Jeanne Robertson | And the Rain Goes On...

A Friday Funny for YOU - on Saturday .....   Enjoy! 

A father’s blessing (2)

“May God give you of heaven’s dew and of earth’s richness—an abundance.”                                         Genesis 27:28 NIV

Let’s look at the next two ingredients of a father’s blessing: 

(1) The power of prayer. Here’s how Isaac, who was a farmer, prayed for his sons: “May God give you of heaven’s dew and earth’s richness—an abundance of grain and new wine.” Dad, have your children ever heard you praying for them to succeed in life?

Perhaps they’ve heard cutting and critical words like: “How could you be so stupid? Don’t you ever think? You’ll never amount to anything!” If so, apologize and ask their forgiveness. Then create opportunities for them to hear you talk to God about them by name; to hear you speak blessing over them. What a powerful thing is a father’s prayer of blessing over his family!

 (2) The vision of a glorious future. The Bible says, “When there’s no vision, the people get out of control” (Pr 29:18 CEB).

School counselors grieve over the lack of vision in their students. Many of today’s kids see nothing ahead for them but economic gloom, unemployment and hard times. They need somebody to believe in them; to assure them they can succeed and live happy lives; to know their best days are ahead. Isaac didn’t wait for his boys to devise their own vision for the future. No, he prayed for their future success, for their rise to prominence, and for respect with their family and society.

Dad, your kids need you to motivate them in the right direction.

"(clip) Judgement? Have You Ever Read The Bible - Francis Chan

As morality becomes more and more subjective, the concept of judgment becomes increasingly offensive. This means that the determination of what is right or wrong becomes located within the individual instead of an ultimate objective standard of right and wrong which is none other than God. Over time, the very concept of judgment diminishes and ushers a culture into moral chaos.

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Popular Christian author and speaker Francis Chan issues an urgent plea for us not to ignore God’s judgment. Chan asserts that in our modern culture no one really believes in judgment anymore—not even many Christians! 

The common mantra that is heard is that a loving God would not judge people.

The problem with this thinking is that we barely get out of page 2 of Scripture before we run right into God’s judgment. We read about God killing whole people groups in ways that would make anyone pause in sober reflection. 

As hard as this biblical reality may be, the answer is to not find the wrong in the Scripture but to find the wrong within our own human hearts.

Chan puts it this way: Whenever he disagrees with Scripture he assumes he is wrong.

Practically, this truth should serve as an important motivator for unity within the church. Yes, there are godly and ungodly ways to judge, and the church must discern with clarity and conviction when she displays God’s judgment, but what the church must NOT do is to be quiet about God’s judgment.

When God gets ready to use you...

Did You Ever Wonder Why Bad Things Happen to Good People? Here’s What the Bible Says

“If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?”                                                                                     (Judges 6:13).

Gideon asked the question thousands of years ago, and we have been asking it ever since. Haven’t we all asked that question secretly, if not out loud, at some point in suffering?

The Israelites were disheartened by the Midianites’ continual oppression. To many, like Gideon, these hardships didn’t make sense if God truly was with his people. They had heard the stories of God’s power, but since they had never seen it displayed, they doubted his presence. That’s why Gideon asked the angel of the Lord, almost sarcastically, “Where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us?” He followed his question with bleak despair, “But now the Lord has forsaken us” (Judges 6:13).

Looking at the circumstances, Gideon saw no evidence that God was there or that God cared.

Why Did This Happen?

For years I felt like Gideon. I wondered why hard things happened when a loving God was supposedly in control. When people told me that God loved me, I thought, If God loves me, then why did this happen to me?

As a polio survivor from infancy, I had multiple surgeries each year, living in and out of the hospital. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was convinced that a good God couldn’t love me and watch me suffer. So, I had concluded that God wasn’t good, didn’t exist, or didn’t care. If he was good and cared about me, then why had all that happened to me?

But when I was 16, God in his mercy answered that lifelong question through John 9. His answer was simple and direct: “that the works of God might be displayed” (John 9:3). And with that revelation, my world shifted.

One Little Word Fells Us

I took comfort in the truth that God was with me and could use my suffering to demonstrate his glory, but when new struggles surfaced, sometimes I would return to that familiar question: If the Lord is with me, then why did all this happen?

After my son died, I felt abandoned by God. If God loved me, why didn’t he spare Paul’s life? And after my husband left me, I would scream into the darkness, “God, if you love me, why are you letting this happen to me?”

Those questions must have delighted Satan. Satan turns truth into doubt with that little word: if. Satan’s temptation of Jesus began with the words “If you are the Son of God” (Matthew 4:3). Satan and Jesus both knew that Jesus was the Son of God. Everyone at Jesus’s baptism knew he was the Son of God (Matthew 3:17). Yet when Jesus was alone in the wilderness, Satan tempted him to doubt what he undeniably knew to be true.

The Lord Is with You

Satan tempts us in the same way. When our prayers seemingly go unanswered, Satan wants us to mistrust God and question his promises. Satan wants us to doubt God’s goodness and demand proof of his love, inciting us to ask, “If God loves me, then why am I suffering?” Or as Gideon asked, “If the Lord is with us, then why has this happened?”

If the Lord is with us? If God loves me? Those statements should never have an “if” before them. God’s presence and love are guaranteed to those in Christ. When Satan tempts us to question God’s character, we must stand firmly on the truth of Scripture.

In Christ we know that God is always with us. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4). Jesus says, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). He will never fail us or forsake us.

