Health Benefits to Coffee

If everyone drank a cup of coffee every morning there would be no more need for laxatives or anti-depressant pills yay! And probably no more need for sleeping pills too, because coffee makes you clean more than you may have otherwise, and then you sleep much better yay! :) Coffee and Jesus is the solution to all problems lol. Except for tooth health, but the trick there is to brush your teeth right after the coffee. :) May God bless you all!

Confessing Sins and Needing Prayer

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed." James 5:16

I would like to be healed so I thought I would confess two things here.  It is a bit easier to do this kind of confession then to people I talk to all the time. 

Two things that I will try my best to not do for a week or longer is self pleasure, for those who are older you know what that is, and looking at things to buy on Amazon.  I actually consider both to be equally bad, one is lust and one is greed.  I suppose then that this blog might appeal to men and women, because usually men struggle with self-pleasure and women struggle with greed and shopping. 

I wasn't sure about writing about those on here but I felt God said it could be powerful.  I know lots of people struggle with self-pleasure but never talk about it, because it seems to shameful to talk about.  I don't look at things like some people do, but I still feel that it is wrong.

When I shared with a friend about it and if she thought it was a sin if I just thought about my husband she said, "Well I think it can open a door to Satan to attack you."  Which is very true. 

I suppose I struggle with these two things because they were the sins of my parents.  My dad was a sex addict.  He molested me when I was a little kid for a long time.  I don't have too many memories of that, but he is now in prison for molesting other kids.  I praise God for that, not out of revenge, but so he can't molest other kids for a time.  Please pray for the restoration of his mind though.  His psych evaluation was that he was "highly intelligent but with a skewed sense of reality."  That skewed sense was he literally thought it was a dad's job to teach his daughter about everything, including sexuality.  Quite strange for sure.  The strangest thing was that on the outside he looked like a stellar Christian, which I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around.  He would be in that group I guess where people say Lord to Jesus in heaven and he says I never knew you.  Unless he really and truly gets saved, which I know is still possible and I do hope for that.  May God save you father, wherever you are, and wash your mind until it is as white a snow.  Amen. :) 

And then my mom has always struggled with shopping.  She has always had countless bags that she needed to return from shopping, kind of a binge and purge cycle that she had for a long time.  So now I struggle with spending more than I should when under more stress. 

We all have our copping mechanisms, and those have always been my two.  My healthy two coping mechanisms though are writing like this and riding my bike or walking.  So hopefully I can do more of those from now on and not slip.

The ironic thing about both is that God seems to have chastened me as a warning maybe to stop both.  I am developing painful arthritis in my fingers, from holding my phone looking at Amazon so much and the other thing.  But the Lord disciplines those he loves so that we will repent and turn the other way, and I know that's what he is doing with me. 

I also feel more of a need to write more because who knows how bad how soon the arthritis will get and I won't be able to type.  But pray for a miracle on that for me please and I will too. 

May God bless you all! 

On Prayer and God

"Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." Mt. 5:16

I had a great day yesterday!  I ate a salad for lunch, which is a rare thing for me, read three chapters in the Bible, went for three walks and then prayed 4 hours last night.  Of course the praying for 4 hours was only because I couldn't sleep.  :)

I used to hear of people praying 4 hours and thought that would be so hard, but when we are connected to the vine of Jesus things like that just come naturally, just like a tree naturally growing fruit.  It doesn't strain to produce fruit, it just does, if it gets enough water and sunlight.  Praying a long time is as natural as if you were to call your mom or best friend and talk for 4 hours. 

I had this vision or image while I was praying of the world, like you might see in a movie, and then God sees a chat window come up over a state and maybe he says, "Woohoo a live one!  Someone wants to chat with me at 3am!"  lol

We always think of God as being austere and anti-social, but he must have wanted a ton of people to talk to him since he created billions of people.  And if there are other planets then trillions and trillions of people.  So he must really enjoy talking to us and want to talk to us. :)

Although I realized last night, I suppose most of the world never talks to God.  Very sad.  Either because they don't have time or they are talking to the wrong God. :(

But I think God gets excited when we talk to him.  He is our father and we are his children.  I love it when my two girls are awake and I can hang out with them, and when they are sleeping I am sad and miss them.  Maybe it's the same with God.  Maybe when we don't talk to him much he is sad.  We are made in his image, so things that we feel maybe God feels. 

