Tag: potential

Posted in Bible Journaling, Christian Service, Leadership, Life Inspiration, Purpose

Let God be True and Social Media a Liar

Written by talk2shari Published Discussion Leave a Comment on Let God be True and Social Media a Liar

Today is Friday, August 30th, 2019. Winding down and the summer and heading into fall. Much like I feel about life right now! How did I get here, you know… 57 years after the picture of me graffitiing my Mother’s belly? Time is swift and not for the faint of heart. Beauty is fleeting, it’s a good thing I never felt that I had it. (Not asking for compliments or pity, just being real). It wasn’t something that I put a lot of stock in as a young person.

Now I attempt to beautimitize myself (totally a made up word) as I travel about and I am concerned a little more about the flavor of style when I’m up in front of people. But none of the frilliness of life ever interested me or caused me to want to do make up tutorials and style videos. Those things were not things I was purposed to do.

My immediate family consists of a dozen, myself and husband, two grown daughters with husbands, and six growing grandchildren. Five boys and one girl. The little girl I get… I raised two of them, the five boys! Oh my stars they are so different from girls for obvious and not so obvious reasons. But mostly because God designed their hearts differently from the womb. So when I read a verse like Romans 9:11 it causes me to ponder what God will do with them, and me!

(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth;)

It draws me back to one of my favorite verses, Jeremiah 1:5

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

For me, that verse answers the abortion debate. Before we were even in the belly, God had a plan for us. So, nobody will ever tell me that a little fella or gal in the beginning stages of formation in the momma’s womb isn’t somebody. They were somebody, before they were a body! Glory!

But back to my point of God’s plan.

While I would love it if my plan for each of my children and grandchildren were God’s plan, I have to look at the very real potential that it’s not. But understanding that their potential is God’s to do with what He will.

Paul was teaching the Romans, and the Jewish people in these passages, that no one can claim to be chosen by God because of his or her heritage or good works. God chooses who He desires to choose to use, and He uses those who have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. Jew or Gentile. God uses them all. He can use anyone lost or saved to accomplish a task, but no one will live up to their potential unless their in Christ.

Three Prayers for my dozen

So that is my first prayer for those that I love and myself. A right relationship with the Lord. It’s the beginning of every good plan.

My second prayer is the will of God for our lives. As I said, “I have many ideas about direction for theses kids.” But if I project my plan onto their life, I may have them headed down a road to destruction. So, I have to leave well enough alone, and boy is that hard! But what I always fail to remember is that it’s hard enough to keep myself in check with God. I’d do well to leave everyone else to Him before I rurally mess things up.

And my final prayer is that our potential is made known so that God can be glorified through us. It’s where I feel parents (myself included) can discourage their children and their selves. Trying to put anyone into a position that God did not ordain for them, really is like putting a square peg in a round hole. It will not work.

Social media is the bomb. Until it explodes in our face. Looking at the seemingly perfect lives of people and their staged photographs will put unrealistic goals into the minds of anyone. Yes, me too! I follow artists, speakers, singers and I love it! But then I hate it. Because I begin comparing myself to their look, style, design and I feel like an unworthy dirt dog.

I need to stop. If you’re doing that, you need to stop.

That crazy baby in the womb, who loves graffiti. That’s me for realsy. I need to love her. And so that’s my prayer for all my peeps. Let God be true, and social media a liar. He determines our destiny. Not the numbers or the masses.

Posted in Bible Journaling, Christian Service, Life Inspiration, Uncategorized

Just Keep Going

Written by talk2shari Published Discussion Leave a Comment on Just Keep Going

ruth

The coming of the New Year always brings with it the potential for change and opportunity. I’m not one to make resolutions, more like intentions; because I know my history of follow through, and it’s not good. But that mindset is likely a part of my problem. I’m always quick to concede that a battle is over rather than seeing it as an opportunity for a new or revised plan. I grow weary in the waiting and the wanting and wonder if it was merely wishful thinking. Wow… that’s a lot of “w” words. But they’re not my points. My point of today’s blog came to me courtesy of the book and story of Ruth, the Moabite. A Gentile gal chosen by God to be in the lineage of Jesus, a woman with purpose because she just kept going.

She lost her husband… and kept going.

Times were bleak… but she kept going.

She didn’t know how or if it would work out… but she kept going.

She didn’t know the people in her future… but she kept going.

I have a Ruth personality, but I often times get a Naomi mindset. Naomi was Ruth’s mother-in-law who had lost her husband and two sons, she was depressed and frustrated and decided to head back home to Bethlehem. She tried to make Ruth stay with her own family, but Ruth had adopted Naomi as new family and she was going where Naomi was going.

