Monthly Archives: February 2013

Happy Valentine’s Day

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“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”1

Every February, throughout the Western World (at least), romantic greeting cards, flowers, and specially packaged candy are given to our loved one/s as an expression of our love, all in the name of St. Valentine.

And who might St. Valentine be? One legend says that he was a priest in Rome during the third century AD at the time of the Roman Empire and that he may have been thrown into prison and killed for helping Christians escape the cruelty of Roman prisons where Christian prisoners were beaten and tortured.

According to another legend, “Valentine actually sent the first ‘valentine’ greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl—who may have been his jailor’s daughter—who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed ‘From your Valentine,’ an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It’s no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.”2

If truth be known, there’s probably a mixture of validity and make-believe in all of these legends. Nevertheless it’s a good thing to show and tell our loved ones how much we love and appreciate them, not only in a romantic way on Valentine’s Day, but every day of the year. As Jesus commanded us: “Love one another as I have loved you.” That needs to be applied at all times—a big order and a goal we all need to strive towards.

In the words of John Oxenham, “Love ever gives, forgives, outlives, and ever stands with open hands, for while it lives, it gives. For this is love’s prerogative—to give, and give, and give.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for special days and special ways to show our loved ones how much we love and appreciate them. Please help me to love my loved ones and others as you have loved me every day of the year. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Jesus in John 15:12-13 (NIV).

2. The History Channel, www.history.com

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Resolution or Repetition

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“Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead.”1

“If you have ever been to a circus, you’ve no doubt seen the huge bull elephants chained to a peg in the ground. Perhaps it has occurred to you that the elephant could easily pull the peg out of the ground and escape. However, he does not try. As a baby elephant he was tied to a huge stake that he could not pull out of the ground. Weeks of pulling and tugging only wore a trench around the stake, and finally he gave up. Now that he is full-grown, with great strength and the physical ability to pull the peg out of the ground, he remembers only the futility of past efforts and does not even attempt to escape. He is conditioned to failure.”2

He is conditioned to failure because he is conditioned by his past as, unfortunately, many of us are. We have had a bad experience (or bad experiences) in the past that have left us hurt, angry, and/or afraid; and we allow those past experiences to control our life today even though these experiences happened years ago—perhaps even in childhood.

True, as God’s Word says, we need to forget the past so we can move forward to what is ahead. But until we resolve past hurts and forgive any and all who have ever hurt us, we are still conditioned and bound by the past and are destined to failure at some level—especially so in relationships. The reality is that what we fail to resolve we are destined to repeat … repeat … and repeat. So, if you ever find yourself repeating past failures, past mistakes, or past impaired relationship patterns, see if you can trace those patterns to some negative experience/s in the past. If so, those issues need to be faced, confronted, and resolved so we can break the chains of conditioning from the past, forget its hold on us, and move ahead triumphantly.

No matter what happened to us in the past it is either resolution or repetition. The choice is ours.*

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me to see if I am still bound in any way by unresolved past experiences and to find the help I need to overcome these issues so I can genuinely forget the past and move ahead with my life to fulfill my God-given purpose. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Philippians 3:13 (NASB).

2. Dr. Arthur Caliandro, of Marble Collegiate Church, New York City. www.marblechurch.org/

* Note for help: See Dick’s book, You Can’t Fly With a Broken Wing, on sale at http://tinyurl.com/yrjrnl.

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Tips for Better Living

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A word from God’s Word: “A wise man will hear and will increase learning; and a man of understanding will listen to wise counsel.”1

Benjamin Franklin said: “Well done is better than well said.”

Thomas Jefferson; “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. In other words, the harder I work, the luckier I get!”

Eleanor Roosevelt: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Albert Einstein: “In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.”

Anonymous: “Leaders are like eagles; they don’t flock … you find them one at a time.”

Anonymous: “A religion that does nothing, gives nothing, costs nothing, suffers nothing, is worth nothing.”

Jacob Riis: “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it—but all that had gone before.”

