also slower when dealing with the individual characters who are important to the overall essence of the story.

Unfortunately I did feel that the male characters were better rounded than the female ones but I enjoyed the fact that there were some out of the ordinary characters.  I was able to deduce most of the mystery and would have been disappointed had I been able to deduce it all.  

This appears to be the 6th book based around the character of the Miami based lawyer and would definitely interest me in delving into another of the series if only to find out whether or not his best friend is also a leading character there.

If you have read any more of the Jack Swyteck books perhaps you would like to recommend another for me? 

Why We Worship 21

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship"

God does not need anything that we humans need to be able to live.

He does not need air, food, water or sleep.

               He doesn't need help or advice.

                              He doesn't need money.

                                             He doesn't even need us.

Isn't it marvellous that even though God does not need us, 

He still wants to have us with Him.

This verse above comes from the passage of Scripture where the Apostle Paul speaks to the people in Athens on Mars Hill.

Verses 22 - 31  cover it more fully.

22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 

23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,

25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 

26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 

27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 

28 for

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

as even some of your own poets have said,

“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 

30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 

31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Paul was explaining that God doesn't need people to do things for Him, He has no need of anything but instead is the reason we all exist.  He cannot be imagined by us,  or completely understood by us however He has determined that He loves us and wants us to come through repentance of our sins to Him.  

God can do everything He needs or wants to do, through His knowledge and wisdom He is in control of all things.   

He lacks nothing.

When we know that God is Self-Sufficient and doesn't need us we can be encouraged because this shows us that He really cares for us.

When we know that God is self-Sufficient and hence is everything He needs to be we can also be encouraged because if he doesn't have to depend on anything or anyone then He truly is the only one we can put our full trust in.

What a difference a Sneeze Makes - A Dose of Encouragement

                  

               I love a good sneeze, don’t you?  

I quite enjoy two or three sneezes at a time but when you have to sit beside someone who sneezes not just once, or twice or three times in a row but ten or twelve times it can put you off sneezes for life. 

When I was a teenager I was at a computer course with a range of students from other schools (yes those were the days before all schools had IT on the curriculum).  How well I remember the first afternoon on that course when the guy sitting beside me started to sneeze and sneeze and sneeze.  Everyone turned round at different times to see who was sneezing and at one stage the teacher stopped talking to stare in our direction.

Later in the church I attended for many years there was this guy who once he started to sneeze seemed like he wasn't going to stop and everyone would start saying 

      

but would then get fed up after 3 or 4 times.


Everywhere I went this guy would be sneezing and people would always think he was coming down with a cold or flu or something worse and often he would get such bad looks from people.

Well, I suppose I'll have to admit that I was in lots of the same places as this guy because this was the guy that I fell in love with all those years ago (even with the sneezing power and volume).  


This is the guy I have been married to for almost 37 years and he still has a powerful sneeze and yes will still sneeze lots of times in a row.

I can recognise Fred's sneeze anywhere.  

And this sneeze has helped me out on several occasions.

Many times when we lived in America and would be in those really, really large superstores Fred would wander off to look at some of the things that interested him more than regular shopping did.
Then when I would be finished shopping and I was getting tired and just wanted to get through the checkout and go home I would not have a clue where he was. 


That's when his sneeze was a beautiful sound to my ear.


He would sneeze and I would hone in on his location, waiting of course until he was finished sneezing before I would actually join him because I'd rather avoid the stares and in some cases pitying looks of the people nearby.



Now you are probably thinking 

               "that's ok he's her husband, she's with Him all the time so of course she'll know the sound of him" 

and yes that is my point

I know my husband really well and the rest of my family really well.

You will know your family really well too!

BUT

Can we recognise the Holy Spirit's prompting anywhere?   anytime?

Do we know the Holy Spirit well enough to know how He works through each of us personally?

I know my husband well enough because I have known him for many years and because I spend a lot of time with him.


So when he sneezes 


I know from experience that he hasn't got those
 allergies that people will be absolutely certain he must have because he sneezed a lot in their presence.

I know the difference between the way he has always been or whether he is taking the flu.

I don't have to think twice or pose the question to myself "is that Fred or not?" when I hear his sneeze.


That is exactly how we should be about the Holy Spirit.

Even just recently I have found myself sitting thinking yet again
" is this the Holy Spirit talking to me or not?"

After all this time I should be more honed in to the way He talks to me, to the way He impresses things on my mind, to the sudden bits of information He gives me.
Yet still many times I will hesitate to step out and do what He wants me to do.

We shouldn't have to take time to ponder and try to work out if the Holy Spirit is speaking to us or encouraging us to so something because we should recognize His way of working in us.

How?

Well just what we do with our husbands and families.

Love them. 
Spend time with them. 
Be prepared to listen to them and not do all the talking ourselves.

No one can know your family better than you through all the years so in the same way no one is going to be able to tell you when the Holy Spirit is prompting you, only you can.


And if we can manage in OUR family where we ALL like to talk and butt in and add our piece to the conversation, then you can too.