Courage

What is courage? Without looking it up in the dictionary it comes to mind that courage is the ability to press on, fearlessly, in spite of obstacles, and in spite of things that could "dis-courage" a person or try to hold the person back from his/her purpose.

So where shall I find courage? Well, if I am "dis-couraged" because I feel weakened by difficult circumstances, could that mean that I am focusing on my circumstances more than on my God? Could it mean that I am believing either that change is impossible, or that I can't have joy until things change, instead of believing that the God of the impossible can and will either change things, show me how to change things, or be my joy and strength if things don't change?

So if being "dis-couraged" means my focus is faulty, I can find courage by changing my focus and re-directing where I place my trust. To do that is simply a choice - a choice to lift my eyes from the waves to the eyes of the One who called me to step out of the boat and come to Him, walking on the water. Take courage, friends!

c. 2007

Announcing My Niece's Website and Blog

I would like to invite my readers to visit my niece's new website and blog, at http://www.sunflowerschoolhouse.com/, launched yesterday. My niece, Honey, and her husband Jonah, are the parents of five children. Honey is homeschooling them, and, in the process, is developing some great resources for families and homeschoolers. She is having a May Giveaway, offering different downloadable products daily, until May 31st. You may still be able to get the products from yesterday, as they will be available until noon Pacific Time; after that you can get today's product.

While visiting the website, be sure to read Honey's post from yesterday, entitled "Happy Mother's Day", in the "My Blog" section. It is really inspirational and funny as well!

Introducing A New Blog

Hi! I have just started a new blog called "Who Are You In Christ?" Its purpose is to help us as followers of Christ to come into greater understanding and revelation from God, about how He sees us, through meditating on relevant Scriptures, asking God about them, and journaling His responses. I am planning to have enough posts on it to allow us to focus on this daily for the whole year. You can visit it here: http://whoareyouinchrist.blogspot.com/ I hope you enjoy it, and I welcome comments.

Multiplying Your Light

Hello, Readers of My Blog! Happy New Year! I hope you had a blessed Christmas season and are looking forward to what God has prepared for you in 2009. My first blog post this year is something I wrote in July, 2007. I intend to post more often in 2009, so feel free to become a "follower" of this blog if you like.

Tonight I started reading a biography of Thomas A. Edison, famous for inventing the light bulb, and so many other things. It was late in the evening when I started reading, by the light of the lamp at the end of my couch, and it occurred to me that I would not be reading by that light, had the light bulb not been invented.

That got me thinking – we have so many kinds of lights from that one invention – such as chandeliers, lights in our refrigerators and stoves, night-lights, flashlights, Christmas-tree light, lights in every kind of building, lights in mines, lights in airplanes, headlights, traffic lights, street-lights, and neon signs. Look at how much pleasure we have from being able to access light so easily! I'm sure it took a lot of perseverance to invent the light bulb, and then a lot more work to get it to the many forms in which we find it today. We couldn't count how many light bulbs have ever existed, or even exist today! What if Edison (or anyone else who worked on it) had given up? What if he (or anyone else) had said, “It will never work!” or “Aren't candles and kerosene lamps good enough?” Yes, the world would have stayed the same in many ways, but look at how much light has been brought into so many lives by his perseverance, even though Edison would not have realized how many lives would be affected, and in how many ways they would be affected!

Journal Questions to Reflect On --

1. How does my perseverance or lack of it affect others?

2. Whose lives can I brighten today -- with a prayer, with a kind word, with a helping hand, with a smile?

3. Are there goals or tasks or other areas of my life in which I have been tempted lately to give up? If so, which areas?

4. What is hindering me from persevering? Am I willing to deal with these hindrances? What steps can I take to deal with them?

5. Whose lives will be “lit” if I persevere? Will my perseverance possibly affect the lives of people I don't even know? Will I choose to persevere?

Why I Am A Christian

"Why are you a Christian?" you asked the other day.
"Why have you forsaken all, to walk this narrow way?"
Oh let me stop and tell you, why I follow Him,
Why all other treasures, in His light, grow dim.

I have found the priceless Prize
And I will not let Him go,
Although I've come to realize,
There's a cost, if Him I'd know.

This Prize is Jesus, my delight,
And I love Him, with all my might.
The Rose of Sharon, Friend of friends --
Him I'll praise, while breath He lends.

"Come close, My child," He says to me.
"I will ever your Father be.
Oh come and rest beneath My wing,
Release to Me, everything."

Jesus holds me in His hands.
My needs He always understands.
He causes my heart's storms to cease,
For He is the Prince of peace.

At His feet, I would learn
More of His ways to discern.
Through my life He'll be my Guide.
He'll be always by my side.

His great love I cannot earn.
More of its depths I would discern.
He daily keeps me in His care.
To know Him is a privilege rare.

I have chosen this road to take.
To follow Him is no mistake.
His hands outstretched upon the tree
Forever prove His love to me.

- by Diane Manuel

The Glass Slipper

Recently I had a picture in my mind, of the Prince putting the glass slipper on Cinderella's foot. Immediately this question came to mind, "Is your walk transparent before your Prince?"