As God’s Word, the Bible, says, “A wise man will hear and will increase learning; and a man of understanding will listen to wise counsel.”1

And such are the ways of God in helping to “shape” us into the person he sees we can become.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me a wise, understanding, and listening heart to learn your ways of grace, truth, wisdom, and love. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Proverbs 1:5 (NKJV).

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Fly With the Eagles

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The Bible says, “Let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily trips and entangles us, so we are free to run the race that is before us.”1 “But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”2

A friend of mine has trouble with Japanese bonsai trees because she sees tiny trees with great potential inhibited because they have been purposely root bound by man. Others have trouble seeing animals and birds trapped in cages for the same reason. For example, how do eagles feel in zoos? Do these magnificent birds, created to soar to the heights of mountaintops, get frustrated? Probably. Are they fulfilled? I seriously doubt it.

Too many of us who were created to reach our total God-given human and spiritual potential and to fulfill God’s noble purpose for our life, are trapped in a cage of our own or of another’s making. We fail to resolve the problems in our life that hold us back. We fail to come to terms with the destructive habits in our life. True, we may have been wounded in the past, but God wants us to be healed, to be free to fly, to soar to the heights of all that he has for us.

We have a choice, we can scratch in the dirt with the turkeys or we can rise up to follow Christ and fly with the eagles to the heights that God planned and envisioned for us to reach. That choice is ours.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to find my wings and learn to fly with the eagles to the heights you have planned for me to reach. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

Note: See Dick’s book, You Can’t Fly With a Broken Wing, on sale at http://tinyurl.com/yrjrnl.

1. Hebrews 12:1, Paraphrase.

2. Isaiah 40:31 (NIV).

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Oportunity Comes to Pass …

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As Jesus said, “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.”1

Once upon a time a city dweller moved to the country and bought a farm with a cow. In no time his cow went dry. When he told this to the neighboring farmer, the farmer was surprised as this cow had always given lots of milk.

The city man was surprised, too, and told the other farmer how considerate he had been of the cow. He said, “I never took more milk than I needed. If I only needed a quart, that’s all I took. If I didn’t need any milk, I didn’t milk her that day!”

What the man didn’t realize is that, to keep a cow producing milk, he needed to take what she had to give.

That’s kind of like life, isn’t it? If we don’t use the gifts we have, we may lose them. And if we don’t take the opportunities for service, for growth, for spiritual enrichment while we have them, we may lose these opportunities too.

Remember: “Opportunity comes to pass, not to pause!”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please show me how to put to good use the gifts you have given me so I can have a part in what you are doing in the world in which I live today. May I never waste what you have given to me to give to others. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. John 9:4 (NIV).

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What We Project

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“A man reaps what he sows.”1

A man was recently complaining to me about how most men rejected him. In his mind he was convinced that it was entirely their problem. As kindly as I could I tried to get him to see that fundamentally “what we project is what we get back.”

If one or two people reject me that’s par for the course. Not everybody is going to like me. Expecting them to do so is unrealistic.

However, if many people reject me, then I can be reasonably sure that the reason probably lies within me. In reality, “We tend to treat ourselves the way we were treated and then others treat us the way we treat ourselves.” If, for example, I felt rejected as a child, I will tend to continue acting as if I am still being rejected, and imagine in my mind that others are still rejecting me also. While this is understandable it’s self-deception.

Furthermore, as long as we blame others for the reactions we have, we can never overcome our problems. It’s far too easy to want others to change. The reality is that the only person I can ever change is me. And when I change, people’s reaction to me will also change—because what I consistently project I will consistently get back! That’s pretty much a law of life. What we sow is what we reap.

The road to recovery begins with facing the truth and reality of what we are contributing to the problems we have. Only then can we help ourselves and only then can God help us. Denial of reality is the way to self-destruction. As Jesus pointed out, only the truth can set us free.2

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me the courage to see anything in me that causes people to react negatively to me in any way. And lead me to the help I need to overcome my problem/s. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Galatians 6:7 (NIV).

