For This is God's Will for You

I'm always amused at myself when I read a scripture that I've all ready highlighted, marked, dated and made a note about and look at it as if it was the very first time I read the words. Certainly I am the only person in the world that happens to!

So many times we all ask ourselves, "What is God's will for me?", "How do I know what to do?", "Who can I call or text or email or tweet that will have a word for me from God?"

Today in my reading I stumbled on what I see as a very clear instructional for putting ourselves in line with God's will. It's actually pretty simple, and very clear, no need for a Doctorate in Theology to understand what Paul's saying in these few lines. In fact, in my Bible the subtitle for the text is Final Instructions, the editor wanted to make sure the reader fully understood the importance of these words.

Are you curious? Ready to be astounded at my Spirituality? Hold onto your hats and prepare to be amazed!!

Here's the list:

1 Respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord (Pastors, Teachers, etc.) and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work.

2 Live in peace with each other

3 Warn those who are idle

4 Encourage the timid

5 Help the weak

6 Be patient with everyone

7 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong

8 Always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else

9 Be joyful always

10 Pray continually

11 Give thanks in all circumstances

For this is God's WILL for you in Christ Jesus

Also

Do not put out the Spirit's fire

Do not treat prophecies with contempt

Test everything

Hold on to the good

Avoid every kind of evil

And then at the end of the Final Instructions, Paul sends out a blessing to the reader.

May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The One who calls you is faithful and He will do it! 1st Thessalonians 5:12-24

That's better than any Irish Blessing I've ever heard!!

We always think we have to do do do, and there it is, God will Sanctify us, He will do it. There's a total of 16 things listed here for us to do and knowing we can't do it without Him, Paul tells us the One who calls us will do it, He will sanctify us.

To me that's so freeing, realizing my to do list has been given, and as long as I hide myself under the Rock that is higher that I, He will do it. He will lead and guide me and put in me the fire of the Spirit to direct my path.

What an awesome God we serve. He gives us our orders and knowing we can't, on our own, accomplish the list, He let's us step into Him and He does it. That's His will for us, to be Inside Him resting, waiting, standing, praising, loving, listening, the list goes on and on.

Bottom line, crawl up in His lap, settle down in His arms and let Him bring about His will for you. He will do it!

Blessings,

Wendy

Princess, Daughter of the King of Kings

Mother of Princesses and Princes

Grandmother of Royalty

Who's Dancing in Your Head?

So many times I cry out to God in my place of fear, suffering, humiliation, etc. needing to make sure He sees what I'm going through.

I need to make sure He has a full understanding of my situation, just in case He was off somewhere having coffee with Abraham, Moses and the gang and missed what's going on.

So many times I feel like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth. On one side I'm thinking O, pity me, Lord look at me, see what I'm going through. Out of the other side, I'm saying God, You are well able.

Acting like the petulant child I allow myself the luxury of having a come apart, whining to the Most High God about my situation, while the other side of my head it telling me He's all ready got it taken care of for me.

Oh please someone, tell me I'm not the only one that has two decidedly different visions of their situation doing a version of Dancing with the Stars inside their head!

Much has and can be said on this dance competition. Coming before God in prayer for help is a topic greater Christians than me have written about, but I'd like to share my take on this.

Psalm 100

1. Shout for joy to the Lord

2. Worship the Lord with gladness

3. Come before Him with joyful songs

4. Know that the Lord is God, He made us, and we are His.

5. Enter His gates with Thanksgiving.

6. Enter His courts with Praise.

7. Give thanks to Him, Praise His Name.

Do this because the Lord is good, His love endures forever, and His faithfulness continues through all Generations because of His Covenant with His people.

I think once we've gone through these steps the things that are messing with us will grow strangely dim and His presence will move the mountains far from us.

We with our finite minds will be able to put our situation in the proper perspective, that would be God's perspective not ours.

Proper protocol goes a long way in approaching the King, and I think approaching our King, Father with praise and worship will get us a lot closer to His ear than our incessant whining about our situation.

