Tag: faith

My Highway

On By Judy GlasserIn JulyLeave a comment

I can visualize it.

Isaiah tells us that when God comes, “he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.”  Isaiah 35:4.

“And a highway will be there.” vs 8.

This highway is called the Way of Holiness.  I can see it stretching all the way up to heaven.  Only those of us who walk in the Way of our Savior will use it.

Those who don’t believe will not be able to travel on it.  The wicked and the foolish will not go on it.

There will be no danger when we – the redeemed – walk home on this highway.  As we return to the LORD, we will be singing praises.  There will be no sorrow or sighing –

only everlasting joy.

What’s the Goal?

On By Judy GlasserIn JulyLeave a comment

Where do I want to be next year?  What do I want to have achieved?

Where do I want to grow in my life?

One of the most important things I’ve learned in my years on this planet is that I need to feed what I want to grow.  I can’t just wish it.  I can’t sit frustrated because nothing is changing if I’m not doing something to change it.

I need to take action.  There must be forward movement – one step at a time – towards my goal.

I am encouraged by Hezekiah’s story in 2 Chronicles of his vast and successful religious reformation of his nation.  One step at a time, working with the priests, he took his people who were far from God and led them back into obedience.  This is a great role model for us if our goal is to grow closer to God and grow in faithfulness.

Hezekiah’s first step was to cleanse the temple.  They purified everything in the temple and consecrated it.  What would this look like for you and I?  How about stopping habits that are not good for our minds and souls?  Stop reading articles, magazines, books that don’t feed what we want to grow.  Change our favorite channels on TV, our favorite music channels and our most visited websites.  Cleanse our minds and souls by using discernment in what we’re feeding them.

Then Hezekiah had the people gather together to use the temple as it was meant to be used – sacrificing to God and worshiping him.  For us, this means committing to meet with God’s people regularly – studying God’s word and growing together.  It also means making sure we are in line with God’s directions on tithing and giving of our time.  The Israelites gave so much back to God that there was plenty to share with their neighbors who needed help.

Next, Hezekiah invited Israel and Judah to come to the temple together to celebrate the Passover.  He invited his neighbors – just like God wants us to ask our neighbors to come with us to church or our small group or watch the worship on line together.

Then Hezekiah told his people, “Do not be like your parents and your fellow Israelites, who were unfaithful to the LORD…” 2 Chronicles 30: 7.

Do you and I have any people in our lives that aren’t good influences?  Do we need to pick different friends?  Different role models?

Hezekiah’s people attacked their idols – destroying them and getting rid of the distraction.  What are our idols?  What things in our lives make us too busy to spend time with God personally and with other believers?

We need to feed what we want to grow.

We read that God blessed Hezekiah and his people as they grew more and more obedient.  God gave them unity of mind as they all looked to him for wisdom and guidance.

I know I want God’s blessings in my life.  I want unity of mind, wisdom and guidance.  One of my main motivations for reading the entire Bible every year for these last 15 years is making sure I’m on a steady path of knowing and loving God more.

I know that I need to feed my relationship with God in order for those things to grow.  And God will be faithful in helping me – he always is.

 

Isaiah 9, 2025

On By Judy GlasserIn JulyLeave a comment

Dear Father,

We ask that the people who walk in darkness today would see your great light.  Shine your light of love and grace on all those who are now lost without you.

Enlarge your kingdom on earth, Father.  We rejoice before you for you have broken the yoke of our slavery to sin.  You have lifted the heavy burden of guilt and shame from our shoulders through the death and resurrection of your son.  You have removed the oppression brought into our lives by our disobedience and rebellion.

For a Child was born to us. You gave us your son, Jesus.

We call him Wonderful,

Counselor,

Mighty God,

Everlasting Father,

Prince of Peace.

Those of us who have accepted your saving grace and have placed Jesus on the throne of our lives where he rules with justice and peace for all eternity.

Thank you for loving us this much, Abba Father.

The Main Things

On By Judy GlasserIn JuneLeave a comment

Have you heard anyone say something like, ” I just can’t figure  out what God wants from me?” or “I really don’t know what God wants me to do?”

Statements like these confuse me because I think God is amazingly clear and to the point about the ‘main things’ that need to be the focus in my life.

The only two commandments Jesus gave us are to love God with our whole hearts and love others.  Jesus tells me that obeying these 2 commandments fulfills ‘all the law and the prophets’ which includes the original 10 commandments from the Old Testament.

There used to be 10 commandments – now it’s 2.  God knows we need simple and clear directions.

As I read the 6th chapter of Micah, I am again amazed at how direct God is as he tells me what he expects from me. ” And what does the LORD require from you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8.

Which part of that is unclear?

Act justly – do the right things. God tells us what is right in his Word.

