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A Time

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And if he trespass against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.  Luke 17:4 KJV

A Time

Does one deserve this…?

Give pain…

Give hate…

Take forgiveness…

Not once, not twice…

Seventy times seven…

How is this…?

A cut so deep…

Salt poured into a wound…

Seventy times seven…

Still know what one did…

A vision in the mind…

It will not escape…

Seventy times seven…

Will a soul make it…?

To not, no reasonable choice…

God’s love is inside to help…

It is in all of his creations…

It must be activated…

To be used…

It is for you…

Seventy times seven…

 

© Janie Sanders and spiritualpulse.wordpress.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Janie Sanders and spiritualpulse.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Childhood Friends

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With the sun shining brightly above us, we would run around the yard, lie out in the grass, sit on the porch talking and giggling or share a snack. Jennifer and I became best friends overnight. She moved in next door to me and it was a though we knew each other already and were just reunited. We did not waste time getting to know each other we became comfortable with one another immediately.  We would get up early in the morning and play together all day and there was nothing we could not talk about together.

One afternoon we were sitting in the grass of the backyard we shared, talking about the subject of God. Jennifer said to me that I could ask God anything as long as I prayed in Jesus’s name. She then asked me if I wanted to pray and I said yes. We kneeled together, side by side, right there in the grass and prayed to God. She guided me along the way until the end making sure I got the words correct. I did not know it at the time, but that is when my faith first began to develop. From that point on I knew how to pray to God and whenever I needed to I would kneel and pray to him is Jesus’s name.

I was about 8 at the time and I knew of God, but knowledge of prayer coming from my friend was different. We were sharing something real. Our religious back grounds were different, but we spoke to the same God in the same way, and heard back from him because of the way we prayed.  I was not too young to pray or to begin a relationship with God. What Jennifer was brave enough to do for me allowed me to have the needed power to make it through my childhood, teen, and young adult years.

Learning how to pray allowed me to be resilient during the times life ran me over and left nothing, but tire marks and debris. I had plenty of tire marks and debris over the years, but prayer got me up each time, God removed the marks, and vacuumed the debris. I did not know why God was not preventing life from running me over then, but I still prayed. Without praying I would not have been resilient throughout my life. I would not be what I am today at this moment, without knowing that God could hear me and answer my request. I am grateful that I had a friend who knew what to share with me one sunny afternoon. It was more than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I got bread for life.

When friends share their life with you it is because they care about you and they want to celebrate life with you. They will help you when, and however they can. A real friend will give you the tools you need to live, grow, and succeed in your own way. They will not use you as someone to spread out over life’s puddles and walk on top of. Good friends can save your life without even knowing it. Look for and hold on to the very best friends that God places on your path not just a person with a BBF title.

Cease Not

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Pray without ceasing Thessalonians  5:17

Being able to speak to God and then hear his voice is a part of his greatness. Communication with God brings answers and needed help if our faith is working. To have a strong line of communication with God we must give him time throughout each day. The time should be personal and nothing should be allowed to interfere. As we spend more time with God his voice will become more distinct. We will not have to ask if it is him speaking we will know.

To be a sweet odor to God is pleasure, and to have our prayers answered is a blessing. When we hear God as he hears us, what he wants us to see becomes visible. If we seek God deeply and intimately we will be connected to him through a line that cannot be cut. When we become connected to that line our prayers will enable us to soar above and beyond life’s situations as we should.

You are free to be heard, go ahead and pray. He hears you as you meditate and your voice is not new to Him. The scent of your prayers is identified by his nostrils. Do not think that he has mistaken you with one of his other children. God knows all things, and no secrets exist with him, he is in your space always. Ask him what you desire, or give him your thanks and adoration, he is listening. Whatever your situation, his hand is still near you and your life. Every part of you is his concern and he will not turn away if your heart is true to him. Seek after the holiness that he has declared continuously, it is what pleases him and causes him to move for you.

Keep the eyes of your soul heavenward and God will relieve you when you are troubled. Let weakness, (doubt) pass you by. If your confidence is in him, pray like you know that it is, do not be the barricade that holds up your blessings that he has available. There is always potential for someone to be the weakest link in any group, but prayer is between you and God and in him there is no weakness. When communicating with God you have to check your prayer chain daily and keep it strong in its entirety. If not you will find a failing connection and your life will suffer as well as those who call on you for prayer. Your strength is in your faith and you only need a small amount.

Pray: My soul has its eyes heavenward. I know you are here listening, my faith is present. I trust you God, to relieve my soul. Deliver me from my troubles and forgive my sins, even my iniquities. Allow me to see myself as you remove the blinders and tune my ears in. Completion is my desire, but I know I must learn your ways so that I can make it. I will not be a weak link. I am free to be heard.

