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Just thinking further on our bible reading from Proverbs (16:9) today “The mind of a man plans his way, but the Lord shows him what to do.”
I have to say that while there was a time in my life where the concept of truly following God’s Will for my life scared me from the point of view that He might just maybe decide He wanted me away off to Africa to be a missionary, and I really didn’t fancy that idea in the least. At the time I was in a very vibrant pentecostal church who were quite heavy on witnessing, and all of that sort of scared me a bit too, so I held back from truly submitting to God in that area. It was really only after my husband Stephen died (in 1998) that things changed in my spiritual life, and particularly by 2000 or so when the Lord started doing something incredible in my life. He opened up doors for me to consider attempting something that for me was so incredible, it really didn’t seem possible that I could contemplate it, let alone walk into the reality of it – learning to fly and gaining a Pilot’s Licence. It was a true turning point in my lesson on not only how to listen for God’s voice in the bustle of everyday life, but also how to be patient and know His Will is perfect – not only in its outworking, but also in its timing which for me was the toughest bit. When I had things that were time-dependent, and time (in my view) seemed to be running out, I truly had to be patient and wait – ultimately He not only came through with what I needed, but so much more besides. He opened up the doors for me to get a Scholarship which provided for me to go to South Africa (intriguing that one eh?) for a whole 2 months to learn to fly with one of the best private flying schools in that area in Port Alfred (43 Flying School) which proved to be an utterly awesome experience from every respect. However, sadly, because of severe knee problems, and a major lupus flareup (from sitting out in the sun too much!), I ended up leaving the first year 10 hours short of completing, but somehow I knew the minute I got home, that I was to return yet at that point, there was absolutely NO earthly (!) reason to consider that notion in the least.
But once again, God spoke to me throughout the next 12 months or so, and after more lessons in patience, I once again went back out to SA and spent a further three weeks there. However, this time round, I knew the purpose of the visit wasn’t for the flying (and that was confirmed by many things, not least the fact that the weather was totally appalling for the first time in years!), so I had a totally different but nearly more enjoyable time there. Went to church with one of the flying instructors which was great, and met many new people. Only He knows what was achieved during that second stay, as I have to admit I can’t think of any really obvious reason for my getting that second opportunity in all honesty. But all in all, those couple of years really did teach me vital lessons – firstly that God’s will IS perfect, and secondly, whatever He wants us to do, He will prepare the way for us, and enable us to walk into His Will with JOY, not fear.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2Tim 1:7.
Anyone who knows me, knows that not only am I heavily fundamental about scripture (its validity, purpose and Truth), but also that I’m hugely into prophecy too. I can remember exactly when I started to gain that interest – back in 1998 when I discovered the Left Behind series of books. Based on the concept of the Rapture from scripture, the books led me on a whole voyage of discovery through scriptures I’d never really read before, or more importantly (like many unbelievers also) were totally closed to my understanding. One such book was Daniel – up until that time I really couldn’t connect with the book at all, but after a wonderful trip to Israel in the spring of 1999, everything suddenly opened up for me. I found that Daniel in particular suddenly not only made sense, but I could even correlate (on my own) many parts of it to other prophetic books such as Zechariah and The Revelation. From there, things just increased all roads for me in my understanding of scripture and my enjoyment of many parts of it, and so I’ve continued on in my interest of ‘eschatology’ or end-times events. And those events just keep on coming and happening as Jesus foretold.
Rampant apostasy is already evident worldwide, the continuing rise of the false religions (Islam, Hinduism, New Age, Mormons etc), the escalation of “natural” disasters many of which might possibly be God’s judgment on the nations for their overt disobedience and turning away from Him – there was another huge one today – a major earthquake in Indonesia (guess what – an Islamic country!) and so many other fulfilments of prophecy.
Even in the US alone (which many consider to be a Christian country almost in its entirety), it’s been postulated that God is judging many of the states for their actions and attitudes before Him, because of the volume of disasters that have hit many states over the past decade or more. Bill Koenig who is a WhiteHouse correspondent has suggested that many of these have arisen each time the US in some shape or form determines to change the structure of Israel.
