Just a thought by coppi

Just a thought by coppi – written in 2015

A light house does not blow fog horns but it only shines.  

When I read the above I thought of our walk as Christians.  Does our life reflect the light  of Jesus.  St Mark 4:21: and he said unto them, is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? And not to be set on a candlestick?  A candle beams its flickering light so we may find our way in the dark as does the Lighthouse.  As Christians we should let our light shine & walk in the light of Christ.  We need not blow fog horns but just shine & let the Holy Spirit beam through us.  Proverbs 20:27 The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord……i grew up in a very legalistic religion & if we did have a little light, it was totally blown out with dos & don’ts & lots of fear. 1 John 4:7: Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God….10: herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us & sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4 is filled with scriptures of love.  The pendulum swings both ways but should be in balance.  I guess my desire is not to be a fog horn but a flickering light for our Lord.

Ian, which was the hurricane which hit Florida with torrential rains and winds destroying everything in and around its space and causing disaster beyond one’s imagination.  I live in Tampa, Fl and we missed the eye of the hurricane by a turning to the east a few hours before it was to hit us. We did get rain and wind which caused damage also, but not near what Ft Myers’s, Naples, and Orlando, etc., experienced.  We lost electricity and still are without it.  I am so spoiled now and love all the amenities electricity brings, but there was a time in my life when I was a youth growing up on a small farm in Fredericksburg,TX, there was nothing but gasoline lamps, and wood burning stoves.  No hot water.  Everything had to be heated on a stove – dishwater, bath water, etc.  We lived close to the Pedernales river and took advantage of using it for bathing.  It was a difficult/hard life especially for my mother.  My mother raise ten children on that little farm.  My father died when I was very young and I do not have much of a memory of him.  Why I am even bringing this to memory is when the electricity went out and I was having to cook on a camp stove, my thoughts drifted back to that time in my life.  

My mother was a women of faith and she read Psalms 91 daily – “1) He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. 2) I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God , in Him I will trust”. Mama put her trust in this Mighty God to help her raise ten children by herself with Him as her companion and helper to accomplish this task. She was not delivered from it, but Jesus never left or forgot her.  He walked with her.  All her children grew up being accomplished in the field they chose for life.

My love for Jesus grew from the many miracles I saw Him do for us as children of a mother of great faith.  

Christ-followers contract malaria, bury children, and battle addictions.  And, as a result, we face fears.  It’s not the absence of storms that sets us apart.  It’s whom we discover in the storm— an unstirred Christ.  (Max Lucado 1/2/19)

The wonderful hope of Christianity tells me that I will see my siblings, mother, father & friends who have gone before again. But more, it assures me that the God of Christianity is one who walks with us now in our pain and in our struggle. 

My husband and I in our morning devotions yesterday were discussing the ‘why do believers in God have to suffer so many tragedies if their God is all powerful’. Why?  We have all heard the different reasons in the scriptures; I will quote several, but does it settle the why in your heart? Mt 5:45: “He sends rain on those who are right with God and on those who are not right with God”. ” And this is Satan’s kingdom and his reign to destroy the way people; people who follow and believe in God”. Do I know the answer- no.  I had to come to the fact that, yes, we do live in a fallen world, Satan’s last reign, and our God is not a respecter of people, and He sends rain on the just as well as the unjust.  But He does say I will not leave you alone but will go with you through the valleys of shadows of death.  As Max Lucado said “it’s whom we discover in the storm”.  My dear mother, when I would question the whys of the happenings in my life, would say “God is weaving a pattern, and you will understand it in the great by and by”. The longer I live, the less I know, but  I pray for wisdom.  C. S. Lewis wrote, “I don’t pray to change God. I pray because I have to. I pray because I can’t help myself. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.” To sums my thought up, ugly happens in our world, always has, and I presume will continue until the end of time – nope-I still don’t understand ‘why’, but I do know in whom I believe, Jesus, and I have discovered Him in the storms of my life.

Jeremiah draws a direct connection between faith and peace. He says, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is in the Lord. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes; but its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought” (Jeremiah 17:7-8 NKJV).

Justin Bieber to Simone Biles through InstagramI when she withdrew from Tokyo Olympic’s due to her mental health – “it’s as simple as—“what does it mean to gain the whole world but forfeit your soul. Sometimes our no’s are more powerful than our yes’s. When what you normally love starts to steal your joy it’s important we take a step back to evaluate why.”

It was very difficult for me to say “no” to anything I was asked to do or what I wanted to accomplish.  I can remember at one time, I was taking voice, piano, art. golf, etc lessons.  I was running in every direction trying to be something that people would love me – not for me but what I could do.  “No” was not in my vocabulary.  I thought I had to be the Wonder Woman doing and not being.  It was a hard lesson to learn, because when the bottom was “knocked out” of my world I created, where were the many “yes’s” that I thought was the answer to “love”.  Everything became a vacuum.  Where were these people whom I thought liked me – “nowhere”?  Painful – yes.  However, out of the pain and hurt, I learned to be me and I learned to slow down and smell the roses.  And, my “no’s, and “yes’s” were selective to “what’s the motivation behind them… “evaluate the why”.