So go talk to God.  When you can't sleep or anytime.  Tell him all about your day and things you are worried about etc.  Ask him for things. 

"If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" Mt. 7:11

May God bless you all!

On Loosing Faith vs. A Fear of God

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I've written a blog.  Sorry to any of you who enjoy reading what I write. :) 

I am working on reading all the red letters of the Bible, the things Jesus said.  I actually have never done that before, just read through all the words of Jesus.  I am noticing some things that I thought I would write about.

There are some seeming contradictions in the Bible.  I have looked into this before with the once saved always saved notion vs. can salvation be lost.  There is Ephesians 1:13 that says "you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise."  It would be good though to know what the original
Greek word was and if "sealed" is the best word for that. 

But then you have phrases Paul uses of some people in the early church "making shipwreck of the faith" or being "fallen from grace" or some "wandered from faith" due to a love of money.  Those all seem to say someone can walk away from the faith and so loose their salvation.  And now reading in Matthew 5:13 Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."  How can we as Christians loose our saltiness?  Does that mean becoming unsaved because maybe we become lukewarm because maybe we start to love money more than God?  Then 1 Tim. 6:10 could come true still today, "Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."

So does being sealed by the Holy Spirit contradict that some can wander from the faith?  Not if the issue is, was the person ever saved to begin with.  As Jesus said, "Many will say to me on that day Lord....But I will reply 'turn away from me for I Never knew you."  So many will think and now think they were/are in the faith but truly were/are not. 

The key is that If we remain faithful to God then we can know we are in the faith and if we do not we never were?  That is a mystery somewhat about the Bible and faith.  The point of those verses though is to remind us to not get too arrogant and lazy.  Romans 11:19-21 says, "You will say then, 'Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.' ²⁰ Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. ²¹ For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either."  Does that mean that if we loose our faith God will cut us off?  I think so.  Is that meant to strike fear into us?  Well Paul does say "tremble" and there is the verse, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."  Some fear is healthy because it keeps us from doing things like running in front of cars and therefore dying.  The same could be said for our faith, a FEAR OF SIN is probably very important so that we won't make shipwreck of our faith.  THE PROBLEM IN THE CHURCH TODAY IS THAT WE HAVE A SERIOUS LACK OF FEAR REGARDING SIN.  If we do not fear sin we won't think too much about committing sin.  But what did Jesus say?  Mt. 5: 28-30, "If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. ³⁰ And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."  Does this also apply to the Christian?  It would seem so.  We don't want to get into extreme legalism, but we do need to have this much of a fear of sin.  If salt looses it's saltiness?  Then what?  It will be trampled on, which is a nice way of Jesus referring to hell, unfortunately. 

In college reading the Bible a lot I noticed all the "If's" in the Bible.  There are verses like, If you continue in faith you will be saved.  But what if we don't?  The story of the prodigal son I think represents a Christian who walks away from the faith and goes back into the world, fulfilling the lusts of the eyes and flesh.  What if that person dies when they were away from the faith?  Would they go to heaven or hell?  Most likely hell.  It is a harsh reality but it is good to tell ourselves the truth on this or we will get too comfortable.  We will think we can get away with murder as a Christians but what did Paul say, "God will not be mocked, a man reaps what he sows."  "If we sow to the flesh we WILL reap destruction."  Even as a Christian?  Yes, even as a Christian.

How can we loose our faith or reap destruction?  One example is what Paul says, when we start to love money more than God, when we put our faith in money more than God.  That is why Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven."  Why?  Because the more rich we are, the more our focus can be on money; what to do with it, how to spend it etc. and not on God.  But our thoughts and focus should always be on God.  I am not very good with this myself.  Lately my focus has been too much on money and things I want to buy and that might be why I have been writing less.  Pray for me on that please. :)  Thank you :)

So the take away on all this is don't worry too much to the point of depression, but don't get lazy in your faith either and how you view sin.  Sin is serious.  We need to not sin as much as possible and it is important to have a fear of sin and it's consequences.  Children fearing their parent's anger causes them to do the right thing.  It is the same with God.  If we have a healthy fear of God's anger and his hatred for sin, we will live better lives and so ensure our salvation.  When we loose that fear, that is when we are in trouble. "The fear of the Lord (and what God says about sin) is the beginning of wisdom."  Be wise, maintain a healthy fear/respect for God and a hatred for sin.  

May God bless you all! :)