Soul Sister Time

Recent days have revealed the worst in people on social media.  My Facebook feed that was once filled with cute babies and fun vacations pictures has become a venue for crude debate and accusation. I have found myself amazed at the comments from people I admire and people I know in a different setting to be level-headed and kind as they share their views about the political changes in America.  If an alien were reporting back to his planet about what how people with different opinions treated one another, he would have an unfavorable report to make for sure.  The culture of the United States has moved far away from the instructions God gives us in His word about how to live.  Even our churches are yielding to the culture and slipping from the orthodox teaching of the Bible handed down to us from the Apostles.  Rather than calling Christians out of a former way of life and live a life transformed by the Holy Spirit inside of you, the church is ignoring t...

Jesus came to save us from sin and death and so much more.  William of Saint Thierry wrote:  For us to serve you is nothing else but to be saved by you .  When I read it, I realized how true this statement is in my life.  My salvation is not fully experienced here on earth unless I am loving and serving God.  When I serve Him, I am being saved from my own inclinations.  Serving God saves me in a deeper way. This definitely happens on every mission trip I have ever experienced.  The divine economy is always played out.  I come with my affluence and knowledge of Scripture to poor souls who need what I bring.  It is only in bringing what I think I have that I realize that it is nothing compared to what they have to give to me.  And they don’t stop giving.  When I put it in proportion to my capabilities, it is sobering. God saves me from wasted time when I am caught up in obsessive thoughts that produce anger, worry or selfishnes...

              As Christians we need to remember that the One we can trust is always our good God.  He alone cares for us.  He alone provides for us in a worn and weary land.  Why is it so hard for us to stay in touch with this truth we all know?               We live a world that is distant from the very presence of God.  When God created the world, He created it in a way that His presence would be a daily highlight of our lives.  In Genesis 1-2 we understand how not only was the world perfectly suited to give Adam and Eve everything they needed physically in the garden God planted but it also gave them everything they needed to have purpose and meaning.  The meaning of life increased as they cultivated the garden and enjoyed the pleasures of the world. They had everything they needed in a perfect relationship where their di...

               A mother’s love is the closest taste of God’s love for us.  I’ve always known this, but I have never experienced it as poignantly as I did last weekend when I visited my son who is incarcerated in a Texas state prison during A Day with Mom provided by a very special ministry.  I attended because it was a chance for my son to have real-world pizza, and he did not want to miss this rare occasion to escape the drudgery of a normal Saturday.  I could not let him down even though I had a wicked strep throat and was not up to driving the 2.5 hours, waiting for the 2 hours between my arrival, processing, and actually being reunited with my son, a 5.5 hour visit and the trip home.  The good thing was that he felt very tired too and so we were a pair just enjoying a chance to be in one another’s presence for that amount of time.  As one of the newest on the unit, one man in white tol...

            Everyone should have the chance to stand before a judge and feel completely condemned.  You become powerless to defend yourself because some facts are true and others are not.  In Revelation 12:10 we learn: Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down .  This fact has never brought more hope to my soul!             I have had a taste of what I will feel when I stand before the ONE TRUE JUDGE and I am so grateful that the accuser has been hurled down on that day because I have accepted His Son as my defender.  The accuser will have many true facts to choose from when he accuses me.  The truths that I fear most are the words I have spoken.  The most frequent conscio...

            In my previous Tea Time for Your Soul, I told how my word for 2015 was miracle and about the miracle that stood out among the rest was my marriage on the last day of the year.  Many wrote back and suggested that Joy might be my word for 2016!  I am sure the joy I experience in the overflow of God’s generous miracles is evident.             The word our Sweet Father granted to me for this year is prayer !  It is a joy to pray.  Psalm 16:11 says: You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand .  There is much joy in the presence of the Lord and there is much extravagance also.             I’m writing this week’s Tea Time from the balcony of my honeymoon on an island paradise viewing a cloud covered volcano...

            Have you ever experienced holy jealousy?  I know you know what unholy jealousy feels like.  We have all had that tinge of jealousy, especially towards someone close to us who seems to always get what we want.  But there is a holy jealousy.             I guess the closest I have come to knowing what holy jealousy feels like was the day my son turned 18, and we were releasing him from the requirement of attending church on Sundays in order to live in our home.  He and I sat together in our regular pew and followed the motions of a typical Sunday service.  He was as present as he had been in years past.  There were no outward signs that my heart was breaking.              As the service progressed I could not help myself.  I experienced a deep sorrow that only now I can...

            Most of us find it hard to feel the love of God when we face harsh realities of life.  Others walk with God so closely that they know harsh realities of this world are common to us all, and they seem to accept God’s love in spite of what they have to lose.  I’m not sure which case the Widow of Nain from Luke 7 was experiencing.              Already a widow on the day Jesus met her, she was burying her only son as well.  Tragedy upon tragedy—hers was a life well acquainted with sorrow. The whole town seemed to stop what they were doing to support this widow.  Their presence almost speaks to the character of the woman with whom they felt so much sorrow .  The crowd might have been stunned into silence; having no words, they were just there for this poor widow, doing what they could.  They were carrying her son’s body to his grave...

            Contrary to human wishes, God’s ways are rarely what we naturally want.  Why? Because His ways are far beyond our understanding.  When we first experience God’s ways as opposed to our own, we are offended.  We all want a God whose ways sync with what we want.  As you grow closer to God, you begin to discover that His contrarian ways bring you what your soul most needs even if it is the very thing you are attempting to avoid.  When you open your soul to God’s contrarian ways over and over, you begin to gain confidence in His ways.             If it is possible to explain, I would say that Paul explains it best in Romans 11:33-36 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!      How unsearchable his judgments,      and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of t...

