The Best Sermons are Lived, Not Preached

These are real life stories that teach us many things in life. They are based on true incidents both wonderful and inspirational.

1. Today, I interviewed my grandmother for part of a research paper I’m working for my Psychology class. When I asked her to define success in her own words, she said, “Success is when you look back at your life and the memories make you smile.”

2. Today, I asked my mentor – a very successful business man in his 70’s – what his top 3 tips are for success. He smiles and said, “Read something no one else is reading, think something no one else is thinking, and do something no one else is doing.”

3. Today, after a 72 hour shift at the fire station, a woman ran up to me at the grocery store and gave me a hug. When I tensed up, she realized I didn’t recognize her. She let go with tears of joy in her eyes and the most sincere smile and said, “On 9-11-2001, you carried me out of the World Trade Center.”

4. Today, after I watched my dog get run over by a car, I sat on the side of the road holding him and crying. And just before he died, he licked the tears off my face.

5. Today at 7 AM, I woke up feeling ill, but decided I needed the money, so I went into work. At 3 PM I got laid off. On my drive home I got a flat tire. When I went into the trunk for the spare, it was flat, too. A man in a BMW pulled over, gave me a ride, we chatted, and then he offered me a job. I start tomorrow.

6. Today, as my father, three brothers, and two sisters stood around my mother’s hospital bed, my mother uttered her last coherent words before she died. She simply said, “I feel so loved right now. We should have gotten together like this more often.”

7. Today, I kissed my Dad on the forehead as he passed away in a small hospital bed. About 5 seconds after he passed, I realized it was the first time I had given him a kiss since I was a little boy.

8. Today, in the cutest voice, my 8-year-old daughter asked me to start recycling. I chuckled and asked, “Why?” She replied, “So you can help me save the planet.” I chuckled again and asked, “And why do you want to save the planet?” “Because that’s where I keep all my stuff,” she said.

9. Today, when I witnessed a 27 year old breast cancer patient laughing at her 2 year old daughter’s antics, I suddenly realized that I need to stop complaining about my life and start celebrating it again.

10. Today, a boy in a wheelchair saw me desperately struggling on crutches with my broken leg and offered to carry my backpack and books for me. He helped me all the way across campus to my class and as he was leaving he said, “I hope you feel better soon.”

11. Today, I was feeling down because the results of a biopsy came back malignant. When I got home, I opened and e-mail that said, “Thinking of you today. If you need me, I’m a phone call away.” It was from a high school friend I hadn’t seen in 10 years.

12. Today, I was traveling in Kenya and I met a refugee from Zimbabwe. He said he hadn’t eaten anything in over 3 days and looked extremely skinny and unhealthy. Then my friend offered him the rest of the sandwich he was eating. The first thing the man said was, “We can share it.”

The best sermons are lived, not preached.

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Blessings to you.

Can Light Penetrate a Black Heart?

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My child sized heart pumped fiercely as I ran away. Fear filled me. I felt like the devil himself was close behind breathing down my neck. “If he catches me I’ll never survive.” I scream out, “Jesus save me” but He didn’t appear at my door. (I thought He would come to my house and save me from the abuse.)

That’s when the devil got his foothold. The anger at God for rejecting my plea intertwined with the fear. The roots of disappointment and a lack of understanding was transformed into a bitterness that grew deeper. With each injustice, betrayal, hurtful word, and rejection another black spot replaced what God created. Hatred filled spaces unknown within a normal pulsating heart that was created to love. Instead of the red blood of Christ filling a beautiful, pumping pink organ, the enemies blackness was trying to fill it to the brim.

Life continued with struggles and the bitterness against man and God continued to grow. God’s light would try to penetrate my darkening heart but with snarled lips and vehement words God was rejected. “If there’s a God then why……..?” “Don’t talk to me about this so-called loving God!” was spewed out from a heart filled with pain, rejection, bitterness, and a hatred so deep it seemed no light could penetrate. God would step in but the door was quickly slammed shut.

God is a persistent God! He never gives up pursuing the lost. He didn’t give up then and He hasn’t now. He continued to chase me down and at my lowest point was standing there to pick me up. I accepted Him and He taught me much. With much love and patience He began healing the heart wounds from all the years of hurt and betrayal and gradually I learned who I am in Him. The blackening of my heart began turning grey. Some of the black spots of evil dissipated. But with a news report I learned it was still filled with hatred. The roots of hatred and bitterness still ran deep. I desperately needed surgery! The kind only Christ can do.

