Listening to God Together

What is it that has the power to buoy us up when times get tough? That's right.  Hope.     Not hope in the sense of,  "I hope it's a nice day." or "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst." Spiritual Hope that God alone can give us.  A Fruit of the Spirit, a product of abiding in the Vine.                 We have 2 classes of muscles in our bodies. Some are ‘voluntary’ and some are ‘ in voluntary’.   The voluntary muscles are the ones we move by our will.  We “tell” our leg to move forward and then the other leg.  Pretty soon we are walking. The  in voluntary muscles mostly belong to groups like our organs.  Our heart is one we can easily relate to.  It just pumps.  We don’t have to tell it to.  Sometimes it speeds up or slows down, and for the most part our conscious mind doesn’t have much to do with that.  That’s probably a good thing—forgetting to give our hearts instructions would land us in a pickle! Virtues are kind of like that too.             On th

Do you ever wish you had complete self-control?  I sure do! I would be thin and prosperous and polite to a fault.  My house would be perfectly clean all the time, and my nails might even be done! Alas.  I don’t have much of it sometimes.  I guess I have more now than I used to— that’s really a good thing!  But I still say inept things at awkward times, put off until tomorrow what I could do today, and eat things I  shouldn’t.  Do you have trouble with things like that, or am I the only one? Here’s the Good News— God loves us just the way we are, and He will finish the good work He started in us.  Scripture says so: Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ — Philippians 1:6 The Fruit of Self-Control is another gift He gives us and works into our souls.  That’s not to say it’s easy — quite to the contrary!  The King James called it “Temperance”.  Have you ever heard of

The Peace That Passes All Understanding Do you ever wish you could just command the world to "Be at peace!  Be still!" like Jesus did to the storm?  I sure do!  It spins completely out of control sometimes, especially lately! I sometimes wish I could command my own heart in the same manner-- "Peace! Be still!"  My heart and mind spin out of control sometimes too.  Does that happen to you? Just before His arrest and crucifixion, Jesus spent time alone with His disciples, preparing them for what was to come.  Although He had told them these things before, the Real Events were about to happen and he knew they had no frame of reference for the terrifying next few weeks.  In John 14:27 He gave them a watch-word to follow through the turmoil: “ Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” What do you think of when you use the word “peace”?

In A Pickle My cucumbers are producing like gangbusters!  Everyday, it seems, I fill my sink with new ones.  I mean, how many cucumbers can a girl eat?? Soooooo…. I’ve started making pickles!  What fun it is to see the jars stack up.  Dill pickles, sweet pickles.  There’s something so satisfying about filling jars with goodies to eat later when the season is long since gone. Here it is, 4th of July again.  I think of pickles and picnics and barbecues.  I remember my father and uncle gleefully setting off fireworks in the back yard when I was little, and being afraid of sparklers and big booms.  And it seems to me now that our world is in a bit of a pickle, with big booms and earthquakes and rumors and plagues.   Not that we should hide our heads in the sand, but we need to remember during all of this commotion that God has promised us that He will take care of us, regardless of our circumstances.  If we are abiding in Him, placing our trust in Him,