Our thoughts today..

We had a great weekend! My mom and I went to a Laura Ingalls pageant in Walnut Grove, MN! It was fun! I will post pictures in the days to come! But wow what a wholesome lovely God filled event. The people in that day were so faithful and loved God so much! It was incredible! They were so amazing and so hardworking. I will be writing more on this subject when I post the photos. I love the pioneer days.

Today was a great Sunday! We went to church, and hung out at my parents house. We ate yummy food and relaxed. It is nice to be together and know that we live in the same house finally. So there is no pressure of spending weekdays apart. But I wanted this blog entry to be centered around what we learned and felt at church today. We really felt like today was an important day and that we needed to pray for the people we love. So we did. Today's sermon was about Divine Healing. Not faith healing. DIVINE healing. The notes for today were fabulous! I just kept writing and writing! I liked that Pastor Keith Kerstetter explained things simply and made it easy for Kaleb to understand. I have grown up in an evangelical church so hearing about God healing people miraculously isn't anything new. But for Kaleb, well he is very interested in learning and understanding what is in the Bible and what God wants for us in this life. It warms my heart because that is one more thing we have in common.  I am going to bold the quotes from the sermon this morning and give my thoughts on them. And I will bold the Bible verses that Pastor Keith Kerstetter used to illustrate his thoughts. These are His main thoughts with what I gathered today as I was listening to his sermon...

God has healed often enough so that we believe it, but not often enough that we can figure it out.

This is where we just have to believe that God knows best. If we start to question why some people have health struggles and some people don't it can drive us insane. And that is what Satan wants. He wants us to feel mad at God and doubt that God truly cares about us. And when we let those negative thoughts in Satan wins the battle in our minds.

Divine Healing: Our faith doesn't heal us, God heals us.

God chooses who to heal. We pray and God hears us. But He chooses. He has the master plan. He sees it all. We have to trust in that. Trust in His word. Trust that He knows things we do not and sees what is to come. And we do not. As humans we make things more complicated than we need to make them. When we need to just relax and let things unfold as they will. And make sure we are being faithful and including God in our life. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. Isaiah 55:8. God's mind doesn't work like ours. It says so in the previous Bible verse. We need to trust in that. He said, “If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.” ... God promises to heal us. He may not always heal us physically but he will help us with our emotions. .

Where some people get off-track is by putting their faith in faith - NOT God.

As humans, we will mess up. We aren't perfect. We can get caught up in being perfectly faithful and doing everything right. And when things still go wrong we can then beat ourselves up and think to ourselves, we aren't faithful enough. We haven't been crossing our T's and dotting our i's correctly. Well that is nonsense. Once again, that is exactly what Satan wants. He wants us to doubt God and doubt ourselves. That is his ultimate goal. It is a strictly evil plan.

Don't put God in a box.

We LOVE to put people in boxes and keep them there. We do this with God. We all do. I know I have to work hard to remember God is NOT like my earthly father. I tend to lean towards putting God in a box that matches my dads box.

God heals the faithful. This is proof...
Matthew 8:5-13
Matthew 9:20-22
Matthew 9:27-30

God also healed those with no faith. This is proof...
John 5:1-9
Acts 3:1-10

God heals the unfaithful to show Himself to them. That person no longer has an excuse to NOT believe. . . God did his part in healing the person. Even though they claim He isn't real.

God is concerned with our total well being.
Our spiritual, mental and phsycial well being.

Healing is not becoming what we were, but becoming all that God intends us to be.
This is important. Because I know I fall into the trap of always wanting to be healed and go back to the old me before I was sick or before I felt stress or was sad.. But that isn't what Jesus wants. He wants us to be better than we were. To have learned from what we went through---To be different.
Our faith should not be in conflict with the sovereignty of God. Sovereign:  One that exercises supreme, permanent authority. I take this statement to mean that we tend to think we have control. When really God should be allowed to take the reigns of our lives. But we have free will and we have to let Him. I seriously, pray that I am letting God have control. I hope you will also.

