Spiritual Growth

Does Your Bible Reading Kindle a Fire in Your Heart?

What would it be like if Jesus led your personal Bible reading/study time?

In a word—awesome!
When it happened to a couple of bummed out disciples walking along a dusty road to Emmaus, they said “. . .our hearts burned within us while he talked to us on the road, while He opened the to us the Scriptures.”

That’s the experience we all want.
We want a burning heart that’s fully alive, fully engaged because of an encounter with Jesus.

Instead we feel a little disappointed or ashamed that sometimes the Scriptures seem closed to us when we read them ourselves.
It happens to us all.
For some people it’s just too discouraging. It’s enough to make them give up on the whole process entirely.

God says we are to search for Him, to seek Him out.

The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men,
To see if there are any who understand, who seek God.
Psalm 14:2

But the Bible is a long book, a big book with lots of characters with confusing names. It’s full of old stories that take place in ancient cities and countries. A lot of it seems so far removed from our lives, our experiences. We get lost in the tall grass 😉

Secretly we ask, “Is any of this even relevant to my life?”
“How can I wade through all of it to find the parts that apply to me, to my life, my family, my journey?”
What does God want from me? For me? Through me?
What is He trying to tell me?

Jesus said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Luke 4:4
Everything God says is pure; He’s a shield for those who take refuge in Him. Proverbs 30:5

It’s all good!!!
All of it.
But I don’t think it was random that Jesus focused on the truth about Himself when He met those two guys on that road to Emmaus.

And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
Luke 24:27

Jesus is without doubt the center of God’s message to us.
In Jesus we see the fulness of God. We see the incarnation of God’s love, His mercy, and His grace in Jesus the man.
Every story that is told reveals something about God’s own nature, His working in the world, His heart toward us, His plans, and His eternal purposes, and our part in those plans and purposes.

What’s the meaning of the burning heart response?

It says Jesus began with Moses, those first five books of our Bible, and expounded, or unfolded the meaning by explanation and interpretation.
Then He moved on to the prophets and did the same.

Jesus opened their eyes to see Him in the Scriptures.
That’s what caused their hearts to burn.

Our hearts are looking for Jesus!
I found an old post-it-note with this phrase on it: There’s a message in every miracle.

I’ve been thinking about that as I read the gospels.
I’m not sure what messages I was looking for, but I thought they might be about the others in the stories, like the little boy who offered his 5 loaves and two fish to Jesus, or a lesson in faith for Martha and Mary grieving their dead brother Lazarus.

But, it was right there all along: the message is about Jesus.
It’s always about Him.
What He can do if we just offer Him what we have.
How the trials in our lives bring Him glory.

Our tendency is to start with ourselves.
We read our Bibles for ourselves.
We want to figure out how to end our trials, conquer our weaknesses, relieve our stresses.
We want happy marriages, successful children, and fruitful spiritual lives.

Nothing wrong with those things.
God wants those too, but Jesus began by expounding, unfolding truth about Himself, to His followers.

If we start with Jesus the rest will follow.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
2 Corinthians 3:18

Our hearts burn when we see Jesus.
Start looking for Him when you read your Bible.

Can I share with you my prayer, the one I pray before I read from my Bible?

Holy Spirit show me Jesus, lead me into the truth—His truth, as I read today. Kindle a fire in my heart with the knowledge of Jesus and with a clear vision of Him. Then change me, transform me into that same image for His glory.
Amen.

I Must Not Be Doing Christian Right.

By Kelly Grace

It seems like it should be easier after 43 years.

I must not be doing Christian right.
Shouldn’t I continually feel God’s presence and absolutely know His ‘perfect’ will by now? Why don’t I pray without ceasing? Why don’t I live a more selfless life? These are the questions I can waste a lot of time asking, but I know who’s really asking those questions.
My Adversary. The Accuser.

God, my Father, never asks those things.

He knows my frame, that I’m of the dust and cobbled together by His power, that’s enough for now.

This dust sculpture doesn’t have to last forever.
God knows what I will be. He’s in a completely different time zone and when I arrive there none of this dust will cling to me. This corruption must put on incorruption. Mortality swallowed up in immortality.

Learning to walk with Him is a long course.
Receiving from Him takes practice. I keep trying to do it all myself as though I could. How to receive transformation? How do I let the power flow in and up to overflowing?