God’s light broke through the darkness within a dream. In the dream the flames within the cage roared about the body of man while ISIS stood watching with vile, wicked grins and slapping each other on the back for a job well done, I screamed out, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” It wasn’t the man being burned alive, it was me! Just before I awoke, I glared at the evil men and said, “If Mohammed was here I would spit in his face!” I awoke suddenly with my chest filled so full of hatred that I thought I was having a heart attack.

The hatred grew within me until I thought my chest would burst. I prayed in English, I prayed in tongues, I asked God what was happening to me. At one point I felt I wanted to jump out of bed and scream at the top of my lungs. I didn’t because it would wake the whole subdivision. I couldn’t move. The chest pain continued until I thought my chest would explode right there in my bed. I prayed some more. I rebuked the devil to no avail.

Confusion swirled around in my head, “Was I feeling what Christ must feel?” I told the Lord I know He loves those people but, “Forgive me, I want them to suffer every scream, every cry for help, every pleading agonized breath and feel every pain that every person and every child felt, for all of eternity in hell!”

My chest grew, the hatred increased. It was vile, it was ugly. I could barely breath. I could taste the wickedness of it. I prayed some more. I cried out for understanding and even threw out the fact that Jesus got mad and threw tables around the Temple. “I can’t ask You to forgive them because You will if they ask, but they won’t!” And, “I won’t pray their heart be changed! They are Satan’s incarnates! That’s like transforming Satan’s heart! It ain’t going to happen!” My thoughts whirled around like a balloon skittering around a room when suddenly released of its air. One minute I was thinking like Jesus might want me to and the next I was lashing out with hatred.

I don’t know how long I spewed the vile hatred I felt for what is going on in this world. The evil that surrounds us all. I confessed, I quoted a couple of scriptures, I did everything I could to try to rationalize and try to understand what was happening to me. Had I not been wide awake I would have thought I was in the middle of a horrible nightmare.

Suddenly a thought dropped into the midst of all the praying, all the arguing and expounding on why I should hate these people,“You have hurt people, too.” That shut my mouth for a moment but then of course my first response was, “I haven’t chopped off anyone’s head! I’ve burned no-one alive! I’m not robbing and stealing and raping!” Then the realization took hold, I have hurt people with my words, some deliberately and some not. I have rejected others, and above all, I rejected God and His Son for many years.

The pain in my chest began to slowly dissipate as that realization took hold. A calming began to replace the pain of hatred. It seemed as though my chest was deflating slowly and as that realization of my own sin penetrated my heart I realized that maybe, just maybe, it was my heart that needed to be changed.

There was no glowing translucent light filling the room. No angels appeared in white robes. No heavenly choir songs rang out from heaven. There was only a hushed silence as I whispered, “Is it my heart that needs changing, Lord?” The pain suddenly vanished! I was left limp and exhausted.

Many of us have prayed, “Search my heart O’Lord.” He takes that seriously and in my case He used the evil of ISIS on a T.V. newscast to reveal the depth of hatred in my heart and not only to expose it and make me aware of its depth but to taste the vile bitterness of it. “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” I was hating the sinner as well as the sin.

We’ve all suffered pain of some sort. We all have areas of hurt. There are no pure hearts in humanity and He’s still working on mine. By His grace I am saved, not perfect.

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.”

Ps. 139:23

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Blessings to you.

 

 

 

 

Please pray for the Prime Minister of Israel whom God appointed

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Photo by Marc Israel Sellem/POOL/FLASH90
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his sons Yair and Avner at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is being accused of recently inciting its terrorist allies to attempt an assassination of Netanyahu’s sons.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard websites are openly calling for the assassination of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s children. Pictures have been published with targets over their faces, and a great deal of information about their lives has been posted online to help terrorists find them to carry out an attempt on these young lives.