He’s written an excellent book called “Eye to Eye” which documents fairly specifically each instance of a disaster and the corresponding possible ’cause’ e.g. a mandate for Israel to relinquish land, and which is very compelling reading. He gave a nice interview on Jewish Voice International, and puts the case very convincingly in it. It’s certainly made me look afresh at other so-called natural disasters in a whole new light to consider that perhaps many of these may indeed be judgments on certain nations or places for their refusal to accept the One True Living God of Israel as the ONLY true living God to serve and worship. No doubt many may find the fact unsavoury or even hard to accept, but sadly those who are following Islam are also way off on the wrong track – Islam is all about death – you only have to look at those in so-called ‘Palestine’ to see that. What kind of god do they serve that glories in the death of children, and what kind of people blindly follow that type of religion to the point where they’re not only accepting of its tenets to such a degree, but can’t wait to sacrifice their children in some vain hope of changing anything. The true God of Israel is a God of LIFE on the other hand. He constantly desires people to come to Him so that they could not only discover the joys of life on this earth in a whole new and vibrant, exciting way, but also that they could have the security of ETERNAL LIFE and forgiveness for sins – something Islam doesn’t even deal with. But that’s sadly what keeps many in it – just be good, and get in under the radar – you’ll be accepted by god (in Islam) if you just stick to the basics and don’t annoy him in case he gets angry enough to prevent you entrance. Or better still, go out and kill a few infidels for the cause to please him – and that’s not my words – that’s what the Palestinians aka Hamas are saying daily to their children. The Palestinians are indeed just the current day Philistines, with all the same wrong desires, and angst against their cousins Israel – except that God has favoured the latter over the former permanently, and so Satan has now taken up their cause, and is working them into a frenzy to get them to do his job – he still thinks he’s a hope of changing the outcome of his eternal destiny which God has already secured and lies waiting for him. So while there is still time, he races around this tiny planet, seeding discord, discontent, anger (just look at our teens these days – totally angry and they don’t even know at what!), resentment, hatred etc – and aims it primarily at Christians whether directly by persecution (again, ironically, particularly in ‘peace loving’ Islamic countries!!), or indirectly by attacking our values and making us out to be the ones in error.
What really angered me today though was hearing that Prince Charles - so called “Defender of the Faith” is seemingly now going to stop defending it, in favour of keeping all the Muslims (primarily) happy, and is going to try and have an all-inclusive coronation. 
Totally mad but not surprising given he’s been wandering off on the wide path for some time now. And so it will continue, but someday in the not too distant future, things will change in a way that will utterly rock the world to its core, and pave the way for the introduction of the wonderful AntiChrist to sort it all out.
And if all that has tweaked your appetite for any form of prophecy in the least (and I pray it has been more positive than negative in its effects), then head off to this great link:
For taking Bathsheba to himself and then after having committed one major sin, goes and commits an even worse one (in our eyes), by having her poor hubby deliberately put in danger with the certain knowledge that he would be killed in battle. However, apart from his major repentance after his first son to Bathsheba dies just after birth, he redeems himself to some degree by marrying her and having another son (Solomon), whom God raised up to undertake what David could have done if he’d not been so bloodthirsty.
For me though, I marvel at how David could kill indirectly so easily – but then it seems in those days that kings did do that a lot – they were used to being out in the middle of battles and fighting all and sundry for their territory.
In the NT readings today, Jesus stated that we would be hated by the world for following Him, and that’s become SO true in so many ways sadly. Persecution against Christians is at an all-time high if you take in to account, all those who have no freedom of speech any longer, and even here in the UK are being put in jail or prosecuted etc for speaking the Truth – nothing more, nothing less. Especially where homosexuality is concerned – I also stand firmly on the Word – God says what He means, and means what He says, and He has said on a number of occasions, that it is THE most detestable sin in His sight – primarily because it goes against the very laws of nature He originally created – if homosexuals had their way, the world would stagnate through lack of procreation – no more children – now wouldn’t that be something? Many people spout “Live and let live” which sounds a nice ideology until you assess their own beliefs – usually none at all, or at worst Humanist in origin. I believe that if you are going to stand up for your faith, then you’d better be willing to do it totally or not at all – bit like the Bible – you can’t pick and choose what bits of it are useful to you, and just ditch the rest. It speaks for itself, as being THE most unique book on this planet – Jesus said His Word would endure forever, and it’s showing every sign of doing so at this point. No other book has the ability to connect with the human soul as it does – God speaks through every page, and every page points to Jesus.