First I’m asking for it.
I think I’ve quit depending. Quit expecting. Maybe even quit believing it could be so simple.
From now on I’m asking for abiding.
I’m asking for companionship. I’m asking to hear and receive.
I’m quieting the shoulds and tearing up the To Do list.
Walking with God isn’t about productivity; it’s about knowing Him deeply and enjoying Him fully.
There is some barren terrain between all that I know and the way I that I live.
A recalibrating is long overdue.
He’s been patiently waiting for me to tire of self-reliance and turn again to Him.

The Christian life is described as a race that’s set before us.

The old exhortation is to lay aside the weight and sin that so easily entangles us and run with endurance the race that is set before us—looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.

Looking to Him.

I’m asking for companionship and then looking to Him.

There’s a beautiful thrilling mixture of peace and excitement when I think about what God has planned.
I know He has divine plans for me, for all of us whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. BIG PLANS.

To the world none of it is BIG.

They’re all wearing spiritual Kevlar that protects them from absorbing or being penetrated by eternal thoughts.
They never escape the earth’s atmosphere but spend all of this precious life focused on getting and spending. They seek to make a name for themselves and the yardstick in each one’s hand is his fellow man.

Believers do it too.
Measuring.
Can we finally break the habit of self-measuring and trust Him for the growth and the end result?
He wants to welcome each of us with a “Well done good and faithful servant”, but distraction and the desire for “other things” chokes out the life sustaining word.

We hear, but not really.
It doesn’t sink down into our ears.

Life is a limited commodity.

Oh how I want to use it wisely.
A mediocre existence isn’t on my Bucket List.
I believe in eternity and I care about people.
But I sometimes struggle to find how to use the gifts and talents He entrusted to me to make a good gain. I want to see a few people in heaven who are there because I was faithful in my walk with God.

That’s what I really truly desire, a small part in the salvation and the edification of the people I have the privilege of meeting in this life.

To feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to love the unloved and teach the sincere seeker. My mission is to teach women to love their husbands and children and men to be kind and caring. My goal is that those children grow up knowing God because their mothers knew Him. What joy it would be for husbands to want to know the God who changed their wife—filling her heart with love and her days with kindness and caring. And what a blessing if pastors and their wives were uplifted and found joy and peace in their calling.

I want to feel His presence as I minister and study and pray or walk through a village with little children gathering around to hear a Bible story. And feel His pleasure as I seek to live as an example of a believer in love and faith. Learning to trust Him as Sarah learned to trust and then received strength to conceive.
It’s not to late for me to bear miracle fruit in my old age.

I refuse to look back wistfully and think what might have been.

My eyes are facing forward and I have fixed them on Christ.
That plan He has will get revealed day by day and His strength is gonna flow through a pipeline called faith until it bubbles up and spills out of my life 😉

The Raw Potato Solution

By Kelly Grace

Embed from Getty Images

Is there anything better than finding a simple solution to a difficult problem?

We all have them, difficult problems that is.

The frequent frustrations and battle fatigue that come with raising small children.
The lonely corners of a marriage, and every marriage, even a really good one, has them.
Politics at work, disillusionment at church, financial strains or physical maladies—it seems like there’s always something conspiring to lick the frosting off the cupcake of life while we scratch our heads looking for a solution.

For instance, recently a lightbulb broke off in the socket of my exterior Entry light fixture.
The thing hangs about 10′ above the ground and has a small opening at the bottom.
There’s not much room for maneuvering a hand or using a tool inside the fixture.
Removing the metal lightbulb housing still stuck in the socket and guarded vigilantly by the remaining shards of glass was not gonna be a snap.

Also, I have a phobia about getting electrocuted.

My husband finally prevailed because he’s totally brave and used a piece of Rubbermaid non-slip shelf liner to get a safe grip on the bulb, but there was an even easier solution—if I’d only known about it.

Later I Googled my broken lightbulb problem and up popped what I call The Raw Potato Solution.
It’s just what you imagine.
Take a raw potato and cut off the end exposing the firm and starchy inside.
With the electricity turned OFF, stick the potato onto the protruding shards of glass and unscrew it from the socket.

I haven’t tried it, but it sounds elegantly simple because potatoes are affordable and ubiquitous.
I’ve waited about 42 years to use that word in a sentence.
What a relief.
Anyway. . .

