by Carol Roberts | Nov 4, 2016 | Encouragement
It’s time to face your audience. Your speech, memory verse or musical number has been rehearsed many times yet your stomach is full of butterflies. Your hands sweat making it hard to hold on to your musical instrument. Your fear is making you forget parts of your memory verse that you knew very well up until now.
What are you nervous about? The audience is full of people who love you or classmates waiting to give their presentations. You are not afraid of the people watching. You know most of the people. Nobody has a gun pointed at you. Nobody is waiting for the ultimate booboo so they can laugh at you.
What is it, really? It’s the devil. You are suddenly lead to believe you will forget words, trip on the way to the podium, voice may fail or possibly drop a prop. What if you miss a note or the prop or instrument breaks? What if? What if? What if? It’s all about you in your mind. It’s not a feeling of rejection from an audience but more of a feeling of self worth. It’s you presenting you. It’s your presentation and you are revealing part of yourself. It’s not the presentation that has you nervous but your work, talent, skills and style that you are exposing.
Wait, you are a child of God. Jesus lives in your heart, therefore the love of Jesus Christ flows through you. You are not exposing yourself after all. You are allowing Jesus to be through you what you cannot accomplish on your own. Sure you have talent and skills but you also have a beautiful spirit that calls upon Jesus to make this presentation through you. God’s greatest display of strength is in your weakness. Now you are ready to present Jesus Christ back to Him with the speech, musical number or memory verse He gave to you. All the rehearsals were between you and Jesus and so is the presentation.
2 Timothy 1:7 Living Bible
For the Holy Spirit, God’s gift, does not want you to be afraid of people, but to be wise and strong, and to love them and enjoy being with them.
by Carol Roberts | Nov 3, 2016 | Salvation
Jesus said in John 3:16 For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that anyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. This is guaranteed.
Things or events, both good and challenging, during this earthly life are temporary. Focus on what is good, true and right which are the things above. Jesus provides it all because He Is All.
Ecclesiastes 7:14 Living Bible
Enjoy prosperity whenever you can, and when hard times strike, realize that God gives one as well as the other—so that everyone will realize that nothing is certain in this life.
by Carol Roberts | Nov 2, 2016 | Friendship
We flip a switch on the wall and the light comes on or we turn a knob on the sink and water flows. We can depend on it but what if it fails? Only then do we appreciate how these things got there. Sometimes it takes doing without before we give thanks.
Many of us have friends who stick closer than a brother or an elderly person who has us safely tucked in their prayers. The fact these people are dependable has created an attitude of taking for granted. “Take” for granted means we take from people, usually without realizing it. These precious people in our lives are the ones we sometimes place on the shelf never to have time for them. We pursue other things that we don’t have without realizing the treasures already in our lives.
One day we realize we haven’t heard from these beautiful people in a while. We make a point to check up on them only to find they have moved on without us. All they wanted from us was to be noticed once in a while or to be given a little time.
What a horrible loss it is to lose a true friend or one who genuinely loves us. Our greatest hope is for just a remnant of what that friendship used to be. It could very well be that our friend left us a final gift of learning to appreciate what we have.
Life is too short to be pursuing second best while neglecting what we have. Even if we get everything we pursue, all combined will not equal that friend which was lost.
Proverbs 18:19 Living Bible
It is harder to win back the friendship of an offended brother than to capture a fortified city. His anger shuts you out like iron bars.
by Carol Roberts | Nov 1, 2016 | Grief
It’s time for a family reunion. All plans have been made. The meeting place is established and all family members are expected to join in the celebration. Some people will start their journey a week ahead of time and arrive a few days early while others will arrive just in time for the big dinner. Family comes from all over the globe to join in this big event.
Life is this way as well. While many family members have completed their journey and have reached their heavenly destination others are still traveling.
Grief is real and it is an act of love for the person who has completed their travel. The void and loneliness can be compared to nothing, yet Jesus Christ offers all hope that the days of mourning will turn into joy that will last forever.
For the ones still traveling it is comforting to look ahead with excitement knowing this heavenly family reunion is the event for an eternity.
Luke 20:37-38 Living Bible
“But as to your real question—whether or not there is a resurrection—why, even the writings of Moses himself prove this. For when he describes how God appeared to him in the burning bush, he speaks of God as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ To say that the Lord is some person’s God means that person is alive, not dead! So from God’s point of view, all men are living.”