If you’re still sceptical, but would be interested in considering reading something of scriptures at least, then why not tackle one of the gospels first and while I’m a traditionalist primarily thus into the KJV, I do accept that new people to the Word are best provided a more easily read version so try this one -http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=50&chapter=1&version=51 should be a useful one for starters at least. John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the whole bible for most, so make sure you really let Him speak to you through it, if you get that far. ENJOY!
Today’s topics were varied in our bible reading online – David doing his usual – slaughtering and praising – truly sometimes do wonder how he became the apple of God’s eye and commanded such divine attention in a sense. But the other side of the coin is recognising how God often did command a certain volume of people (usually heathens to my knowledge) to be killed, right down to the babies which is hard to cope with, as is the fact that beheading was common practice amongst God’s people at that time. Horrible practice for any time in my opinion.
More important though, was the reference God made to how He would put someone on David’s throne (rather than David himself) who would lead the nation into peace and provide God with a more lasting covenant and place to dwell. 
I got a bit confused on this one, but think it meant Solomon first at least, and then obviously Jesus (who has yet to reign on David’s throne too).
Annoyingly trying to place an image in, somehow managed to lose me 2/3 of my post which I couldn’t then recover, and now have to try and remember what I’d written!!
Think I was saying about how in the NT we were looking at Jesus once again berating his disciples on not understanding what He was trying to convey to them about the importance of His leaving. I can understand their confusion to some degree, as it must have been quite tough on them to contemplate this teacher whom they revered so much talking about His death so definitively. It’s so much easier for us on the other side of the table to see things more clearly, but I certainly never think I’d have fared any differently than they if I was put into that situation. I too, would have found much of what He said hard to accept or take in. Thankfully God is gracious and merciful to those He chooses and so the disciples eventually ‘got it!’ and went on to do one awesome job in conveying the message to us.
I was then discussing too how amazing it is that much of scripture has been recorded verbatim, but it is seen that scribes and recorders are found even in David’s day – how much more prevalent must they have been in Jesus’. And the Holy Spirit would have ensured that His Words were not lost but recorded faithfully as He said that His Word would endure FOREVER!!!
I just had a dire realisation tonight when praying – somewhere over my years of prayers, I’ve come to expect God to please me – as much as I consider it’s my role to please Him, I suddenly came to that shocking awareness tonight, that a lot of the time, part of the reason we pray is to have Him do something to please US – and I ended up truly repenting of that attitude. Just think on it – who are we to expect anything of God, much less that he do what we want! Yet for whatever reason that’s what we do – we ask Him to grant us a good day, or we look for him to provide us extra money for something, or no doubt some may actually even ask Him to let them win the Lottery or whatever. Is it any wonder He says NO a lot of the time. We must surely grieve Him with our attitude to our finances – we think our money is all ours to do with as we please, instead of recognising it’s all HIS to do with as HE pleases – if he deigns to provide it to us for our enjoyment and/or to meet our needs, we have no right to expect that constantly. When it comes to tithing – that wonderful principle of giving Him back 10% – we should consider ourselves very fortunate – He could have said – I want you to give me back 50% and willingly – which is really what our attitude at least should be, regardless of whether we actually manage to give that amount or not. I heard someone teaching on this recently state the most obvious thing (to me at least) – if you can’t give £1 without resentment, you would be better off not doing so – whatever you give whether 1% or 50% unless you give it freely and willingly, it’s pointless – after all, would you want someone resenting giving you something and wishing they didn’t have to do so?? Why should you treat God any less. He provides for us because He loves us and desires to bless us, but it is absolutely His right as to how much and when he does so.
I’m just grateful for having learnt yet another valuable lesson today – it’s another aspect of my Christian walk I absolutely appreciate – how He teaches me new things every day, and takes the most mundane concepts sometimes to do so 
).