Please join  in urgent prayer right now that this great evil will be stopped and that God will protect the Netanyahu children and all of the people of Israel from those who mean them harm. Pray that peace will come to the City of Peace and the land of promise. Pray that God will arise…

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The Jezebel Spirit – Discerning the Spirit of Control

dianarasmussen's avatarPrayers and Promises

Every now and again you receive a teaching that transforms you, that helps you see things as they really are.  I am sharing this, as it helped me know why I was continually hooking up with abusive men. Why was I the one attracted to the Jezebel Spirit?  Yep, I was an Ahab. I would do anything for love and attention.  I didn’t see it then, but once I was free and safe, I had to look at my behavior.  I didn’t want to keep repeating the same pattern.  I took a year off from dating – yep, for the first time in my life – I wasn’t attached to anyone.  It was the best thing I ever did.  I came to know God.  I learned to sit at the feet of Jesus and let Him heal the emptiness inside  my soul. Places and wounds that I had tried to…

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What size box do you have God in?

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Standing before a congregation in a small church in Wyoming I’m speaking about how the Lord brought me to this town. I hear a woman in the second row emphatically tell her neighbor, “God doesn’t do that!” This lady obviously has a particular size box that she has our Lord and Savior encased in.

So what size box do you have Him in? Is it that we have a particular size box for Him or that we are the ones that has placed our faith in Him in a box?

As a new Christian I found my box of faith was pretty small but the Lord was quick to begin tearing the sides off my box. He began by allowing me to hear His voice in an audible way. “My sheep will know My voice” John 10:27  At first I thought I was mentally ill because I kept hearing, “I love you. I am not like your earthy father.”

Then the visions began. I had a very close friend who was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. After having a bone marrow transplant that failed she was transported in a very glorious and beautiful way to heaven. By opening my spiritual eyes the Lord allowed me to see my friend jettison to heaven. A beautiful purple light is swirling toward heaven. It races heaven bound followed by a pure white light that’s beside, mingling with, and swirling with the purple light. I know instinctively it’s my friend and I shout, “You go girl! The angels can’t even keep up with you!” I feel her joy. The phone call minutes later from her husband confirmed what I just witnessed.

“Open my eyes so that I will observe amazing things from your instruction.” Ps. 119:18 The Lord has opened my spiritual eyes to many things. A man in our church tries to commit suicide and dies. The Lord shows me this man streaking towards heaven, then standing and talking to Jesus. The only words I hear is, “It isn’t your time.” He’s revived and lives. At the very moment the Lord showed me this was the very moment this man died. It was confirmed by my pastor who was there with the man. I was also allowed to see my beloved husband cross the finish line into glory. (See my post, “Reaching the Finish Line”)

Oh yes, the Lord is opening my box wide. He’s tearing down the preconceived ideas of who He is and what He can and will do. A trip to hell rips the sides off my box big time. (See my post, “Been there-Not going back!”)

Over the years the Lord has taught me much through His Word, through speaking to me, through visions, mental snap shots and experiencing the miraculous. I have seen angels encamped around people. I have seen demonic camps over various churches or cities. Part of my ministry is delivering people from the demonic attachments that the Lord shows me. I have experienced and witnessed His healing, both physical and emotional.

The Lord has no box, we do!

During my healing process from growing up in an abusive home He showed me how my grandfather had dedicated any and all children my father would have to Satan. He walked me through all the prayers of repentance, forgiveness, and severing of those generational ties. I have been in God’s Heavenly court where God deemed me not guilty. (See my post “Taking Care of Legalities-True story.”)

He has shown me how witchcraft, Satan worship, and the generational sins, like attitudes and unbelief, of my past generations has affected me in my life. Sexual abuse was big in my past generations. Children were to be used for whatever perverted pleasures came to the men’s minds. A vision of a small girl being raped in a field. Bloodied and shattered she is left to die as the men walk away laughing. Many times I was left bloody and crying as my Dad walked away.

God has no box! We must be open to whatever He wants to do within us, through us, or for us. If we remain contained with a fixed attitude of what God can do or will not do we have confined ourselves in a box not made of cardboard but of steel.

There are many gifts the Lord has and wants to share with us. We must be willing to be His vessel so that He can let any and all gifts flow through us for whatever occasion or purpose He has. The gifts are His and we are His vessels He uses to enable His purposes to be fulfilled. He isn’t limited, we are – by our boxes.

Allow Him to rip the box you are in wide open and watch what happens.

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Read more about how faith and obedience can rip those boxes apart. My true story reveals lessons well learned about God’s faithfulness.

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Published 2008

http://www.elahministries.com   http://www.facebook.com/elahministries

http://www.cybersupportgroup.org   http://www.suespen2paper.com

elah501c@bellsouth.net

Blessings to you.