5 Minutes with Jesus 10/25/12

Dear Jesus,

I am really enjoying spending this time with You in writing and, also, posting it so that others may be able to gain something from it, or be inspired to spend at least 5 minutes a day with you. Thank You for the idea and for always being available. Thank You also for my life and all the blessings contained within it. I am so grateful for true, long-lasting friendships and for my wonderful family relationships. I don't believe I could have asked for a better family. I am so thankful that we all get along and, for the most part, don't hold onto bitterness, anger, and unforgiveness. Lord, please help me to do a good job of passing those traits onto my children.
You know I am having some struggles right now when it comes to school and I am wondering exactly what path I should take. I will keep holding onto Phillipians 4:13 (I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.). I know I can succeed. I wanted to give up, but I think it's just out of fear of failure/fear of losing financial aid and not being able to pay the difference. My husband just recently reminded me of a pastor he didn't even know prophesying to him to never make decisions based on finances. We also recently received a prophecy saying that God will take care of our financial needs even for five generations. Therefore, I must quit worrying, quit fretting about money. I will step out on faith and accomplish what You want me to accomplish and continue to believe You to meet my needs. Thank YOU. In Your Name, Amen.

5 Minutes With Jesus 10/24/12

Dear Jesus,

     Thank You again, for another beautiful day. I love being able to see the fall colors and I love the fact that You usually give us a little burst of summer right before it turns cold for the next 6 months. Thank You for the gift of sight. It truly is a gift. There are many people and animals who are unable to see the splendor of the Earth, but I am thankful that I can. I am thankful for my husband and my children. Today I am thinking about the many things that I have been blessed with that so many others don't have. One of my Facebook friends posted about being lonely and how that was out of character for them. I felt so bad because that is out of character for that particular person and many people seem to think that person is okay with being alone because they seem to always be so positive. However, it is a reminder that it is hard to be alone sometimes. You created us to want to fellowship with You and with others so it is actually unnatural for humans to live completely alone. This explains why the punishment of solitary confinement is so hard on prisoners. Imagine, in such a gray, dreary, walled in place, full of hatred - even self-hatred, it is not a relief to be away from people in this situation. It is a punishment. We all need somebody. Not just for sex, but just to sit next to sometimes. Somebody to hear moving around in the other room, reminding us that we are not in this big house, or this little apartment, by ourselves. We need to know that we are not forgotten.
     Lord, please bless my friend and help them to know that You are always present. You will be their comfort. I pray that they will seek You first and that You, in turn, will send them the physical presence that they are longing for. (Mk 10:28-31) In Your Name, amen.

Five Minutes With Jesus

Dear Jesus,

     Thank you for the blessing of another day. I think of the young people, my age, who have died recently and imagine the thought of not spending one more day here on Earth. I know that one day in your courts is better than 1000 elsewhere, but I also feel there is much unfinished work for me to do here. I feel that if today was my last day, I would have let You down. Therefore, I am thankful that I get another chance to honor you. Lord, sometimes it is hard for me to honor You everyday. Not that I don’t reverence You, but I believe that honoring You would consist of some outward act. Something that shows someone else a little bit of Your love. Maybe I’m actually thinking of a different word if I need to have an outward showing. Anyway, even if I touch somebody in person, or through the Internet, I want to be sure that I’m leaving a little piece of You behind. I think that is mandatory for me to do each day, so I will be working on that.

     As far as finishing my work here, I don’t feel that I am 100% sure about my actual purpose in life – the purpose You have for me, but I think I have some clues as to the direction I should be going in. I think that You put a teaching spirit in me and I've realized that since I was a child so I believe that whatever my ultimate goal in life is, You would definitely have me be a teacher of some sort. I’m not absolutely sure if that means a school teacher, a Sunday School teacher, just continuing to teach bible studies, or something entirely different. I guess the next step is to work toward that end and see what develops.

Thank You for this time, thank You for listening, thank You for allowing me to speak to you. I love You.

In Your Name, amen. J

Bumps along the road

Judges 7:2 – The Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel boast themselves against Me, saying, My own hand has delivered me.”


My Christian Journey has hit some bumpy roads these last few days. I believe the primary defining characteristic of being a Christian is to love God and if you love God, you must love His children. It’s so easy to love someone who is good to you, someone who shows you love. For me, it’s even easy to love a stranger, especially one who has a need, or a sad story. The most searingly difficult part is loving the way Jesus loved. Jesus prayed for His enemies. Jesus asked God to forgive the ones hammering nails into his hands, the ones pushing thorns into his head. I and my family are coming up against a person who is totally unreasonable and selfish. This person does not care anything about my children, they don’t even care about their own child’s feelings/relationships/wishes. This person cares only about their own feelings and about enacting revenge on someone who they feel hurt them more than a decade ago.