Listening to a program relating to the saga of the Israelites, I heard a really good story related:When Abraham was a small boy, his father Terah who sold idols to the local pagans, left Abraham to mind his ’shop’ – when he returned some hours later, all the idols were smashed to pieces – all except the largest one. When Terah asked Abraham what had happened, the boy said “Don’t blame me, the largest god beat up all the smaller ones”, to which Terah replied – “Don’t be silly – they’re just wood and stone – there’s no life in them!” Abraham turned to him and said “EXACTLY – they’re worthless and useless and of no value to be looked on as gods or to have any value in any other respect either.”
Have you any worthless and useless idols in your life?? I know at times my PC can be one of mine – that’s if you look on the definition of god as something/someone you spend your time worshiping and if an idol is something that equally you give most of your time/energy and/or devotion to, with little value in return, then I think I’d have to say I’m guilty. However, sadly, in this world many people worship much more dangerous idols – true idolatrous worship of the gods of the age – humanism, socialism, fascism etc, along with the worse occultism and spiritism. Hard to understand why when the One True God of Israel, our creator, has made us to worship Him alone, and only in doing so are we ever truly free – free to be ourselves, and free to know Truth and Righteousness, while also knowing we are worshiping a Holy and Awesome God. If you don’t know Him, it may be time to rethink your spiritual strategies in life. While many claim there are “many roads to God,” God states there is only one – through Jesus, and if many roads do indeed lead to Him, then Jesus died in vain! Think on that.
Do you want to spend eternity separated from the only One who makes life (here or there) worth living for! Here you have a choice (there you don’t!) – use it wisely. Time IS running out – faster than we perhaps realise, and sadly, for many a day will arrive all too soon, when the choices will be removed, and God will once again step into history to judge this world for its sins against Him.
I have to say personally, that without doubt my life has been ultimately tons richer for having a relationship with God through Jesus – I have hope for the future and security for the present – I may not always understand why He allows certain things into my life, but I KNOW He will use them for His good (not necessarily mine!) and that’s all that matters to me. I can be 100% comfortable in the knowledge that His Will is perfect, 
and that whatever He brings into my life each day can be used to teach me better how to walk with Him and hear His Voice more clearly. I’m heavily disabled by a multitude of chronic pain and rheumatic conditions, which many assume must mean I’m totally miserable – yet because (and ONLY because) of my relationship with God, I’m truly the happiest I could imagine. Doesn’t mean I don’t have tough days, or days when I’m at the end of my tether physically – but it does mean I’ve an inner joy which enables me to better recognise that this day will soon be over and another one will start shortly, and may be much better than this – bright mountains are ALWAYS preceded by dark valleys, and some may be darker than others.
If you’re finding this concept tough to get to grips with in your own life, please write a comment – I’d be more than happy to hear your views and problems and be there for you to bounce things off if you desire.
Like many, I’ve often tried to read the Bible daily or read it more carefully or whatever. However, like many, I’ve usually failed for lack of focus or even to be honest, enthusiasm. Not being involved in any sort of regular outside bible study has been a problem to a degree too, so I’ve tended to use online sermons and the expositions of others more scholarly in scripture than I am, to teach me. BUT God has been very much reminding me that listening to others talk about Him is in no way as useful or spiritually edifying as listening TO Him speak to me more personally as He can really only do through His Word. So I went on a search for bible studies online, and while I found quite a few that were your typical type of studies with little quizzes at the end to score how great you are in not bothering to read the passages, but just your general knowledge of the topic perhaps – I also had the divine ‘fortune’ to come across what I think will prove to be one of the best sites I could have discovered this year.
Calling itself, the One Year Bible Blog its no different to any other blog except the author has skillfully put it together in a truly interesting manner. You have the options of listening and/or reading the relevant passages (2 from each Testament), and then reading what Mike has put as his own thoughts on them, before having the chance to put up your own if you’re interested – ultimately you don’t have to, but I’ve done so on a few occasions, as much to hone in on my own interpretations of what I’ve just heard or else to ask questions or perhaps to provoke some debate on some particular topic – today it was the concept of ’soul sleep’ – another one which divides the camp in multiple directions sometimes. I used to think it was a sort of heresy and had held to the “Absent from the body, present with the Lord” concept, but listening to the story of Lazarus yet again today – what leapt out at me was the portion where Jesus stated:
John 11:11 These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. “ KJV. SO, that sort of got me wondering somewhat whether perhaps the soul sleep brigade are maybe right, or else it may be that the concept is a valid one, but only prior to the Resurrection of Jesus!