Thinking about life’s problems I found myself wishing there was a Raw Potato Solution for more of them.

There is, but I just hadn’t thought of it that way until now.
Maybe you haven’t either.

Prayer is a Christian version of The Raw Potato Solution.
Think about it.
Prayer costs us nothing because God, by grace, has given us access to Him continually. (Romans 5:1-2)
He’s always willing to hear us and help us. (1 Peter 5:7)
Prayer helps us handle the sharp edges of our lives. (Psalm 34:19)
The broken parts that aren’t working right.
People and situations that we can’t get a grip on are the perfect subjects for the Raw Potato Solution of Prayer. (Psalm 18:16-18)

You can translate every frustration into a prayer for kind-patience.
Let your unspoken fears be transformed into statements of faith because you know God intends to work in people and situations to bring about good. (Romans 8:28)
Confess your broken, not yet Christlike attitudes and ask for a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit.

God doesn’t expect you to handle on your own everything that comes into your life.
In fact, the troubles we have in life usually work to draw us closer to Him.
Jesus said we’d have trouble in this life, but He promised us His peace and joy. (John 14 & 15)

Say your prayers, talk to God about your troubles, you’ll find it’s even easier than peeling a potato.

Are You Feeling Weak? Here’s Why That’s Excellent.

By Kelly Grace

What do you do, how do you react when your strength isn’t equal to the task?

Driving through a village in Ghana I saw this little girl trying to lift this large plastic container.
It’s too heavy for her. She’s too weak to get it up on her head and follow her Mom.
But she’s trying.

We spend a lot of our lives doing what she’s doing.
Her Mom was walking away with an expectation that she will follow bringing her brother and the container.
It didn’t happen.

God is never like that with us.
But He does let us try to go it on our own when we get it in our minds that we can, or we should.
My expectations of myself are often so clearly inflated above reality.
I still fight the tendency to go it alone. Alone in my own wisdom, strength, and resources.

And God lets me fall.
Or drop ‘it all’.

That’s when the teachable moment finally makes an appearance.
The Holy Spirit gets my attention and I hear the old truth, “”Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit says the LORD.”
Zech. 4:6

The Christian walk isn’t about learning to do it on our own, it’s about learning to get out of the way.
Learning to surrender, to receive, to be simply a vessel for God to fill.
Apart from Him I am always running on empty.

One problem with the necessity of dependence is that it runs so counter to our American culture and tradition.
We value strength and personal reliance.
We scorn the weak, the feeble.

Who wants to be needy or inadequate?
The thought is so negative and deeply etched in our minds as wrong.

Jesus spent 3 years trying to demonstrate to his disciples His reliance, complete and total reliance on God.

In 2 Corinthians 12 the apostle Paul talks about his ‘thorn in the flesh’.
He’d asked to be delivered from it 3 times, but God said—“My grace is enough for you because My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

So why am I surprised when I feel my strength in short supply?
If it doesn’t happen on its own, God will allow a circumstance to bring us to empty.

Only then can He fill us.

Are you feeling like you’re running on empty?
That’s exactly where God wants you.

For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground:
Isaiah 44:3

Water is a common metaphor for divine grace and the empowering of the Holy Spirit in you and in me.

A doctor once told me that most Americans are chronically dehydrated.
I think most of us Christians are too!

“Come to the fountain, there’s fullness in Jesus, all that you’re longing for, come and be glad.”

Want To Hear From God? You Control The Volume!

By Kelly Grace

Do you want to hear God’s voice more clearly?

You can.
It’s that simple.
You and I control the volume.

We have to turn down the outside noises.
The ambient noise level in our lives is in our control more often than we think.
Sure there are lots of hours of the day when our time and environment aren’t ours to control, but there are moments and hours that are.
It’s what we choose then that can make it easier to hear God clearly.

Here’s an awful realization: I’ve acclimated to noise.
When did noise become the default setting in my house, my life?
Monday afternoon I caught myself grabbing for the remote before I even put down my purse.
I thought, “I’ll just listen to the news while I unload these groceries”.
That’s the kind of small choice that has big consequences.
I didn’t think about it in the moment, so I missed an opportunity to hear from God.
I drowned Him out with a bunch of blah, blah, blah pre-election day chatter.

Today I chose quiet.
And I can hear Him speaking.
In bits and pieces from last night’s mid-week Bible study and my morning reading.