2. John 8:32.

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To Be or Not to Be

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“Then He [Jesus] appointed twelve that they might be with Him.”1

God is not into religion. He’s into relationships. That is, his goal for you and me is that we be in healthy relationships both with him and with one another.

God himself is in relationship as the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Being created in the image of God we, too, were created for relationships. Furthermore, Christianity began in relationships when, at the beginning of his earthly ministry, Jesus chose the twelve disciples “that they might be with him.”

As another has said, “To be is to be in relationship” without which we limp along in the shadows of life with an empty hole in our heart. It may not be most desirable, but we can live a fulfilling life without being in a romantic relationship, but we cannot fully live, let alone fully love, unless we have a healthy relationship with at least one other loving person … preferably with more than one. To be in relationship is to be open, vulnerable, and known as we really are, for we can only ever be loved and truly relate to others to the degree that we are known. As long as we hide behind a mask, we can never feel loved nor can we relate because masks can’t relate.

In his book, The Transparent Self, Sydney Jourard said, “Every maladjusted person is someone who has not made himself known to another human being and in consequence he does not know himself. Nor can he be himself. More than that, he struggles actively to avoid becoming known by another human being. He works ceaselessly at it day and night. And it is work!”

True relationship begins with being ruthlessly honest with one’s self and with God—and then with at least one other honest, loving, and trustworthy friend.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be an authentic person—honest with myself, with you and with at least one other trustworthy friend so that I will learn to be the person you envisioned for me to be and therein discover how to fully live and fully love in loving relationships. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Mark 3:14 (NKJV).

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Words

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“With the tongue [words] we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers [and sisters], this should not be.”1

I recently read about a middle-aged man who has been struggling with chronic depression for many years. His counselor told him that he would need to be on antidepressant drugs for the rest of his life. He told the counselor that his father, a self-made head of a large corporation, repeatedly said to him, “Son, when you inherit the family business, I expect you’ll ruin it.”

“These words stung more painfully each time he heard them. When his father died, the man felt driven to work unreasonably long hours to prove his dad’s prediction wrong. The pressure to avoid failure that relentlessly gnawed at him was quieted only by alcohol. Soon a serious drinking problem developed. His wife threatened to leave him. Finally he succumbed to ongoing depression for which he could find relief only in drugs. His life was devastated by the power of his father’s tongue.”2

I was once told that I was physically ugly. It took me years to overcome that one sentence because, tragically, I believed it. However, I have since learned that it had more to do with the person who spoke those words than it had to do with me.

With words we can bless or curse others; encourage or discourage; hearten or dishearten them. They can be powerful motivators or de-motivators. Let’s always use them as an instrument of healing and encouragement—and never use them to hurt, demoralize, or destroy another.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for the gift of words. Please fill my heart with your love so I will always use words as a blessing to others and never as a curse. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

Words

Words spoken
may soon pass away
and forgotten be,
but when spoken
in love and kindness,
are like beautiful flowers,
and even though
they fade and die
from conscious memory,
their fragrance lives on
embedded in the
deeper mind —
forever.3

– Dick Innes

© Copyright

1. James 3:9-10 (NIV).

2. KneEmail. To subscribe, send any message to: kneemail-subscribe@welovegod.org.

3. Poem by Dick Innes, beautifully presented is available for framing. See: http://tinyurl.com/words-spoken.

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The Direction You Lean

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“I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”1

As I’ve mentioned before, for many years I have ridden a mountain bike, and riding down the steep hill where we live is quite exhilarating—sure is a lot more fun than riding back up again—obviously, though, the benefit is only from the ride up. Unlike a car, however, on a bicycle you don’t steer to turn. You lean to turn in the direction you want to go. If you lean towards the left, you go left. If towards the right, you go right. And if you lean too far either way, you’ll fall. I know because I’ve leaned too far before—not on our steep hill fortunately.

Life’s like that too. If you lean towards the left of liberalism that’s the direction you will go; and if you lean towards the right of conservatism, that too is the direction you will go. And if you are an ultra or extreme-left-winger or a dogmatic extreme-right-winger, chances are—in time—you will ultimately fall too.