But regardless – if anyone reading this has any interest in such a wonderful Bible reading in a year plan – head to http://www.oneyearbibleblog.com/.
And of course, please feel free to add your own views here as much as there too )
Well – not much happened this past week, other than me getting out for a couple of drives. The first one was to take my wonderful ‘baby’ Tikvah (pic shown), to the vets to check out his weight gain – sadly Craig my equally wonderful vet said that his weight sort of “comes with being a certain age!” I’d really hoped he’d consider it just might be more down to a possible underactive thyroid or the like, and we could just stick him on some drugs for a fast result, but not to be. Instead, I had to shell out for some rather expensive diet food for him, which after being on for a week, he’s now gained another 2g SO I think the time has come for me to get real – I tend to just throw in whatever looks an acceptable amount for him to eat, but I’m obviously still overfeeding him heavily. It’s SO hard tho to try and keep him on a strict diet when he keeps snicking into the breadbin for extras!! Soda bread and now pancakes seem to be his favourite!
Second trip out saw me getting my mum out to Holywood for a very short walk – she was so much worse than usual, and really not up to walking much at all which was a pity. However, we did manage to make it into a lovely coffee shop for a nice couple of Lattes which was enjoyable.
On the spiritual front, I had a rather tough awakening to what spiritual warfare is about to some degree on Sat night/Sun morning. Having had a nice chat with Colin (our minister at BMC) on Sat afternoon, and stating strongly how I fully expected to be at church in the morning, I ended up having one of the worst nights of the week for lack of sleep and increased bone pain, with the result that come Sunday morning, I was neither able to wake up, nor in any fit state when I finally did haul myself out of bed, to consider driving even the very short distance up the road to join the service late at 12, (as it was a Communion morning, and I’d said I might just head up for that section rather than sit out the whole service!). So wasn’t to be, but I did feel the timing was rather suspect in every respect, and told Colin as much. However, can but try again next week, as there’s no doubt that the more I allow myself to be pushed into not going out and in particular to church, I’ll end up back where I was 2 years ago – unchurched, and unfellowshipped (prob not a true word, but you know what I mean!).
God has continued to deepen my walk with Him tho, and has also been answering my prayers for an increased knowledge and interest in His Word, by providing me with an excellent one-year bible site, as well as speaking to me through a couple of films I torrented recently – one being the Gospel of John, and the other, the Life of David. Really been challenged in certain sections on both as He has (as always) hit me with certain scriptures
Ok – not a recent one I grant you, as it was in the spring of 1999, BUT having looked at a few other religious sites which provide some material esp photos on the topic, figured I may as well throw up some of my own here, as I have some really important photos.
This one for starters, is a lovely view over Bethlehem taken on the way out of the town going South.