             Psalm 66:5 says:  Come and see what God has done,   his awesome deeds for mankind!   Those words say it all about who God is to us.  He is always for us.  He has our back.  Even in the worst of circumstances we can find His goodness. Our enemy, the devil, is the one who wants us to think that God is against us.  The reverse is true.  The devil wants to blind our eyes to what God has done and how His awesome deeds are always for mankind!  Are you aware of how much God constantly woos you?  Do you have any concept of what He has done for you?  Do you know that He does what He does for you? Spiritual breakthroughs happen when you get the concept that you are loved by a God who never does anything that is not based on His love for you. I know what you are going to say.  Why did that baby get raped?  Can you think of anything worse?  What is the worst event that h...

            On the church calendar, Eastertide is the season between Resurrection Sunday and Pentecost Sunday.  Just like Jesus appeared to them for forty days after His resurrection until His ascension, we need forty days to allow our souls to adjust to Easter Sunday each year.  Resurrection Sunday is a day that calls souls to church.  Our church offered nine services to accommodate all the people who enter the church.  Some come alone; others as part of a family obligation.              During the weeks of Eastertide those same souls go back to their lives.  They don’t let the light they sensed drawing them to church continue to burn and reveal what is greatest about life.  They return to their life as they love it without consideration of their church experience.  It is a place where they are more comfortable.  They might fee...

            There is bliss of knowing that you are loved by a real and intimate God.   I have felt that bliss. I don’t experience it all the time and sometimes it takes me a while to notice how much I miss it.   Often I come back to my senses when I read the spiritual writings of one who is explaining how great God is and I am reminded how good He is to me.               I suppose the saints stayed more connected to the bliss of God on a regular basis and missed it far less than me.   I wish I knew their secret; all I can tell you is that it is a cycle for me to find myself unaware of God for a time.   It is often a struggle to reconnect each day. What brought me to my senses recently was a huge blessing He sent my way.   This good thing literally came to me directly from the hand of God.   I didn’t even consider sharing the joy I was ...

            June brings warmer, longer days, summer vacation and Father’s Day.    It’s a day to celebrate the role that God chose to identify with Himself, although no one really understood that God wanted us to see Him as our father until Jesus insisted that we follow Him in praying to Him in this way.               Moses was the first to describe God to us as our Father in Deuteronomy 1:31:   And in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place .   Although God always saw Himself as our Father, we could not see it until Christ showed this reality to us by coming to us as the Son of man and the Son of God.   David wrote of God as Father in Psalm 103:13: As a father has compassion on his children ,  so the Lord has compassion on those who fe...

            Jesus said it best: Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little (Luke 7:47).   The Lenten Season that focuses on penitence and being aware of the cost of Easter is the perfect setting for true sinners to experience deeper love for God.               The more God’s love means to you, the more you become aware of how far you have fallen.   A soul that feels the depth of the love of God has no other response than to love God in a great way.   Before we even get to the cross, death, burial and resurrection, the season of repentance itself brings great spiritual healing.               Did you wake up today amazed that God loves you as much as He does?   If not, I’m not sure you are really...

              We encounter fear every day.   It is natural to be afraid.   I can’t believe how many scenarios that I can come up with over one given situation.   Most of us learn how to down-play our fears; we have to in order to function.   The problem is that if we are simply burying them inside, they will come out somehow and usually in ways that we don’t connect to the original fear such as addictions, anxiety or depression.               Fear takes on many disguises like cruelty, anger, anxiety and others.   The phrase do not be afraid was found 42 times in the English Standard Version Bible.   The word fear is mentioned 437 times. Obviously, it is an important topic for our lives and one that God knows we face.   He tells us over and over that there is no need to be afraid.   It’s hard to make the jump from fear ...

            I’m grateful for what I don’t know.   God in His goodness keeps all knowledge to Himself. Even after Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we still are blessed not to know some things.   Jesus recognized that He could not tell the disciples all that He knew :   I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now (John 16:12) and that it would be up to the Holy Spirit to fill us in (John 14:26).               Jesus, on the other hand, fully knew what awaited Him in the garden and on the following day of unjust trials ending in His being put to death in the most shameful and inhumane way on the Roman cross.   His prayers for another way were genuine and evidence of His full knowledge of what God had asked of Him.             I’m grate...

              At the beginning of Holy Week I heard a familiar scripture in a new way.   When the reader recited Isaiah 42:1: Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him;   he will bring forth justice to the nations, I thought about God’s soul for the first time.               Before really hearing that scripture, the words soul and delights seemed more applicable to describe something like dark chocolate candy.   Thinking of the pride God the Father takes in presenting to the world God His Son to fix up the problem of sin in the world leaves me in awe.   For the first time I let my mind conceive that God has a soul.   He has a soul like me (or the other way around, He saw fit to give me a soul like His).   His soul is capable of being delighted by Jesus!   His soul...

             God’s love is unimaginable.   The depths to which He will go to bring those He loves into relationship with Himself are awe inspiring.   My own personal experience of being separated from my husband through death has brought richer meaning to God’s love for me.   As you can imagine, it is not easy to learn to live in the absence of someone who has been a constant strength for almost three decades.   All my siblings and I have long-term marriages.   I have noticed in each of us that we have taken on the characteristics of our spouses through the years.   For instance, I became more generous through living with Brian, and he became more willing to plan and save for the future through being married to me.   Decades of marriage merges minds as well as bodies and souls, thus your whole being aches when these unions are separated through death or divorce.   I have also obser...