Results of His Love

Our Lord loves us extravagantly. God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3). Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9). In love, God sent his own Son to die for our sins. Nothing can separate us from his love.

All of Scripture assures us that God is with us and that he loves us. Many of us have known this truth from childhood: “Jesus loves me — this I know. For the Bible tells me so.” 

With reassurances everywhere, we must reframe our question, instead asking, “Because God loves me, then why did this happen?”

Because God loves me. This phrase changes everything. It reorients my heart. It turns me Godward. When I ground myself on the truth that God loves me, I view my situation through a new lens. Rather than questioning his love, I seek to align my thoughts and actions with his, knowing everything in my life is a result of his love and his presence, not his disfavor or absence.

Rather than insisting that God answer me, I can instead ask myself: What is God doing in my suffering? What can I learn from this trial?

Receiving Trials with Faith

With this new perspective, believing by faith that my trials are given out of love, I can deliberately look for the good that God is bringing from my suffering.

Sometimes the good is hard to see. And the little I do see can feel insignificant in comparison to the pain I’m enduring. It is then that I must remind myself that my afflictions are producing “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). And God has a purpose in each of them.

While we may not learn the specific purpose behind each struggle, we do know that God uses suffering to increase our dependence on him. To deepen our faith and draw us closer to him. To refine our character, to prepare us for ministry, to comfort others with the comfort we’ve received. And as we rejoice in him even through pain, God is glorified.

God doesn’t love your suffering. He loves you. He will walk with you through the darkest valleys and will never ever leave you.

When God brings trials into your life, don’t question his love or turn away. God is doing something breathtaking in you, for you, and through you. 

Because the Lord is with you, and because the Lord loves you, everything that happens to you is filled with divine purpose. Every trial you endure has passed through God’s loving hands.

 And one day, when your faith becomes sight, you will thank him for every difficulty.

Source:    By Vaneetha Rendall Risner 

Vaneetha Rendall Risner is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to Desiring God. She blogs at danceintherain.com, and is the author of the book “The Scars That Have Shaped Me: How God Meets Us in Suffering.”

A version of this article previously appeared on the Desiring God website under the headline, “If God Is With Me, Why Did This Happen?”

If You Want to Change, Start with Your Thinking

Change requires new thinking. In order to change, we must learn the truth and start making good choices, but we also must change the way we think.

The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act. If you want to change the way you act, start by changing the way you think. In addition, if you want to change the way you feel, you must start with the way you think.

For instance, you can say, “I need to love my spouse more,” but that isn’t going to work. You can’t fight your way into a feeling. You must change the way you think about your spouse, about your kids, about the rest of your family. That will change the way you feel, which will then change the way you act.

The Bible says, “Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes” (Ephesians 4:23 NLT).

The battle for sin, the battle to deal with those defects in your life that you don’t like, starts in your mind. If you want to change anything in your behavior or anything in your emotions, you start with your thoughts and your attitude.

The renewal of your mind is related to the word “repentance.” I know repentance is a dirty word for a lot of people. They think it means something bad, something they don’t really want to do, something painful. They think of a guy standing on a street corner with a sign that says, “Repent! The world’s about to end!”

Repentance is about more than changing your behavior. It is about changing your mind and learning to think differently. “Repent” simply means to make a mental U-turn.

You turn from guilt to forgiveness. You turn from frustration to freedom, from darkness to light, from hatred and bitterness to love.

You may also need to change the way you think about God. He’s not mad at you; he’s mad about you! You’re deeply flawed, but you’re deeply loved.

Start with your mind, and change the way you think about your relationships, the economy, the world, and your past, present, and future. Changing the way you think will then affect your emotions and your behavior.

Source: 

First appeared HERE

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.                                                                             Matthew 5:7

As we in humility recognize our “poverty of spirit,” God in His mercy forgives and equips us. Having received mercy, we are expected to show it to others.

The biblical term merciful is related to the word for empathy, which means the ability to get right inside another person’s skin until we see things with his eyes, think things with his mind and feel things with his feelings. This is what Jesus did for us in His incarnation. 

Thus:

Blessed are those who empathize with others until they are able to see with the eyes of others, think with their thoughts and feel with their feelings. The one who does this will find others do the same for him or her and will know that God did this for them in Christ Jesus.

How do we see our non-Christian friends? Can we see Muslims, for example, as real people groping in the semi-darkness, under the mere glimmer of light that a crescent moon provides, thinking that is all the light there is?

As we see them, mercy would be an appropriate word to describe our feeling and attitude as well as actions toward them. Just as we would go to the aid of a blind man heading in the wrong direction, so mercy should similarly drive us to go after them and show those who are willing to listen, the way to more complete light.

If we are secure in the knowledge that Christ is the Sun of Righteousness, then we do not need to prove anything but patiently and gently show others the way.

A relatively young man decided to work for the Lord in China. His father was not a Christian and very strongly opposed him. The son decided to attend a series of Christian meetings in one of the areas where he was serving. His father opposed so strongly that they quarreled before he left for the meetings. Then the son suddenly died while he was at the meetings.

The Christians there prayed and showed much concern. They knew that the news of the death would be hard for the father, so they asked a doctor to be there just in case the father needed him. When the father arrived and saw the love of the Christians, he gave his life to the Lord.

RESPONSE: Today I will see others as Jesus sees them and I will empathize with them as though in their skin.

PRAYER: Lord, help grow closer to You so that I will act like You, forgiving others and being sympathetic.