As ever, time’s run away from me completely, and I’m long behind on this project, which I’d fully intended on keeping much more up to date than I have managed so far! However, determined things are going to change from here on and the simplest way of ensuring that happens is by making this a public ‘diary’ rather than primarily private. So, to set the scene – there’s been quite a few things happening of interest. Firstly, I have carpal tunnel – my Consultant amazed me by not only being kind enough to stick my name down on some probably imaginary ‘cancellation’ list (to my knowledge few med secretaries would have time to administer such a thing if it were available) but also got me an appt through within 3 weeks or so of doing so which was quite incredible. So the 13th April (don’t worry – NOT a Friday, although I’m totally not superstitious so of no interest to me anyway) saw me up at the Royal (Victoria Hospital) duly having my right hand wrist injected. Not knowing what to expect was possibly a good thing. It was without doubt one of THE most painful injections (and I’ve had tons in my lifetime) I’ve had in some time. The LA was possibly the worst of the two being the first and a fair volume of fluid to put into a fairly tiny space. Once that left me feeling as if I’d lost my entire first 3 fingers, he then proceeded to inject what seemed like an equally huge volume of steroid which was still fairly painful too to get put in. Then just put into an ordinary wrist splint and sent home with instructions to rest the wrist for 2 days total and 4 restrictive which I duly did. Sad to say though, the procedure totally failed in that wrist and now almost a month on the right hand is no better. However, I’ve already got an appt through for him to treat the left one, which is much more likely to respond given I feel CTS is its only problem, unlike my right.However within a week or so of having that lot to cope with, my bone pain once again took center stage. I’d begun a new narcotic patch treatment (Transtec) on the 13th, which at one point did look like it was helping, but the effect only seemed to hold for a few days, before the pain returned bit by bit until last week, when it peaked early on Tues morning to an utterly mindblowing 10/10 (felt more like a 20/10 to be honest at the time!). I’d already started increasing the other oral narcotics also in an endeavour to cope with it, but once again it just felt like nothing was helping. SO, my GP later that morning suggested I upped the patch dose to the next strength (52.5) and drop back on the oral meds over the next few days. Also started on regular higher doses of ibuprofen to see if they might help. I had to wait until the following evening before increasing the dose because of a morning appt I couldn’t miss so switched patches around 7 in the evening. However, by 10 I was starting to feel not only the expected ‘kick’ but also somewhat nauseated. Again, partly expected that and was used to it with the lower strength, but had duly taken the prescribed anti-emetic prior to the switch to prevent nausea and went to bed expecting it to start working fairly soon. However, when I woke up the next morning I was still feeling off colour and wasn’t up to eating much – the cyclizine was also making me very sleepy so spent a fair few hours in bed, but it wasn’t long before the nausea turned to vomiting, and within 12 hours I found that was all I was doing – sleeping and chucking. When things hadn’t improved by Friday morning I phoned the GP who suggested I drop back to the lower strength patch and also start another anti-emetic – buccastem which she hoped would improve things. So I duly removed the strong patch at lunchtime, took the buccastem and went to sleep. When I woke 3 hrs later (to be sick once more) I stuck on the lower dose patch but within an hour felt a lot worse so just removed it as well. An hour later and I finally started to feel somewhat better and thought everything was fine. But wasn’t to be. I was sick twice more before I settled down for the night finally at 2 am and despite sleeping fairly well until 8, woke up and immediately chucked up again. SO at this point, I knew I was in trouble as I was now bringing up small flecks of blood too – testament to my utterly dried out throat from the SJS and now the dehydration too, and so phoned the on-call Dr, who was lovely and sensibly said he’d organise an ambulance to get me into A&E for some fluids & better drugs etc. So I spent 6 hours in the A&E of the Royal (my choice) with a superb young doc treating me very sensibly with 2 litres of saline and some IV valoid which didn’t do much, so he then moved up to IV ondansetron (Zofran). Not a usual anti-emetic by any standard and I was frankly surprised at getting it, as it’s normally only provided to those on chemo, but it worked (as before) within 10 mins and for the first time in 3 days I finally felt more like myself and up to eating/drinking which was wonderful.The really more incredible outcome of all of that was him sending me home on 2 days worth of Zofran and it not only keeping my stomach settled, but completely sorting out my bone pain. My consultant friend (Dr. Gary McCleane) who’d originally provided it to me after one of his own treatments caused nausea, had suggested I try it for the bone pain, but I’d only just started on the patches, and felt I wanted to give them a go first. But the unfortunate aspect of that particular drug is that it’s hugely expensive, and equally not licenced for pain relief, so if I do want to go down that route it will be possibly some job to undertake to do so. However, at least my GP is willing to consider it, but for the meantime has once again started me on the anti-inflammatory route. Just have to see how I go.
And if you’ve been interested enough to read this far, then I’m grateful. Well known for my verboseness at the best of time, I tend to like to provide as much info to set the scene as possible, but please just remember this is a “catch-up” post after all and two months worth of catching up to do !! Future ones should be somewhat shorter, as they’ll not be so personally orientated as this one has been but hopefully more about faith and beliefs etc.
