“We love Him because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19…………………….. God has a heart, you know. Read the Bible and you’ll see. How often, I wonder though, do we focus on how God loves us rather than focusing on how we should love God? And how we should express our love to Him? He tells us in His Word our love for Him comes because of His love for us, and His greatest command to us is to love Him. I wonder then, does God feel loved by us? By me? By you? God sees our hearts. He sees our actions. He hears our words and knows our thoughts. He knows our decisions. He sees what we focus on, how we spend our time, what and whom are our…
““The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes Leaping upon the mountains, Skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, he stands behind our wall; He is looking through the windows, Gazing through the lattice. My beloved spoke, and said to me: “Rise up, my love, my fair one, And come away.” Song of Solomon 2:8-10………….. “Come spend time with me,” the Spirit of God spoke into my heart one beautiful surprisingly warm later winter morning. “It’s more important than anything else you do.” I sensed Him leading me to go take a walk with Him. One of my favorite things to do, but the truth of the matter was I had so very much to do that day. I felt pulled in…
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6……………………… I was down on my knees, exhausted from a long day, praying briefly before climbing into bed when the Lord told me to do something. Something I had done before, but never to the best of my recollection in the way He told me He wanted me to do it. Still on my knees, I said, “Why?” His answer was immediate and emphatic. “Do you need to know, or do you need to obey?” the Lord responded. I didn’t answer. We both already knew the right answer. I didn’t need to know. I didn’t need to understand. I didn’t need an…
“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of…
“All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:6…………… I feel worthless. Ever felt that way? Feeling that way somewhat now? Or lots right now? I felt that way FOR DECADES. Like I had no value. No worth. No significance. Like I didn’t matter. Like I was utterly worthless. And, the truth is, I was. Worthless. I didn’t just feel that way. I was that way. Seriously? Yes, seriously. In my eyes, yes. And in the world’s eyes, yes. By the world’s standards yes. So what about God’s? After all, that’s what matters most. So where did I stand in the way of worth? Of being worthy? Of being…
“and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” 2 Cor. 5:15-17…………. “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Phil. 4:11-13…………. I had begun the big search for housing for my next destination, the destination where the Lord was sending me as I continued forth in my ministry work for Him. It didn’t take me very…
“The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way.” Psalm 37:23………… “Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.” Mt. 6:10…………. When a beloved friend and sister in the Lord shared with me how the Lord had “closed” a door of opportunity in her life, and how a woman had called her to tell her the opportunity was “closed”, confirming my friend’s desire to have the Lord close doors for her and open the ones He wanted open, I encouraged her and prayed for her about something I believe we all need to hear. As much as many of Christ’s followers throw around the words “when God closes one door, He opens another,” and “Please God open the doors…
“Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”” Mt. 22:37-40………….. Now I don’t know about you, but I always thought love is an emotion and that love is an action. Both. And I thought about love in terms of people loving me, and in terms of my loving others. Then the Lord drew me to Himself, saved me (Eph. 2:1-10), adopted me into His forever Kingdom, into His eternal family, to begin an everlasting relationship with Him, sealed me with His Holy Spirit,…
“Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad…and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again…Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new…Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their…
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.” 2 Cor. 10:3-6….. “Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:38……… “The devil doesn’t care about you,” my long-time pastor who is now with the Lord taught his congregation one day. “He…
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable [pleasing in some versions] in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.” Psalm 19:14……….. “Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever…” Hebrews 13:20-21………. “We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.” 2 Cor. 5:8-9…….…
“Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.” John 14:23-24………….. “”Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” Mt. 7:21…………. There’s something in my life I don’t want to do. That’s an understatement, if I’m honest. I desperately don’t want to do it. So you might be surprised to know that as much as I desperately don’t want to do it, I…
“Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” John 4:34………… “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” John 6:38…… Please be careful when it comes to this. Sometimes we have prayed to God, have sought God, and have heard God, and know what God wants us to do, and are clear about it, but then convince ourselves either that we haven’t yet heard from God or that what we have heard from God is not from Him. So we look for another answer, a different way, something easier, more palatable, more comfortable, more appealing, more pleasurable, less challenging, more self-satisfying, etc., and convince…
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” Mt. 6:25-27…………….. “…For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.” Mt. 6:8……………… “Why don’t you take all of this fruit, too?” the woman whispered to me as the man teaching the Bible study pressed on with his teaching at the…
““Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly. And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on…
“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, …” Colossians 1:1 (bold and underlining added)……. “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” 2 Cor. 4:7……………. The last thing in the world I ever would have expected would be that the Lord would call me at 50 years old to pack up the few belongings I still have after selling my house and giving most everything away, and the dogs and their necessities, and go further up north than He has already sent me to bring my little ministry of evangelism, streets ministry, and writing to the streets of New York City. I LOVE a quiet lifestyle, I HATE cold weather, I live…
““Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” Mt. 7:15 Many years ago, a pastor at a church I visited a few times told those of us in the congregation to pray to God for His vision for us, write it all down, and believe it would all come to pass. He took a verse from the Bible, showed us how he believed it fit his homework assignment for us, and told us to get to work. It didn’t take me long to come up with a magnificent vision, convince myself it was from the Lord, and off I went. Within a very short while, I reported back to the pastor that I was moving a long distance away and that…
“Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”” John 8:18…………. “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”” John 14:6-7………… Ever been hopeless? Felt hopeless? Like no matter which way you turn, no matter what you try to do, no matter how much you try to help yourself, no matter how much others try to help you, no matter what, nothing seems to work, nothing seems to get better, the way you…
“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Mt. 5:16………….. “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” And He said, “Go, and tell this people…” Isaiah 6:8-9…………… I’m still in awe that the Lord took a woman as broken and purposeless as I was for decades – broken by the world around me and broken by my own sin – and transformed me into a sold out relentlessly passionate Christ follower filled with love, joy, peace, and hope with an unfathomably beautiful and glorious forever relationship with the Lord who is now out on the road full-time for Him…
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” 2 Cor. 1: 3-4………………… I was headed down the hotel hallway on a mission. I’m always on a mission. Always going somewhere to do something. I don’t sit still well. Rest is not something I do well. Slowing down I do out of obedience to God and because I so exhaust myself in my everyday life I get to the point when I have to. So suffice it to say I wasn’t just going down the hallway to return…
“I will lift up my eyes to the hills— From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1-2…… I was broken for decades. Hopeless. Purposeless. My life ever spiraling downward. I could barely function. Childhood sex abuse. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Alcoholism. Anorexia. Self-mutilation. Abandonment by my family for talking about the sex abuse. Then abandonment by two husbands. Numerous tragedies. Continually contemplating suicide. Indescribable depression. Awful anxiety. Desperately seeking a fix for my brokenness. No amount of human help gave me more than a temporary band-aid over wounds that only worsened. Oh, how broken I was! Only now with total clarity can I see why my brokenness only worsened. I believed I was broken. But I couldn’t see past myself. I…
“Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” Romans 12:15…………….. I barely knew him. I had met him once a year or so before. For about 10 minutes. Our conversation was strictly business. Then in recent weeks we had talked on the phone. About three times. Super short conversations. All business. He had agreed to help me with something. Kindly. Graciously. Generously. I said please. I said thank you. I shared briefly about my ministry work. Our conversations never went farther than that. Until the day I called him for an update about what he was helping me with. That’s when he told me he hadn’t been able to help me as he had hoped to do in recent days. And he told me why. In case…
Once again, as I do each year, I want to say THANK YOU so exceedingly much to those of you who graciously and generously donated to Walk by Faith Ministry this past year. I am thankful beyond measure! As many of you know, as I do not have any staff and only have an extremely minimal amount of volunteer help compared with an enormously full plate of the work to which the Lord has called me, and given I use a very old fashioned bookkeeping system, when it comes to receipts I ask each year if anyone would like to receive one for his or her previous year’s donations. While I do my best to keep up with receipts desired throughout the year for those who donate over $75 for…
“Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before Me, My mind would not be favorable toward this people. Cast them out of My sight, and let them go forth. And it shall be, if they say to you, ‘Where should we go?’ then you shall tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Such as are for death, to death; And such as are for the sword, to the sword; And such as are for the famine, to the famine; And such as are for the captivity, to the captivity.”’ “And I will appoint over them four forms of destruction,” says the Lord: “the sword to slay, the dogs to drag, the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. I…
“When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.” Mark 8:34-35 NKJV………………. Is there something you need to throw away? Something you’ve been thinking about over and again you know needs to be gone? Something you know you’re holding onto that needs to go into the trash? Into the garbage? To the landfill? Down the toilet? Down the garbage disposal? Something deep down inside no matter how much you’ve been avoiding it, or how much you’ve been pretending you don’t…
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.” Psalm 19:14…………… Please pay careful attention to this. Please don’t miss what I did for years. Please hear this message. This is a well-known Bible verse, and sometimes verses become so well-known we neglect to dig deep into them, to truly hear the message from God in them, and to go out and do what the Lord is telling us. What is the psalmist saying? What is the psalmist praying? What is the psalmist asking for? To whom is the psalmist speaking? He is calling out to THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY who SAVED HIM, who REDEEMED HIM, and who GIVES HIM THE STRENGTH HE NEEDS. He…
““And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?…You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast, and take oaths in His name.” Deut. 10:12-20 NKJV………. “You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him.” Deuteronomy 13:4 NKJV……….. In the first verses above, the Lord uses Moses to…
“Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” Psalm 100:3 NKJV…………….. I could not have been more excited. In fact, I couldn’t recall the last time I had been that excited. Not only was what the Lord was calling me to do literally what He created me to do, what I was born to do, what He knew I would do even before I was born, but the next step in my life’s calling was so incredibly critical, so vital, so important, and so awesome and amazing, that I simply had no words to describe the feeling in my heart. So when the Lord called me to start seeking Him…
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” James 1:17…………….. “Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits:” Psalm 103:1-2……………… I don’t know about you, but sometimes, maybe even often, sometimes too often, I become so driven, so determined to get everything done in a given day I believe I’m supposed to get done, and plunge so quickly into it after spending my personal alone time with the Lord, that I have a tendency to miss God’s blessings right in the midst of it all. Not only do I miss…
“Oh, magnify the LORD with me, And let us exalt His name together.” Psalm 34:3 Ever felt taken for granted? I have a long, long history of being rejected, so it goes with the territory. Whether people outright abandoned me, or simply stepped back and pretended like I wasn’t there, and still do, ouch. I’m sensitive to begin with, so suffice it to say I am all too familiar with the feeling of being taken for granted by people. It hurts especially when it’s people I love dearly. I’ve also done plenty of my own taking people for granted. Including people I dearly love. The more I follow and love the Lord, the more I try to never take people for granted. Whether strangers, friends, or loved ones. But this…