Check The Foundation Of Your Praise

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By him therefore let us offer sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.  Hebrews 13.15

It is rare to find someone who has not thanked another person for one reason or another. We all have shown our appreciation in some way, it may have been for a gift, a compliment, or for the help that we were offered. The gratitude that we exhibit to one another sometimes rolls right off from the tongue by habit. We are helped, we feel good, and we express our feelings. When we recognize that we express our appreciation in this way to people on any given day we will also realize that we are capable of releasing great thanks. Thanks that comes from deep within our hearts, a thanks that only God deserves. In time this thanks becomes your worship to him which is initiated by your increasing praise.

God deserves the kind of thanks that he creates in your heart. The thanks inside of you will not be the same as anyone else’s, it is personal. It has been developed inside your heart over time. Everything that you have experienced with God builds up your thanks and turns into praise before progressing into worship. Once you have a clear picture of what God is to you and how God has been great to you the need to praise him will become alive.

To know what God has done for you, you must take time to know and understand him, his miracles, and his son. You cannot worship God the way that he wants you to (in spirit and in truth) if you do not know who or why you worship (John 4:24). After accomplishing these things you will be able to give a meaningful praise to God because you will know who you are praising and why. When a meaningful praise exists inside of your heart you will be open to experience an extreme praise. Your heart holds the background for your extreme praise and you can releases it with a simple background check.

When you authorize a background check you allow your extreme praise to exit your heart. An extreme praise does not consist of any hold backs. As it builds you will notice your intense love for God and see your need to worship him. This worship happens when you are devoted.  Being devoted means your love for him is greater than your love for any other person, place, or object in your life.  It is your honor and fear for him. A true worship experience with God ignites feelings that no other can achieve for you. The experience will cause you to want to release more praise to him and it will give you another memory to store in your heart.

To praise and worship God is a part our purpose. When our praise flows freely from our beings we please God, and he in return blesses us with more of his greatness. We have thanks, praise, and worship inside of us, but what are they to have if we do not release them to our creator. In our thanks we find delight, strength and hope. Through praise we receive our needs and desires. During worship our love for God grows, our faith increases and we become aware of a rest that is surrounded by peace and joy. We need all three of these qualities to be active in our hearts. If we find that they are not, we must do whatever is needed to develop a background that will bring these qualities back to life.

Scripture Inspiration; Psalm 145

 

God Sees Opportunity

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Do not be limited to what others imagine you as. Everyone is free to have thoughts and their own opinions, but you do to have to live within the jurisdiction of anyone’s mind. It does not matter what gifts, skills and abilities you have or what you have done people will categorize you. If you try, and strike three times some will label you as out even if they have knowledge that God can do all things and change all things. People limit God so why would limits not be put on you.

There are some who will see that you are on your third strike and they smell failure and expect it to reign. God sees opportunity when others are drawing a blank. He sees that you do not give up when you are challenged and that you are not ashamed to start over when you fail. Others see your failure without knowing your struggle. They do not know that during your adventure you acquired new information for the future although you struck out. Many will not read your story as success they will only see your strike and what you have not accomplished.

God see the success. Each time you have failed God knew that there would be a greater opening in your heart, mind and soul for him to enter into. He knew that you were not out, but ready to come into something new. God knew that you were in no rush to get to the top because he hid the concept of growth in your heart for you to find. While others thought you were crumbling and were waiting for you to be swept away you were progressing. God was molding you and developing you. Now you have a strong resume for the job ahead of you.

Keep trying, keep moving, and keep your ears on God’s voice. Anyone can come along to attempt to break you while you are already broken. Let them waste their energy, their best efforts do not compare to God. There is no piece of you he cannot find and make whole again. God sees all of you while others are only there for some of your plays and innings. They blink, day dream, and focus on the imprint you left the last time you fell, and that sums up what they are able to imagine for you.

However, with God you are free, free to live in God’s vision and you are not limited to what anyone else believes to be your reality. Look at all that you have, and top it with God’s ability and he will show you what you can do with what he has given to you. Stand, shake off the excess, tuck in your blouse or straighten your tie and walk past every strike and false limitation ready to live through God’s eyes.

Scripture Inspiration; Psalm 56:1-13 KJV

The Connotation Elephant

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The dictionary is a tool that shows us how to pronounce words, and it will also offer ways to use words as nouns, adjectives or verbs, but we often have our own ways of processing words and getting them to mean what we want them to. Take the word forgive, it has a denotation, but we can give it our own connotation. In the dictionary forgive means to pardon, excuse or abandon the anger one has. The connotation of this word can come out quite differently.