I am a Christian, I know I am supposed to love everyone, but 2 days ago, if I would have seen the aforementioned person there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would have …. (edited out due to legal reasons) I will say that it would not have been good for that particular person. At that moment, I had so much hatred, I was asking God to curse them and another person involved in this issue. Eventually I calmed down and asked for forgiveness. All I could think about was Jesus. I thought about how his pain, hurt, betrayal had to have been 1000 times greater than mine yet, he still forgave them, he still loved them.

Have you been brokenhearted before? I mean truly brokenhearted where you couldn’t imagine the next day, you couldn’t fathom your body being able to rise back up if you went to sleep that night, a pain so deep you thought your body would shut down on its own. I’ve felt that way a couple times, mostly as a teenager, and I never would have thought this particular situation would bring me back there – yet here I am.

So, as I attempted to cope with the knife twisting through my heart over and over, I thought about how much more Jesus didn’t deserve to suffer the way he did and how much harder it was for him. I just kept asking Him to help me. I finally reached the point where I was able to pray for the salvation of the hateful person I’ve been dealing with. I wrote out my pain and finally felt some peace. I came to the realization that God still has me – he still is holding me in His hand and still cares for me and loves me more than I could imagine. He is not letting me and my family go through this for nothing.

This brings me back to my chosen verse, Judges 7:2. We actually recently studied this chapter in Sunday school so it obviously came at the right time. In Judges 6 & 7, God is giving the Israelites a huge victory over their enemies, but He is doing it in such a way that will show everyone that the victory was only possible because of God. I believe we have suffered a setback now, but that in the end, everyone who knows of our situation will be able to look at it and realize that we won in the end ONLY because God was on our side. Either He will cause this other person to completely change, or they will receive a crushing defeat.

I am on my way to loving them. I am praying for them. I haven’t completely arrived yet, but I am on the way and I do believe I will get there. It’s funny because my husband is staying positive and he is not showing much pain even though I know he is probably more deeply hurt than I am, but he told me that if he didn’t get anything else out of this setback, he realized how much I am truly on his side. Of course he knew that I loved him, but going through this has brought us closer and shown him another level of my love for him and that’s something you can’t put a price on. I almost want to thank that person who put us through all of this for that reason alone. :-) I’m sure they were hoping that this situation would put us through financial stress, causing us to argue and be resentful, but it’s done the opposite. We have grown closer and look out for each other even more. Thank You, Lord, for using my enemies to strengthen my marriage! LOL (The sound of that LOL was the sound of me getting the last laugh! LOL again!)

How did I get where I am today?

I grew up in an A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) church where my grandfather was the pastor. I remember the services being very reserved and quiet. There were no fast, clapping songs and the rare "Amen" during a sermon. In 1989 we got a new, younger pastor and things gradually started changing. Now, almost 20 years later, people sometimes even shout during the sermons! LOL The choir almost always sings a fast song or two. I'm not saying it was bad the other way. I LOVED my grandfather's sermons and the atmosphere was pretty relaxing. However, change is inevitable and not always a bad thing.
During my teenage years, my mom went through stages of telling me I could decide if I wanted to go to church to her forcing me to go whenever she was going. When I got to college, things completely changed. I met a girl who had grown up in a Pentecostal church. They were so strict that she had never worn pants in public! At her urging, I eventually went to a campus bible study and became hooked. I loved all the new things I was learning and even decided to get baptized. That's when things started changing.
We were taught about being baptized and receiving the Holy Ghost as referenced in the book of Acts (1:5, 2:4). I understood all of that. I had been "sprinkle" baptized as a child, but never submerged. I decided it was time for me to get the full baptism and I expected to receive the Holy Ghost afterward and start speaking in tongues. Unfortunately, this didn't happen. The people from bible study and the church prayed with me and I kept trying, but I was unable to speak in tongues after a couple of hours. I decided it would come later and left it at that. Unfortunately, it seemed like no one else did. The next thing I knew, I would go somewhere on campus and people I didn't even recognize would come up to me and ask, "Did you get the Holy Ghost yet?" At first it was just a little weird, but then it just started getting ridiculous. It was happening everyday! One guy even looked up my phone number in the campus directory and started calling me about it on a regular basis! I felt harrassed. It got to the point where I finally decided to just stop going to bible study and stay away from the people who were associated with the group. I completely backslid. I didn't want to go near a church for awhile, or hear any type of Christian talk. I did read my Bible occasionally, but I didn't practice much of what was in it. I was completely turned off from religion, but I never stopped believing in God and Jesus.
Fast forward a couple of years later. At this point, I was a single mother. I did want my child being raised in the church so either I or my mother would take him to her church most Sundays. My best friend told me about a revival at a large church in our city. I was at a point where I was unsatisfied with the way I was living my life. I realized I needed to drastically improve my relationship with God so the timing was perfect. I went to the revival that summer night (I believe it was either a Wednesday or a Friday) and forever changed my life. At that point, I decided I was going to start making positive changes and be a Christian.
This did not mean I was going to be a "saint" overnight. I still had many issues, but I decided that I was going to continue on the path from then on.

To be continued...