Job’s loathing of his own life because of his sufferings spoke to me about feeling deep compassion for people caught in a crucible experience.
Peter and a few other Jewish believers shed all their old presumptions when a group of Gentiles were saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit right before their eyes. Embracing as brothers people they’d always thought of as dogs. And God made them all family so they could fill the known world with the good news of Jesus Christ. Can I cast off old prejudices and be useful to God in bringing others to Jesus?
Voting for our leaders is responsible citizenship and praying for them is good in God’s sight.
God cares about the sparrows, but He’s numbered the very hairs of my head. I’m loved and watched over by God.

How many days have I missed His input?
Forgetting what lies behind, right? I press on toward. . .

We have to turn down the inside noises too.
This is harder. Stopping my own thoughts from their constant flow is like turning off Niagara Falls.
But I want to cultivate a private quiet.
Ecclesiastes says For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . . .a time to keep silence. . .
When is that time in my day, in my life?

We can turn up the volume on God.
Give Him lots of air play.
Turn up the volume by reading your Bible, or reading it more.
I began a new reading plan that has me reading a chapter in 10 different parts of the Bible each day.
Can I just say I was skeptical, but I’m a convert!
I love it 😉

http://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-reading-plan/prof-horners-reading-system.html

I also bought a read aloud App of the New Testament.
As one reviewer noted the reader has a slight southern accent, but I like it.
It’s free, but there’s an in-App upgrade for $1.99 which I bought for the jump to any verse and sleep timer features.
I used to have a set of cassette tapes—yep, I’m that old—with Gregory Peck reading the Bible.
I’ve missed listening to the word as I walk, or sweep the garage, or unload the dishwasher.
Starting that again today!!!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spokenword-audio-bible-new/id304085181?mt=8

Here’s another techified approach to hearing God’s word.
Our friend Don McClure’s messages come on a cool little 16MB USB Flash Drive. We took this to Africa and really enjoyed listening to Matthew and Philippians while driving to the villages for ministry and conferences. I’m sure you can find lots of other similar products from other pastor/teachers.

http://calvaryway.com/product/selected-studies-950-messages/

How do you handle this noisy world we live in?
What do you do to hear from God?

Here’s Why You Might Want To Pray Out Loud!!!

By Kelly Grace

Are your thoughts like these crates when you start to pray?

There’s a little order, a few coherent sentences, but then they start tumbling down into your To Do List, or what someone said about your new hair cut, or what to make for dinner.

Prayer is conversation with God; listening to Him as we read His word, or as the Spirit speaks in the stillness of our own hearts and then talking to Him.

Prayer is spiritual, but we need our minds, our thoughts, if we’re going to pray.

I struggle with random thoughts invading when what I want is clarity and purpose in my prayers.

Here’s what I want instead:

Praying out loud helps me stay in my prayer.

It keeps my thoughts from wandering off on their own.
That’s OK when I’m gardening or vacuuming, but not when I’m talking to God.

You know how you feel when the person you’re talking with starts scanning around the room and answering with a vacant kind of “yes, un-huh”.

You know they’ve moved on, they’re done.

Well, I don’t want God to feel that way!!!

We don’t need long formalized prayers. In fact we ought to try to listen before we speak! Aim for clarity and brevity birthed out of a realization that God already knows my circumstances 😉

Walk prudently when you go to the house of God; and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they do evil.

Do not be rash with your mouth,
And let not your heart utter anything hastily before God.
For God is in heaven, and you on earth;
Therefore let your words be few.
Ecclesiastes 5:1-2

But, God wants to hear from us.
He’s invited us to come and talk with Him. He walked in the Garden with Adam and Eve. He longs for our fellowship. That’s a church word that means time spent together talking and enjoying a relationship.
It’s hanging out with Him.

Jesus said to begin a prayer with, Our Father.
To remember that He is my Father. My provider, my protector, the one Who loves me with an everlasting love.

My newest great-grandson was just beginning to vocalize when we left for Africa.
I hung on his every ‘word’! I encouraged him to talk to me 😉

Let your Father hear your voice today.
I hope you find it’s easier to stay in the conversation when you have a ‘speaking part’!

You Don’t Want To Limit God, Do You?

By Kelly Grace

Are you at your spiritual BEST?

When I’m in Africa I feel like my spiritual life gets expanded about 1000%.