Love Mercy – forgive others.  Give people a break especially when they don’t deserve it.  Help others.

Walk Humbly with God – develop a close relationship with God understanding that he is a supernatural combination of Creator of the Universe, the Holy and Perfect One and my Abba Father. I need to stay in line with God, asking him to do what he wants in my life, not what I want.

Micah told us this thousands of years ago.  I have discovered that, if I am serious about doing the things God has already told me to do, he fills in the other details at the right time.

Do you think its time to stop asking God what he wants us to do and focus on the directions he has already given us?

Do You Feel It?

On By Judy GlasserIn JuneLeave a comment

He will be our peace.

Seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, Micah prophesied about the birth of Jesus saying that a ruler would come from Bethlehem, “And he will be our peace.” Micah 5:5.

Notice – it doesn’t say ‘a source of peace’.

Jesus is our peace. Period.

Do you feel that in your life? I do.

I don’t find peace in the things that so many people here on earth think are so important.

I have not found peace with money and success.

I have not found it in relationships other than my relationship with God.

Buying things has definitely not given me peace since things break and grow old – no longer shiny, no longer ‘the latest’.

I have not found peace in education and achievements.

I love to travel and experience new things but that is not where I find peace.

My relationship with Jesus is the only place I find real Peace. I feel it down in the center of my soul. No matter how crazy our culture gets, God is my Rock. He holds me steady within his arms when the whole world shakes around me.

I can trust Jesus with everything and he has a perfect love for me.  He has proven his love for me over and over in my life.  He who never sinned became sin for me on the cross so that the price for my sins was paid and I can live with him forever.

My eternal life with Jesus has already started on this earth –

He is my peace.

Do you feel it?

Stop The Excuses

On By Judy GlasserIn JuneLeave a comment

I’m surprised when I find myself doing it – rationalizing.  I start to make excuses for making not great choices. I find myself thinking it’s ‘not really bad’.

Do you do this, too?

Do you tell yourself “everyone’s doing it” or “no one will ever know” when you think about doing something that’s not quite right? Do you cut corners and make excuses for yourself?

God’s words through Isaiah are very clear about our tendency to rationalize away bad decisions.  “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter”.  Isaiah 5:20.

Woe to me when I call evil good…..or call evil okay.  These words echo through my head reminding me that I never want to rationalize things. The culture around us is growing in its ability to say evil is okay, isn’t it? This makes me glad that this place is not my forever home.

I need to be discerning – don’t accept evil as good, don’t think that shades of darkness is light.

I need to be wise.  This doesn’t mean I go around judging other people.  God is their judge.  I’m focusing on my behavior and my values and my choices.  I’m focusing on calling good good and calling evil evil in my life.

And stop the excuses, stop the rationalizing.

There is a Famine

On By Judy GlasserIn JuneLeave a comment

I need to know the truth. You need to know the truth.

And we won’t know the truth by listening to our culture – it is full of lies and half-truths and rationalizations. The amount of fake news that is being repeated like it’s true is staggering these days.

Where’s the only place we can find real truth?

God’s Word. The Bible.

I have a huge thirst to know the real truth. I don’t need to hear what he thinks or she thinks or they think or even what you think. What God thinks – that’s what is important to me.

This thirst has taken me on an 15-year journey of reading the entire Bible every year. After several years of reading the entire Bible, I started saying things like “that’s not in the Bible’ when people quoted things that just aren’t there. One of these things you and I hear often is not true – “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle”. Not in there. That’s one of the most misquoted scriptures we hear. My experience has been that God often gives me things I can’t handle so I need to go to him and trust him to help me.

I now can recognize if what someone is saying is in the Bible about 90% of the time. If anyone says something new, I always look it up. Sometimes I learn something new and other times I realize that what they were telling everyone was not true.

What’s also important is that I know what’s missing when listening to a preacher or teacher teach from the Bible. One of the reasons I read the entire Bible is to get a big picture of God, an overall understanding. So I can tell when someone is leaving something out because its too controversial or maybe they don’t agree with it.

I don’t care if its controversial or you don’t like it. It’s in the Bible. That’s the truth. God calls us to adjust our lives to his truth – not the other way around

Unfortunately, I’m hearing about more and more pastors who are adjusting God’s truth to make people happy. They leave out the tough parts because, well, maybe people won’t like it and they will leave the church.

I’ve talked to several good Christian people I know who have left their church because the pastor started veering away from the truth. A denomination that I was a part of for many years decided a couple of years ago that they were going to change what is preached in their churches to fit what people ‘think’ is right, not what God says. That’s a very bad decision which can only lead to negative consequences.

The prophet Amos predicted times like these. “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land – not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.” Amos 8: 11&12.

We don’t have to stagger around searching for the Word of the Lord. His Word is in the Bible if we make sure we have a credible Bible. People have actually changed words in the Bible to fit what they think as well.