Both of these extremes are the opposite side of the same coin. The culprits are not likely to admit it, but both are equally neurotic. For example, a dogmatic-right-winger is theologically rigid because he is emotionally rigid, repressed, and in denial. It has nothing to do with his self-perceived spirituality. He’s this way because he is insecure. His defense against this is his rigidity. He always wants to be in control as this is the only way he feels safe. It’s exactly the same for the extreme-left-winger. He’s no different and is just as rigid in his stance as is the extreme or dogmatic-right-winger in his.

The healthiest and best direction to lean is towards God, trusting in him and in his Word for the direction of your life. It is also essential to face one’s emotional issues so we have our eyes open so we can see clearly the direction in which we are leaning—and heading, for where you look is where you will go.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me be emotionally honest with myself and you so I can see clearly and stay focused on the direction I need to go. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Psalm 121:1-2 (NIV).

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Overcoming Fear

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“But when I am afraid, I will put my trust in you. I praise God for what he has promised. I trust in God, so why should I be afraid? What can mere mortals do to me?”1

Fear is unquestionably a problem common to all. Somebody has said that there are 365 “fear nots” [or the equivalent thereof]* in the Bible—one for every day of the year!

Healthy fear is a God-given emotion. Without it we would get into all sorts of dangerous situations. We rightly fear, or should fear, driving through a red light or walking alone at night (or in broad daylight) in a dangerous area. If we don’t, we’re out of touch with reality.

The fears that give us problems are those that cause anxiety, sleepless nights, give us ulcers, cause us to fail in our relationships and in our work, etc., etc.

On the surface these fears may seem to be irrational. Usually they’re not in the sense that they have their roots in past frightening or traumatic experiences. Even a dog, if it has been abused by a human in the past, will be afraid of humans—so will people.

So how do we overcome our fears?

First, like David, we need to trust in the Lord and seek his guidance to find the help we need to resolve our fears.

Second, if our fear is caused by a traumatic experience in childhood or in the past, very often skilled therapy is needed so the root cause can be resolved and trust restored.

Whether God heals us directly or through a counselor doesn’t matter. The important thing is that we choose to trust God and ask him to give us the courage to face our fears-and lead us to the help we need to overcome them. As King David said, “When I am afraid, I will trust in you.”

When I am afraid, I keep quoting David who also said, “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do unto me?”2

May our trust be stronger than our doubts and our love greater than our fears—for the God who brought us this far will not desert us now.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me the courage to get in touch with and face all my fears so I don’t set myself up to fail. And please lead me to the help I need to overcome them so I can honestly say with David, ‘I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.’2 Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Psalm 56:3-4 (NLT).

2. Psalm 118:6 (NIV).

3. Psalm 34:4.

See “Conquering Fear” at: http://tinyurl.com/rhlho

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* How Many “Fear Nots” are there in the Bible?

It’s been said that there are 365 “Fear nots” in the Bible, one “Fear not” for every day of the year—actually there are more than 365 “Fear nots” in the Bible! Thank God because we need to be reminded to “Fear not” and trust God every day.

Many people say, “It’s a nice thought to say that there are 365 ‘Fear nots’ in the Bible, but it’s not true.” Indeed, there is not a version of the Bible that 365 times says, quote unquote, “Fear not.” For instance, the King James Version says “Fear not” or “Be not afraid” 103 times, but not 365 times.

So why do I say that there are more than 365 “Fear nots” in the Bible?

“Fear” is spoken of over 500 times in the KJV. Furthermore, in addition to the “Fear nots” many times it’s saying “Fear God,” which really means reverence God alone and do not fear anyone or anything else. Expanding the search to look at verses encouraging us not to worry or not to be anxious would add many, many more “Fear not” Scriptures. This is why I say that there are more than 365 “Fear nots” in the Bible.

From Soul Shepherding by Bill Gaultiere © 2010 http://www.soulshepherding.org/

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