What is a connotation? Well, it is the feeling you associate with a word and allow to be the meaning of the word for you. So if you look at the word forgive and think: peaceful living and a way to move forward, that is a connotation. It also means that you are more likely to forgive others for anything that they do to you without too much thought or hesitation. You know that doing so is better for you than holding on to resentment and anger. What if the connotation that comes to your mind is a little different, what if it goes like this: a feat of giving in, losing. That is exactly how I defined the word forgive, and when I tried to forgive others the denotation was never solidifying inside of me, my connotation was in the way.

It was this way for me way to long and I never realized how badly this was affecting me; I was being bruised over and over and did not see it. I was basically going rounds with myself, two of me in a boxing ring. The denotation I knew, and the connotation I lived. Time came for the referee to call the match, and there was only one capable to take my warring emotions on. His name is God. He caused me to land on the scripture that called my situation out clearly after I had one of my faux forgiveness episodes. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matthew 6:14-15 KJV

God had spoken! Not being able to forgive or live the denotation of forgive was not my real situation, the real situation was that I needed to realize that forgiveness from God is what was going to cause me to live in this life, because I was not really living, and for my soul’s eternal life. I also had to understand that I was not losing or giving up by offering a pardon to others because vengeance was never mines to have or lose, it was God’s.

Now that I recognize that connotations can turn words into what we desire and that the outcome can be good or bad I just have to ask, are you living the denotations, positive connotations, or the negative connotations for your life’s vocabulary? You don’t have to tell me just think about it.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2013

Do You Hear It?

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I was breathing, but it did not feel as though any air was moving through my nostrils or my mouth. I was bent over gasping. An invisible fist had knocked the wind completely out of my body. My stomach was touching my back. With my phone in hand my palms rested on the foot of my bed, my knees buckled with weakness like someone had given the back of my legs a push. The sound waves that came over my phone formed into words I was not ready to hear. “He shot her, he killed my mom”. Those words caused my sudden reaction.

I lost my sister to domestic violence a little more than two years ago and that was the scene in my home on that morning. Even now when I hear those words in my mind I remember as though it was this morning. That one sentence rocked my being and I thought I would not be able to stand as my body shook, but I did. I stood up after a long pause and found my beat, the rhythm I live by, the sound that allows me to resume my breathing through highs or lows and live daily.

At first I couldn’t cry, not even when I sat down alone and thought about her. I couldn’t force the tears out; they just wouldn’t come down my face. It wasn’t until the end of the funeral that I was able to release some tears and that was it. A month had passed before reality knocked on the door and I let it in, and that is when the unpredicted tears begin to flow. Life had already shaken me and now it was dropping the aftermath on me. She was not coming through my door for a visit, when my phone rang it was not going to be her, and if I called my sister she was not going to answer. It was real, and my life’s rhythm was steadily threatened as I became more aware of what would no longer be, but I had power within me to make it.

There was enough God given power inside of me to make me stand and listen to my own rhythm. The rhythm that caused me to breathe normally even tough other beats were being propelled onto my path waiting to carry me off. I listened and stepped to the sound I heard, I stepped my way out of the lowest low. Keeping my beat enabled me to keep my joy, my peace, and my mind. I reflected and thought how grateful I was that God had cured me from depression before this tragedy occurred; I needed every part of my life to be on an upbeat to make it.

Tragic occurrences will push us into the lowest lows that we can have, and leave us there struggling to get out of them and back to a low high or a high low. Being aware of your own beat can be the tool you need to get to that stable place. Moving through life with a rhythm that is steady can stabilize you when life has passed out its hardest hits and extreme moments that cause you to go too high or too low. If you know God you can identify your true self and the beat he has given to you. You will know how to keep your stride during every circumstance and live beyond existing.

I Need Another Fix…

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Another lie for the liar, another steal for the thief, another hit for the addict, another drink for the alcoholic, and another loan for the spender, all fixes. These are nothing but temporary satisfactions. A sensation comes before the need and if you have one of these conditions it is time to learn how to recognize the sensation when it is forming and use power against it.

If you are saved, or a Christian you may be in the habit of using the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ to get you through another situation, sin, or iniquity as though Jesus is a fix. This is not proper use of the love and power God has for us and has given to us through Christ. Jesus has come to reconcile us to God and free us not to be a fix, a temporary solution. For those who do not know Christ yet take note of the proper use of the benefit of being reconciled to God to use once you decide to welcome Christ into your heart and life.