Any doubt that there is a famine?

Our Bible can be and should be in our hands and entering our minds every day as we read and apply God’s truth to our lives. Our Bibles should be dog-eared and looking well-worn these days because we can’t count on anyone else to make sure we know the truth.

There is a famine all around us but we have what we need to feed ourselves – God’s Word.

The Rebellious

On By Judy GlasserIn JuneLeave a comment

Who is wise and discerning?  They will understand that God’s path is the right path and they will walk in it.

The book of Hosea ends with this truth – ‘But those who rebel stumble.’  Hosea 14:9.

How do the rebellious stumble?  They spend many hours on things with little or no ultimate value.  They spend a lot of money on things that provide little or no satisfaction.  They spend much energy looking for something that will complete them and give them a purpose when the Provider of these does not live on this earth.

Meanwhile, God opens the eyes of the wise as they walk with him.  There are still small stumbles but they know how to get back on the right path.

How do we walk right with God?  By loving God with our whole heart, mind and soul and loving others.  Simple….yet profound.  When we do this, we are transformed.

When we walk with God, he completes us and gives us a purpose.

He also gives us joy.

Life Is Short

On By Judy GlasserIn JuneLeave a comment

I only have so much time here on this planet – I shouldn’t waste it.  If there is one lesson that has been engraved on my mind these last few years, it’s ‘Life is short”.

I truly never knew how extremely short life can be until my son was killed.  One moment he was here and the next he was gone.

My life blew up in that one moment.

Life is short – I have no time to waste.

Just like Jonah – he had no time to waste.  So it’s a little frustrating to read about Jonah going through his big drama of disobeying God’s direction to go to Ninevah.  Jonah decided to go the other direction, got caught on a ship in a big storm, was thrown overboard by sailors and spent 3 days in a huge fish at the bottom of the ocean.  It was there that he repented and reached out to God. (bottom of the ocean, end of our rope – sound familiar?)

Jonah used a bunch of time running from God before finally deciding to obey him by going to Ninevah.   “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.  From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.” Jonah 2:2.  When Jonah turned back to him, God ordered the fish to spit Jonah out on the beach so Jonah could go ahead and do what God asked him to do in the first place.

That whole first whale trip was just a big waste of time and energy!

Wait a minute – do I do this?

Do you do this?

I have to admit that I’ve wasted a lot of time in the past disobeying God.  I ignored what I knew was right.  I did what I wanted to do and gained nothing from it.  It was useless – a waste of time.

One of my life goals now is to obey God the first time.  I want to stop wasting time and energy while disobeying.

I want to avoid getting hit by the 2×4 that eventually comes our way when we ignore the lessons God is trying to teach us. The issue or problem doesn’t go away when we disobey – it grows.  And it continues to grow until it’s too big and bad to ignore any longer.

Have you ever been hit by God’s 2×4 as a consequence for avoiding his directions? Have you found yourself at the end of your rope? Or stuck at the bottom of the sea like Jonah?

I have.  It’s a wake up call.  An enormous red flag pops up and starts whipping through my life.  It seems like everything starts going wrong at the same time but, in reality, this issue has been gradually building steam while I prioritized other things.  Because he is a good Father, God doesn’t ignore me when I’m trying to ignore him.  He lets the consequences of my own actions grow until it’s just like getting hit by a 2×4.  By then, the issue has become too enormous and too awful – I cannot continue to look the other way.  It’s a direct message from God – attitudes and behaviors and priorities need to change – and they need to change NOW!

I got it, God!  I have learned my lesson and I intend to obey right away from now on.  No more 2×4’s in my life if I can help it!

I have also learned that obedience up front, the first time, brings additional blessings of peace and strength that come from being in line with God and in step with the Spirit.

Obeying right away is never a waste of time.

What’s on the Inside?

On By Judy GlasserIn JuneLeave a comment

It’s what’s on the inside that counts.

We can make ourselves look good and nice and religious on the outside.

But that doesn’t count unless we are letting God mold us and change us on the inside.

When we submit our hearts and minds to God, he will transform them.  Eventually, his redeeming power working in our lives will start to show on the outside.  What people see will be different.

Because we’re becoming more like Him on the inside.

June 13 2016 on the inside

This is why, in Joel 2, the Prophet Joel told the lukewarm people of Judah to ‘rend your heart and not your garments.’

They needed to genuinely give their hearts back to God – not just make a big show of tearing their clothes and weeping loudly in the temple.

God called them to rend their hearts – break open their hearts – and let him back in.

Then the transformation can happen.

God asks us to do the same today.  He wants us to open up our hearts to him and let his light shine in our lives.  To mold us.  To change us.

And we can choose to do this.

Today.

What are you going to choose?