I don’t know how you’d ever measure it, but I know I feel more spiritually energized and effective.

I want to feel this way all the time, even when I’m back at home in the US.
Then I saw this little roadside shop and started wondering if I’d been limiting God in my life.
I TOTALLY DON’T WANT TO DO THAT!!!

God doesn’t want that either.

Here are the things to avoid if you don’t want to limit God:

#1 Testing God by murmuring and complaining. We can try His patience, and insult His love. The children of Israel made this an art form during their desert wanderings.

Yes, again and again they tempted God, And limited the Holy One of Israel. Psalm 78:41

INSTEAD:

In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
(1 Thess. 5:18)

#2 Not believing that with God all things are possible. Really after creation and resurrection I think we ought to give God His just due and realize that nothing is too hard for Him!

And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
Matthew 13:58

INSTEAD:
Believe. Just memorize Mark 9:23
If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes.

I love that there are no qualifiers in that promise. God always responds to our faith 😉

#3 Don’t throw a bucket of cold water on the Holy Spirit.

Do not quench the Spirit.
1 Thessalonians 5:19

Most of the time this is caused by our ‘ sins of omission’.

We don’t take in enough of God’s word so our faith is small. Faith comes by hearing, or opening up the heart to the truth. Feeding on the truth, on God’s thoughts, His works, and His plans. It radically changes us if we’ll let it.

We neglect time for prayer; for listening to God and reflecting on Who He is and what He’s like.
That’s why we’re stressed out and bouncing around like the little balls in a Pinball machine.

We don’t hang out enough with other Christians, especially ones that are walking close with Jesus. The company we keep really affects us more than we know. Like water, we can always find the lowest level. I think about Daniel and his three pals in Babylon, or Caleb and Joshua waiting around for all the faithless guys their age to die off in the wilderness. I’d rather be in the minority of the dedicated than the majority of the lukewarm.

Have you been sabotaging your spiritual life, holding yourself back from all God wants to do?

Let’s not miss anything He’s got planned. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever!!!

Talk to Him about it. It’s never too late to start getting in on all God has for you.
You haven’t missed your chance! Not if you’re still breathing.
Grab the opportunity now and invite Him to show you what He’s been waiting to do in your life and through your life.

Have faith and stay blessed!

The Father of Lies Is A Builder of Cages

By Kelly Grace

A lie is a cage made of words.

And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
John 8:32

The lies we believe imprison us, our sentence may be a few hours, a day or two, or many long years.

I once spent an entire day angry at my husband for ‘thinking I had nothing better to do than pick up after him’.
When he came home and it all exploded, bubbling up like magma from an overdue volcano, I found out how wrong I’d been.

He didn’t leave socks on the floor to send a message that I was ‘expected’ to pick them up and see that they made it safely to the hamper.

Nope.
That hadn’t entered his mind.

He was just running late for a tennis match and prioritized his time in a way that reflected his concern to not keep a friend waiting.

A whole day wasted in feeling mad and bad and rehearsing the inequity, the disrespect, and the laziness that was all ricocheting around my brain, but was really just a figment of my imagination.

This can happen with family, with friends, or even with the guy in front of us on the freeway!

We can even do it with ourselves.

Focusing on our inadequacies, our failures, and most often on our fears, we make small cells for ourselves fashioned of our worst remembered moments.

We’d rather succeed than fail, excel not be average, and conquer doubt instead of surrendering without a fight, but the lie defeats us before we begin.
It hobbles our feet and saps our motivation.
Like trying to run underwater, we can’t get up to speed or gain traction.

The enemy of our soul, the one that hates us with a long practiced menace, he’s the suggester of every negative thought about others and ourselves.

That’s not God telling you what a loser you are.
It’s not the Holy Spirit trying to make you regret your marriage vows.

The truth is a key made of words.

Jesus said in His word we’d find the truth and that truth would set us free.

Sometimes just one word is all it takes.
Words like loved, accepted, strengthened, righteous, blessing, wisdom, answer, grace, and hope.
We have to dig in and find the key to our own cages.

Get free of the lies that are holding us back, limiting us in life or affecting our relationships.

Sit in the cage or swing in the trees, it’s really our choice.

Does Your Bible Reading Kindle a Fire in Your Heart?

What would it be like if Jesus led your personal Bible reading/study time?

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