Think about the last time you called on God, did you request a fix for the symptoms, or a cure for the condition. If you requested a fix and received it you got by for a while, and then had to come back for the same symptoms later. If you requested a cure and received it you no longer had to come to God for the same condition. Getting by is not a way to live, eventually the symptoms will overwhelm you and force you into state that you never desired to be in.

What would your life be like if you ask God to cure your financial problems instead of giving you a solution to get by for a few months? How good would you feel if you had real joy instead of a smile that hides the pain behind it? With a cure you could actually stop having those sexual desires and build a strong marriage with one person, walk past a bar without feeling your flesh tingle, sincerely congratulate someone else because you are no longer bitter or insecure. Without asking and expecting a fix you can live free and enjoy being you through a cure.

The next time you are communing with God study your heart and define if your request is a cure or a fix. If you have been consistently asking for a fix you need to discover why. The fix does feel good, but you will soon be back in the state of mind prior to the fix. You will never live as you are intended to with a “fix” lifestyle. It doesn’t work for the liar, the thief, the drug addict, alcoholic or the spender. It won’t work for you either, get the cure.

And in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight. Luke 7:21

Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. Luke 9:1

The Dust That Settles

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If you were to rub your fingers across a dusty shelf there will be evidence on your fingers that dust is in the atmosphere. Likewise, if you have been with God, seeking him and receiving him there will be evidence that you have been with him (Romans 8:11). There should be enough evidence covering you that someone else in your life should get a contact exposure to God.

The life of the people you encounter should be impacted in some way because you represent God. If you were one to stick your foot out to watch others fall over it, because of the dust of God covering you, you will no longer have your foot out. Now, due to change, when you see someone fall you will reach to the person with a firm intention of helping the person to his or her feet. To keep that state of transformation you must exercise a changed life and build on the new character you have taken on. You cannot be transformed and react the same way that you would have before the transformation. If you do you are living with a double mind, and you cannot serve both good and evil when you are covered with God’s spirit. (Luke 16:13, James 1:8)

Every day it is good to check for the dust, the residue that says “God is here”. Sin comes easy because we were born in it. We have practiced it and perfected it. It will take a push from the core of our beings to exercise living a transformed life. Any goal that you set in life has steps and a finish date. Growing as you are living a life reconciled to God will also take steps and goals to reach daily or weekly depending on your needs. Waking up with a phrase of being changed in the front of your mind (I am not the same person I was, I am becoming more of what God created me to be daily) can help you to recognize your change as you work on your goals (Romans 8:26). You will have good intentions in your mind as you awake and go about your day.

You are God’s representative, what are others saying about God’s Kingdom when you cross their paths. Are there high volumes of customer complaints or are they normal. Check to see if you are transferring God by contact. If you see that you are not, get in God’s atmosphere and get covered again.

What Is That Smell?

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Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren these things ought not so to be. James 3:10

There is power in the tongue that can bring about life or death and growth or decay. That power can cause healing and encouragement in one’s own life and that of others, or it will allow things such as: sickness, disease, depression, death, hatred, and stagnation to live freely.

We like our words because they can actually satisfy us as though we had a five course meal, but at whose expense. We should not fill like we have gained or been lifted up in some way if another person’s livelihood has been compressed. (Proverbs 26:28) When our mouths open and words exit or when we send a written message out we have the choice to decide what is formed.

Have you ever opened a trash can and the smell of perishing food and the mixture of everything else a trashcan holds hits you right in the face? This is the same fragrance ours words produce when we are not speaking life. We can stink, and God can smell us. If we were able to take in the scent as God can we would be more aware of the responses we have while communicating. Walking around smelling like the amount of life or death that is in our tongues would either cause a smile or sicken us. However, the reality is that the aroma is not actually there to us so we need to make an effort to be aware of the thoughts, actions, and reactions we have to all the information we process. It is not because we sometimes hear garbage with our ears. It is because we receive it with our minds that it becomes a part of us, and could possibly roll off our tongues as garbage for someone else to hear.

Don’t live on repeat if the message you have is deadly. Press shuffle and wait for something good to enter your thoughts then resume to play. With a strategy like this we can begin to overcome the thoughts in our minds that cause us to distribute such an awful scent. Taming the tongue will take practice and it may not be the easiest thing if negative words, lying, deceit, and gossiping have been instilled in us. We will also need to be committed to a new way of thinking and responding for the change to transpire.

Is putting the foot of your tongue on someone else’s life really worth the hole you leave in your own spirit? No it isn’t, that leaves two lives injured. Challenge yourself and practice saying good things to others. Before death can flow from the tongue it has to develop in the mind. Stop and think, and work to lift others in your speech instead of tearing them down. Remember only you hold the power over your own tongue.  Smell good today. 

A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is breach in the spirit. Proverbs 15:4