Psalm 32
Blessed is the one
    whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
² Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.

³ When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
⁴ For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.^[b]

⁵ Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.

⁶ Therefore let all the faithful pray to you
while you may be found;
surely the rising of the mighty waters
will not reach them.
⁷ You are my hiding place;
you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance.

⁸ I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.
⁹ Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you.
¹⁰ Many are the woes of the wicked,
but the Lord’s unfailing love
surrounds the one who trusts in him.

¹¹ Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous;
sing, all you who are upright in heart!

David is talking about his guilt in this passage. David had made many mistakes. He felt much better when he let God in and told Him his fear and let go of his guilt. We have that freedom because Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Take it to the cross and leave it there. Jesus already paid the price. NO PERSON SHOULD MAKE YOU FEEL DIFFERENT!!

Isaiah 53:5

⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 

Even though the enemy was defeated he wasn't evicted. 

On earth, during war, a series of battles are fought and the accumulation of these battles determines who wins the war. God's war is different. At the cross Jesus defeated the enemy. The war is won, now we have battles to fight. That is the way it is in the spiritual realm. That is the way God set it up. We need to be aware of Satan. That he is lurking and waiting to strike. We need to pray. We need to do our part and do our best not to choose sin. We need to recognize that Satan can feed us negative thoughts. We need to pray them away and remember that Jesus saved us!! The answer to Satan's accusations when we are not healed is the cross. 

1 Peter 2:24

²⁴ “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

Pastor Keith told a story about a missionary who came home to find that the lights were not on in his home but he heard noises. He then saw that a python had gotten into his home. He found his gun and mortally wounded the snake by shooting it in the head. BUT the snake did not die right away. The snake began to thrash around in it's death throes. It was violent and ended up destroying the man home interior. It was an intense experience. Finally, the snake died. God compared Satan to a serpent. And this is the bottom line. Satan has been mortally wounded by the blood Jesus shed on the cross. And what we are dealing with on earth are his death throes. He thrashes around this planet, usually in our minds and makes disasters. He causes pain. He lies to us. He gets us to believe we are useless and we are worthless. He feeds us the lie that we should just end our life . It is sad that many fall victim to that lie. .The list goes on and on. But the good news is this...

Hebrews 13:8

⁸ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

We can hold tight to that truth. That Jesus doesn't change. Everything written about Him in the Bible is true and He doesn't change. People change. Satan is unpredictable. But Jesus is NOT. He is predictable in the facts that are in the Bible. He is near and stays near. God loved us enough to send Jesus to die for our sins! We need to walk in that truth. That is what life is all about. It isn't about where we attend church. It isn't about what others think about us. It is about our actions and if they match up to God's expectations. If we mess up, confess and repent and be forgiven. THE END. That's all it takes. It is wonderful. It is a blessing and it will set you free! Remember that the love that God has for you and me is bigger and stronger than we can imagine!! Imagine having a son and letting him die so that everyone else could be forgiven of all the dumb things they will do. Cause boy do we do dumb crap!! If people hold grudges, that is their problem. Walk in the light. Walk in the love that God has for YOU!! If someone is dragging you down, pray for them. Ask God to soften their heart. Ask God to help you react properly to their abuse and to guide you. IF you have hurt someone ask for their forgiveness and give them time. But most importantly confess the wrong doing to God, take the sin to the cross and leave it there. Jesus' blood is important. We need to take it seriously. It is not a joke. IT has a divine purpose. It is to cleanse us of the wrong things we have done. So we can walk in the light just as Jesus is in the light.

1 John 1:7-10

⁷ But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all^[a] sin.
⁸ If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

James 5:14

¹⁴ Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
We need to pray more than we do. In this country we get comfortable. There is no immanent dangers. So we get cozy in our existence. I know I do. I feel today that I need to pay more attention and I need to pray more. I will make it a morning and nightly habit and pray when I am driving. I often forget to do that.

"The greatest tragedy is not unanswered prayer but unoffered prayer". F.B. Meyer