As glass is "transparent," and our feet "walk," the glass slipper illustrates the walk of transparency we can have with Jesus, our Prince of Peace. We know that all of our thoughts and actions are already known to Him. Yet, as part of our relationship with Him, He desires that we be open (transparent) with Him and talk to Him about the things on our hearts, even those things that we might prefer to keep to ourselves, such as our deepest feelings, our hurts, temptations, sins and disappointments. As we talk with Him as a Friend, and hear His response, we can then receive His comfort, healing, and encouragement, as He shows us His perspective on what we have shared with Him.

In our story, Cinderella only lost one of the slippers. Sometimes we may be transparent with Jesus in some areas, but not in others. As our relationship with Him grows, he desires to take us to deeper levels of this transparency, leading to more wholeness and stability in our "walk."

Just as shoes protect our feet, transparency with Jesus is a protection for us. Imagine Cinderella walking home from the ball, wearing only one glass slipper. Her walk becomes unbalanced; soon she is limping and feels she might fall. Exposed to dirt, sharp pebbles, and other hurtful objects along her pathway, her foot may get cut and wounded. How safe she would have been, had she been wearing the glass slipper!

Glass is actually made of sand. Often, when walking along a beach, I think of how the thoughts God has toward us outnumber the grains of sand. I find this truth to be mind-boggling, as I consider how I cannot count the sand-grains in even a tiny section of one beach, let alone all the sand on all the beaches and in all the deserts of the world! Add to that all the sand in all the glass in the world, and the volume of sand is unfathomable, just like God's thoughts toward us! As we walk in a life-style of transparency before Jesus, we will become more conscious of His loving thoughts toward us as we commune with Him.

When Cinderella met the Prince at the ball, she must have felt like a new woman. The Prince loved her unconditionally. Dancing with him, she forgot the lying taunts of the wicked step-mother and step-sisters. In his arms, she knew she was destined for something greater than the life she had known. After the ball, however, back in her familiar surroundings, Cinderella may have begun to question the new identity she had found in the Prince, and the hope it had given her. She may have reverted to her old mindset of worthlessness projected onto her by the step-mother and step-sisters.

Suddenly, the Prince is at her door. He has been searching for her throughout the kingdom, trying the glass slipper on all the other maidens. Just as our footprints are unique to ourselves, so, too, is our own transparent walk with Jesus. It doesn't matter how many other people have a transparent walk with Him; He wants the fellowship we, personally, have with Him, that is uniquely ours. He comes searching for us, knocking on our door, desperate to find us and put the glass slipper back on our foot.

The door opened. The Prince entered. When the glass slipper fit, Cinderella was identified as the one whom the Prince longed to marry. Once again, Cinderella knew who she was, her beloved's. Everyone else in the house knew as well, and stepped back, speechless in amazement.

After meeting our Prince, at times we may find we are somehow in a place of having cut off some of our transparency with Him, and may have become vulnerable to stones in the path, which may have wounded us and tried to trip us up. Without our "glass slipper" on, we may have begun to forget who we are and Whose we are, and been tempted to embrace lies we once believed.

Like the Prince that He is, Jesus comes. He kneels before us and washes that foot that may be hurt and bleeding, and bandages it with His nail-scarred hands. He then slips the glass slipper back onto our foot, and restores our identity. Once again, we know we are His, and that we have found true love in His arms. As well, just as it was said of Peter and John, "They took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus," when the slipper is back on our foot, others will also see that we are His.

As we know, Cinderella then left her old home behind and married her Prince. As that glass slipper is restored, we can then find the strength to choose to leave the life that once held us captive. Like the Bride in Song of Solomon, we can skip over the mountains with our Bridegroom, who invites us, "Come away with Me, My beloved!"

Treasures New and Old

I would like to comment on why I chose "Treasures New and Old" as the title for this blog.

Jesus said that God's kingdom is like a householder bringing out of his treasure "things new and old." (Matthew 13:52) Our hearts are like treasure chests. The Word of God, insights from the Holy Spirit, as well as the lessons and character development gained through suffering (trials), are all rich "treasures" that get deposited in our hearts as we go through life. I would like to "enrich" the lives of the readers of this blog, by drawing out some of these "treasures". Some of what I post may be "hot off the press" things that God has shown me recently - "new treasures." Other items will come from what has been shown or imparted to me some time ago - "old treasures." I hope that what has strengthened or encouraged me in the past may do the same for someone else in the present or future.

I enjoy journaling - recording how things "strike" me and what God says to me or shows me. I enjoy it so much that I like to challenge others to do the same! If you like journaling, or if you haven't tried it but would like to, you might try journaling about some of the things I will be posting. From time to time, I will include some questions to help you "dig deeper". I would love to hear what God speaks to you or shows you as a result of your "pondering" over the posts or the questions, so you are welcome to share in the "Comments."

Here are some "Digging Deeper" questions -

1. What is one "treasure" God has deposited in your heart in 2007 or so far in 2008? How did He deposit it in your heart?

2. Read/ponder Proverbs 2:1-5, Proverbs 3:13-18, Proverbs 16:16., and Job 28:12-28.

a. Why would God say that wisdom is a treasure more valuable than silver, gold, onyx, sapphire, crystal, coral, pearls and topaz?

b. What does it, or will it, "look like" for you, to be seeking wisdom as hidden treasure and giving it the same value and importance as God does?

3. Read/ponder Isaiah 45:3 - "And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel." What are the "treasures of darkness" and "hidden riches of secret places"? Has God given you any of these? How?