Nothing surprises Him, and he all ready knows exactly what's going on. He doesn't take coffee breaks, He's ever present, always watching, waiting for us to approach Him with thanksgiving.

When we get so full of thanksgiving we bubble over, the dance competition will be over and God will be the winner!

Blessings,

Princess, Daughter of the King of Kings

Mother of Princesses and Princes

Grandmother of Royalty

Who is your Daddy?

Come near to God and He will come near to you. James 4:8

Sounds simple enough. So why do we always think we have to have an action plan and a scheme or a list of things we have to do or become?

In March the unemployment office celebrated my one year of unemployment by stopping my benefits!

Previously I had received a letter stating I was approved for a 13 week extension. Now, me being me, I assumed that meant my benefits would be automatically extended 13 weeks since the letter didn't have any fine print telling me otherwise.

On the day my check is normally in my bank account I checked my account and discovered a negative $400 balance. I quickly realized something was wrong, duh!! I must have misunderstood what was going on. After a very quick call to unemployment I was told my benefits had come to an end regardless of what the letter had said and I needed to reapply.

The nice lady on the phone took my info. and submitted my claim again assuring me I was all ready approved for more weeks, but since everything was first come first serve my application was at the bottom of a very large pile to be reviewed, and she had no idea how long it would take to get my checks started again. Reassuring me I would get all the back weeks I missed didn't make me feel better considering the current state of my checking account and the fact that in 2 weeks my rent was going to be due.

Unlike how I used to react to this type of situation, I just said," OK, God this isn't a surprise to you so what do you have planned?"

After calling the bank and a few other places I had done all I could do, the rest was up to God.

I was nudged by the Holy Spirit to Fast. I pulled out my book, "Fasting" by Jentezen Franklin, grabbed my Daniel Fast information from it's folder and started to prepare myself. I knew I was to fast from Monday-Sat before Easter.

On Monday I claimed my unemployment weeks as instructed by the nice lady on the phone, knowing it would probably be at least 6 weeks till I started getting my checks again, that's what I was told the wait was.

Knowing there was no other immediate source of income for me I reminded God He was my provider and rent was coming due, just in case He forgot.

I proceeded with my fast Monday and Tuesday knowing God had a plan, trusting Him to fulfill His plan. I was feeling very much like a little girl trusting her Daddy was going to provide somehow. I didn't know how and I really didn't care how I just knew He was up to something.

Wednesday came and I thought I'd take a peek at my negative balanced bank account just for kicks. I almost fell off my chair when rather than a negative balance I was back in the black!!

Not only did God move on the State of Florida to get me to the top of that long list, but the first week that's normally held back was in there too!!

What could I do but praise and thank Him! There was some serious happy dancing going on in my home that morning!!!

Along with all that, as if that wasn't enough, God, my Daddy, decided to bless me with some groceries just to put a little icing on the cake.

He is such a good Dad, if we would just let Him what He wants to be to us. He doesn't need our instructions, our lists, our plans. All He needs is for us, His beloved Children to draw close to Him.

If we take one tiny, feeble, infant step toward Him, the creator of the Universe runs to us to fill in the pot holes, level the mountains, fill up our bank accounts and throw in a few groceries for good measure!

How can we not love and praise Him? How can we not trust Him to take care of us? He has chosen to have a loving family relationship with us, He's not going to hurt us, He wants to be our Daddy.

Even if there was no loving family relationship in our life to draw on for an example, even if there wasn't a Daddy figure in our childhood, He wants to fill in that loss. He wants to be your Daddy. He will never leave us or forsake us and He's not a man that he would lie to us. You can trust Him when maybe your earthly father wasn't so trustworthy or loving.

Having what the world would call crazy faith in God is not politically correct or socially acceptable, but I'll continue strive to raise my level of crazy faith in my Father.

In the end, He's the only one who will take care of His own by lavishing us with all the blessings He has stored up for us.

He's waiting on us to take that step toward Him in love and obedience so He can start overwhelming us with His love, comfort, healing, and provision.

Let Him be your Daddy.

Blessings,

Princess, Daughter of the King of Kings

Mother of Princesses and Princes

Grandmother of Royalty