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Is your soul singing about God?
My soul sings
My soul sings
My soul sings
How I love you
God is love, and therefore we must celebrate His love for us. We do that by singing all about God’s love for us. So join us today in singing about God’s love for us.
Open the page and see
The wonderful history of love, love
I start and end with you
I’m pulled to the gravity of love, love, love
Some words from 2 Corinthians 5:7 (NIV) that you’ve probably heard or read many times:
For we live by faith, not by sight.
Following on from yesterday’s blog post Walk By Faith, today I want to think further about our walk through life. When it’s dark around us we can stumble around getting nowhere if we have no guiding light. Likewise, when we are blinded either temporarily by a bright light or something in our eyes, or permanently blind, we can also find ourselves getting nowhere in the darkness unless we have a guide.
These are exactly the circumstances when those words from Corinthians can be most applicable. After all when we can’t see around us, we really are walking or moving about in faith aren’t we – Faith that we’ll find a safe route or path out of the darkness.
Our faith must be strong enough to get us through those dark day, otherwise we put ourselves in real danger of not getting through those dark days unscathed.
Ecclesiastes 3:9-11
What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.
Life is made up of many different seasons. And not just seasons like winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Different seasons of life for different emotions and different responsibilities. He created different seasons in our lives to mould us into who He intended us to be. God uses the seasons of our lives to show us that He can “make everything beautiful for its own time”.
God will change the season of our lives only when He’s ready to change something about us. Some seasons in our life are good other not so good, but no matter the season, God just wants us to trust Him through each one, because He will make everything good in His time.
When you build something some scratch, whether it be decorating a room, building a wall, writing a book, a computer program or something else, you feel pride in what you’ve built, and probably a little bit protective of it as well.
Likewise, when it’s something we’ve built, we are the ones who know better than anyone else how it was built and how it actually works.
Similarly, when it comes to us, the person who created us, God, knows us far better than anyone else – He knows what makes us happy; He knows what upsets us; He knows what worries us as well as knowing our talents; He knows every little thing about us.
Because God knows us inside out, doesn’t it make sense that we turn to Him for help and guidance, just as we would turn to an instruction manual when we have a problem building something.
I dreamt the other night that I travelled to another city with a family member to visit some people whose house we’d never been to before, and surprise surprise, we got lost…I’m not sure if there was no SatNav in the car or whether we were in someone else’s car.
To be fair, we did seem to find the house we were looking for but then had to go to some shops, and it was once we’d been at the shops we got lost.
This got me thinking about how easy it can be to get lost in our journey through life, particularly if we don’t follow a map or directions.
Stay on course with your life, by following God’s path.
When we buy goods/services they often come with a guarantee which promises that if the purchase fails or breaks within that guarantee period, it will be fixed or replaced free of charge. We now also seems to be getting more and more goods/services which offer extended guarantees on them so that even once the manufacturer’s guarantee has expired, for a monthly/annual cost, the supplier promises to fix/replace the goods, although this time there’s often an excess charge.
So a manufacturer’s guarantee is usually limited to a reasonable small amount of time, and an extended warranty while it does provide a guarantee of fixing or replacing faults, there is a charge associated with it.
Isn’t it great though that our very own manufacturer, God, guarantees to look after us not just for a few years, but forever, and not for a price, because Jesus paid the extended warranty fee for us when he died at Calvary.
Who else would give you a lifetime guarantee for no charge, except God?
Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish between fiction and reality, especially now that there are so many reality shows on TV these days.
So this Easter, I want to ask you, what is Easter to you? Is it just a story or do you believe that Christ died on a cross at Calvary on that first Easter morning?
Easter is real for me. Calvary is real to real. Jesus is real to me.
Are you looking for simple ways to encourage your heart and nourish your soul?
In the last while I’ve given you some ideas which will hopefully inspire you to implement them in your own life, and over the coming weeks I’ll share some others with you.
So here’s today’s suggestion:
Slow down!
Life these days goes by at 100 miles an hour, with everyone having loads of things to do, in a limited timescale. It’s therefore no wonder that we get stressed and tired just trying to keep up with everything that’s expected of us. That is why today, my suggestion to help you enjoy your day more and lift your spirits, is simply to take a deep breath, think about the here and now, and consider everything and everyone around you.
Each person, each location, each event and every circumstance going on in your life and in the lives of those around you, is important to them. So take time to think about, and consider, those around you instead of just rush past them.
Slowing down may lose you a few seconds in a day, but it will help you to appreciate those around you and what they may be going through.
Some people like taking charge and organising everything and everyone. Some prefer to be have their days planned out for them, so they just follow the plan. Which kind of person are you?
Whether you are a planner or whether you prefer to have your days planned for you, we all must follow the plans God as set out for us, because he planned our lives out before we were born, and is now wanting to direct and lead us through the tasks in His plan.
In the last few days I’ve been talking about giving thanks to God, and saying, “Thank you” to everyone who does something for you. Saying “Thank you” isn’t just something that’s just randomly become something we should do, as in the bible there are examples of many saying thank you t each other, and to God.
The example I want t give you today though, is if Jesus saying thank you to God, his Father, for hearing and answering his prayer:
John 11:40-42 (NIV)
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
Jesus knew it was important to thank God for all he does, so follows Jesus’ example each day, and remember to say, “thank you” to God for hearing and answering our prayers.