The book of Ruth is just four short chapters. I recommend you read it and not take my word for it, but while you’re here with me, let me tell you the impact this story has for me and the coming New Year. I don’t talk a lot about the frustrations of life because I don’t want to be a discourager. But trust me when I say that I have more than a few. When my jobs quit me… I didn’t quit working, God told me to and I didn’t listen, so my jobs quit me. Funny thing about your jobs quitting you… so does the income. Huh… who knew! And living on one income isn’t fun. But God has done amazing things with nothing. He is the only One who can. I have been provided for in amazing ways. And yet… there’s always room for a few woe is me stories. Naomi had a reason to be sad. Her husband had taken her into a land that ended up being a land of famine and then had the nerve to die on her. How rude! Followed by the death of her only other providers, her sons.

So let the rubber meet the road when I say that sometimes things happen because we’re not where we’re supposed to be. Naomi and her family should have been relying and serving God all along, but they’d chosen another path and so did I. When I finally set into the fact that God wasn’t going to allow me to work in the secular world I hit road block after road block and a few stumbling blocks of my own that haven’t allowed me to be “The Jesus Chick” to full extent that I desire. But as I approach 2017, the third year in service to the Lord, I approach it with a new mindset.

Three things happened that changed Ruth’s life when she kept going:

  1. The plan was a step of faith.

She leapt without the net appearing. That’s what faith is. And I need that faith for 2017 as I live bolder and braver for Christ and believe that God’s plan is going to come to fruition. I need places to speak, I need place to sing… God knows that. I believe He’ll provide. I need to provide an income for my family, not for wants but because a ministry costs money. That’s the reality of it. So the net that I’m counting on appearing is a net worth that will allow me to serve God unencumbered by the woes of the mighty dollar.

  1. The purpose of Ruth was faith

Ruth’s story is one of great purpose. She didn’t know it then, it was just life. But look at the impact her life has had. We’re still reading of her thousands of years later. She’s a grandma to Jesus! She shouldn’t have been there, she was a Gentile from a heathen nation of idol worshippers. But she stepped into her purpose in faith and God rewarded her.

  1. Her proposal came because of her action of faith

When Boaz proposed to Ruth, she had taken some pretty bold moves in the place of the threshing floor. She came in the night and laid down at his feet and ask him to cover her. She didn’t want anything that He didn’t want for her. She laid her life down, and Boaz bought her from the kinsman who was entitled to her by the culture she was in.

I’m very much living in a world that would have me for dinner and cast me aside if it had its druthers. A ministry for me is the unknown. It’s just laying myself at the feet of Jesus and saying Lord, if You don’t cover me, the world’s going to bury me. It takes a strength that I don’t personally have to step out and say, I’m the Jesus Chick. I believe that Ruth was saying “I’m Boaz’s chick” if he’ll have me. And he did. And the rest as they say is written in the book.

Are you living in God’s plan and purpose? Has He made a proposal for you, and have you accepted. That proposal starts with salvation… but then it continues with the plan of action. What potential lies before you in 2017?

Posted in Life Inspiration

The First New Year’s “Eve”

Written by talk2shari Published Discussion Leave a Comment on The First New Year’s “Eve”

New year

It’s New Year’s Eve! Let’s get the party started…but before we do I have a thought that I need to follow through. Was the very first New Year’s Eve formed in regret? Perhaps I’m wrong, I’ve been so before; but when I began looking for a topic to blog on this morning I wanted to think on a biblical eve (as in the night before something happened) But where God took me was to the capital “E”  Eve and the thought that the very first New Year’s Eve celebration wasn’t really a celebration at all. But rather it was formed in regret… much the way many other modern day New Year’s Eve celebrations are formed when bad decisions effect a life time.

Genesis 3:1 ~ Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD GOD had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

Just one question got that New Year’s Eve party started and Eve living her first day in the very first year. Prior to that she and her main man would have lived out eternity in the perfect world, but that decision began the time when life was counted in years. That thought gave new meaning to the word “eve” for me. We are on the brink of a new year. And it’s always a bitter sweet time, I’m sad about those things that I did not get accomplished in the year prior and excited about the potential for the coming New Year; and one thing for sure I don’t want to form 2015 in regret.

With the exception of one year, I have begun every year since salvation in a church service. The one year I missed was one of the saddest I’ve ever experienced (of course that was my own fault for allowing Satan to convince me of it). But none the less I determined that every year to follow would be spent in Christian fellowship if there was any way possible at all. And God has provided! Tonight for the second year in a row I’ll bring in the New Year at a “Teen Up All Night” event (spending at least 4 of the 12 hours asking myself, why did I do this? And the other 8 praising God!) At last year’s event 11 young people came to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Now that is a New Year without regret!

There will be many who unfortunately will wake up (or not) in great regret tomorrow. They’ll not know the saving grace of Jesus Christ or they’ll have turned their back on Him. What is important to remember is that we are all just one eve away from a broken relationship with Christ if we’re not on guard. Eve didn’t go to the garden to fall but she did indeed fall and because of it we all now face the very real day to day decisions of regret.  Some are small, some are huge! 2015 is filled with potential! I pray yours and mine is filled with better health and a closer walk with Christ!