God has limitless, powerful grace for you today. Run to him with your sin. Run to him with your failures and struggles. Run to him with the pain of others’ words that he might speak his healing truth over you. (Greg Denison First 15 12/27/18

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3

“’Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” –Isaiah 54: 10

Sometimes I allow my own emotions and feelings be related to who God is.  “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” Numbers 23:19:  If the God of the Bible truly exists, then he exists regardless of my/your feelings about him. My opinion will not change the reality of who God is.  There is so many opinions of belief and unbelief – questions on top of questions.  Always has been.  I used to think I had to have an answer for anything I was asked about the reality of God.  Not anymore.  I believe the Bible and its words of inspiration and truth.  They have guided my life down in the valley and up to the mountain top.  I don’t have to be God’s Ambassador to the world – and what a relief that is.  God is bigger enough to handle it.  I know what I believe and that settles it for me.

“Dear God, thank you for today”.

This is not a dress rehearsal – this is it!   Dear Jesus help me to live each day, each minute/ moment of this day in gratefulness & love of the beautiful life you gave me.

So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem: for he did eat continually at the king’s table; and was lame on both his feet.”�2 Samuel 9:13

Mephibosheth was no great ornament to a royal table, yet he had a continual place at David’s board, because the king could see in his face the features of the beloved Jonathan. Like Mephibosheth, we may cry unto the King of Glory, “What is thy servant, that thou shouldst look upon such a dead dog as I am?” but still the Lord indulges us with most familiar intercourse with himself, because he sees in our countenances the remembrance of his dearly-beloved Jesus”.  (Charles Spurgeon)

Aren’t we blessed!  God looks at us through Jesus.  Our deformity shall not rob us of our privileges.  Lameness is no bar to sonship.  Let’s come to the king’s table with our lameness  – it’s a hiding-place for all our inadequacies.  Come.

Unclogging The Shofar….

“The most uniquely Biblical musical instrument was the shofar, the Hebrew trumpet from a ram’s horn.  The word shofar comes from a word that means clear.  To make a sound you have to be clear.  You can’t blow through something that’s all clogged up.  You’re called to be the Lord’s shofar-a vessel of God, an instrument for His purposes…..in order for God’s Spirit to blow through you have to be clear, you have to be free of obstructions & clogged up stuff like bitterness, un-forgiveness, pride, lust, anger or anything that’s going to stop the blowing….”Jonathan Cahn

Anytime I read about a shofar, I think of Standish, my deceased husband.  He loved the sound of the shofar.  Our dear friends, Ralph & Diana Stinson, so graciously gifted him with one.  Standish was an Episcopalian & blowing the shofar in the church we attended was not acceptable.  However, when we visited the Messianic Jewish Synagogue or the Light House Gospel Ministries, out came the shofar.  It takes a lot of breath to blow a shofar & Standish would give it his best…..many times another “shofar blower” would come stand by Standish (he was much younger than Standish) & together they made beautiful music for the Lord.  I remember at Standish funeral in the  Episcopalian Church, his “shofar buddies” stood in the back of the church & blew the shofar…..The Episcopalian church had not planned for shofars to be blown, but I am sure Standish planned it, as he wanted all to know part of the music in heaven is the clear trumpet sound of ram’s horn, the shofar.

Max Lucado:  ” God gives us more by going deeper than we ask.  He wants not only your whole heart – He wants your heart whole.  Why?  Hurt people hurt people.  Think about it why do you fly off the handle?  Why do you avoid conflict?  Why do you seek to please everyone?  Might your tendencies have something with an unhealed hurt in your heart.  God wants to help you for your sake.”

The other night driving home from a restaurant, a man in a van kept cutting us off.  We tried to ignore him but to no avail.  The next thing I knew he was besides us, rolled down his window & threw a cup full of gooey stuff at us.  We ignored him as it is dangerous to react to someone’s anger.  I looked in the rear view mirror & he had pulled over & beckoned us to stop & say something.  Ignore him, I said.  We did. As we did nothing – just driving home.  I wondered if this person had some unhealed past hurt he never dealt with….”I have always said when one stuffs feelings, they eventually will come out….”  Much better to have a confidant that you trust & talk it out or write a letter to Jesus & tell him about your hurt feelings……I promise you, you will feel better.

Just a thought by coppi

I am reading a book about the Amish people.  I fell in love with some of their proverbs/sayings. Following are some:

” We may face situations beyond our reserves, but never beyond God’s resources”.

“Regrets of the past & fear of tomorrow are twin thieves that rob us of the moment” 

(Take my past Jesus & I trust you with my future)

You are never alone…..”Gott is always with you.  It is He who gives us friends.  Love always finds a home in the heart of a friend”.

“Fear is just false evidence appearing real”.

“Today, read a sound book, think a good thought, live a blessed life”.

“Friends are among Gott’s best gifts, ain’t so”.

just a thought by coppi

Just a thought by coppi

“Prayer makes the darken’d cloud withdraw;

Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;

Gives exercise to faith & love;

Brings every blessing from above”……

If you are around me any length of time, you will hear me say..”prayer is laying hold of God’s willingness not his reluctance.  I have embedded those ten words in my mind because they were very meaningful to me when I went through a very difficult time in my life.  In 1997, I can remember being in Corpus Christi, TX feeling like chicken little, the world falling down on my head.  It was during that period I came upon God’s willingness not His reluctance.  I prayed diligently for Jesus to guide & direct my steps, & gradually He pulled me out from under the rubble.  It didn’t happen overnight but His peace covered me until I could stand strong in Him.

Just a thought by coppi