LOVE, MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE

 As a child I learned this: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling symbol. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I can remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing… it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind. Love envies not. Love vaunts not itself, is not puffed up…is not easily provoked, …” And now I have forgotten the next phrase.

Go to the end of I Corinthians 13 and you find: “And now abides faith, hope, love: these three but the greatest of these is love.”

Power? When we believe this… “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” The Holy Spirit abides in you and places the power to love in your heart and soul and mind. Love moves you to forgiveness. Love sent Jesus, The Son of God to earth to die for your sins and mine. As I was lying on the floor in my bedroom doing exercises, I began to think (sadly) of the escalation of violence in our Country. But in the quietness of the room a disturbing thought slowly came to me: I’ve lacked love too many times. I’ve been unkind. My failings brought me to a prayer right there in the quietness of my bedroom: Lord, forgive me for my sins. In Jesus Name. Jesus, fill me with your powerful love. Scripture above is I Corinthians 13 “The Love Chapter” and John 3:16.

Read your Bible every day. The wisdom there will be the Way to a successful life.

HOMEMADE GRANOLA...SO EASY TO MAKE

 

Granola (the cereal made from Old Fashioned Oats) can be simple and healthier than almost anything bought in the grocery store. The storebought has an exceptionally extensive list of ingredients in exceedingly small print. It is tedious to read, so often we do not. It is also often questionable for your health.

The costs are high!. Make your own is my suggestion.

Homemade Granola.

Mix in large pan over warm heat

One stick of butter & 1/2 cup olive oil … add 1/3 cup maple syrup & 1/3 cup honey.

Add/mix in seven cups Old Fashioned Oats. (Dash of Cinnamon).

Bake 250 degrees for 30 min.

Stir.

Bake in one or two large shallow pans at 250 for 30 minutes more. Cool. Cover, Refrigerate.

Seeds and nuts are good additions.

When we thought about health in our family, simple, grown, natural food became our aim. Now we do not crave things made with unhealthy ingredients. Corn Syrup is so noticeable, we will not touch restaurant food made with it. White flour and seed oils (so highly processed they cause health problems).

But whole food, whole milk, good meat, cheese without chemicals and additives, whole wheat flour and whole grains, real butter, organic olive oil, organic honey…these are health building… look for these nudges and repeated recommendations in the Bible. God speed.

 

YOU CAN RESPECT HIM

This is a repost: Building a marriage strengthens your life, your nation...and your relationship with God.

Every man has gifts because he is in God’s image. Abilities, giftedness is there; you can trust that it is.

 My husband, Eric, worked as an electrician's helper when we first married; the pay was minimum wage and we lived on it about four years in a rented mobile home; our first two sons were born in those years. Work he did not know existed came to him just after our third son was born. Eric had a natural bent toward organization and Logistics. His education at Boston University in secondary science, work as a Radioman on the U.S.S. Ponchatoula and now his interest in electricity all qualified him for a career in the Navy.

If it takes time for interests and gifts to come out, listen carefully to your husband day after day. Watch him with fresh hope and vision. Look deeper than the surface you will discover his strengths, his gifts. He will be very encouraged if he suspects you are seeing him this way. Passion will rise again; fascinating layers to his personality he may not even know are there.

Beyond his encouraged persona, you have hope, too. When you met and agreed to marry him, you saw something important and worthy of love and respect. With years of marriage, with the disappointments, you may have forgotten all the reasons. But no matter what he has or has not accomplished yet you can begin again to believe because he is created in the image of God.

Look and listen. Focus. A spark, an interest he demonstrates. Being closest to him, you may begin to recognize it! His uniqueness needs pride from you. Your power is because you are created in the image of God!  “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:27. 

 For the minute, forget the past, forget the attitude of anyone else and think just of yourself, him, and God! Once you “see” with spiritual eyes and you decide to encourage what you see in your husband, you may just make the difference in his future . . . and in yours . . . in the future of your world.

With fifty years together, the solidarity, the agreement and love, Eric and I share covers even how we disagree. It has  come from the Bible.  

MAKE YOUR HEALTH A GOAL

 

Dear Friends, Interest in good food leading to good health with many people, here is a Repost that may challenge you as Scripture has done for my husband and me...

 It may take a turn around, but health is beauty. Make your health a goal.

The most powerful king in the world, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon commanded a diet for four captured Jewish boys. "And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king's meat, and of the wine which he drank..." Daniel 1:5. But Daniel “purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat…” It took ten days of healthy food, and Daniel and his three friends were outstanding in their appearance.

Daniel and his friends were trained in all matters of wisdom and understanding that Babylon had to offer, but the food was an issue. Daniel requested of the Prince, "Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, (something sown, a vegetable) and water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king's meat: and as thou seest, deal with thy servants. So he consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days. And at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer (beautiful, best) and fatter (plump, firm) in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king's meat. Thus Melzar took away the portion of their meat, and the wine that they should drink; and gave them pulse." (Daniel 1:12-16).

Just do it. (The Bible does include beef, lamb and other “clean” food as in the sacrifices in the Law), Daniel here seems to have limited his food to vegetables and water. You have one life and getting from Scripture the wisdom to live it well is more than worth the effort. Settling into a warm and active relationship with Jesus through Scripture will change everything, beginning now. Your future will be changed.

EAT RIGHT...NO CHEMICALS, NO BLEACHED FLOUR, NO BIOENGINEERED...

 It is becoming clearer: serious health problems are becoming more common in the United States, beginning with children and worsening as we grow older...what we put into our bodies is critical.

This subject began with my father as I grew up. His passion along with my mother for reading the Bible through cover to cover, time after time gave all eight children a keen sense of the highlighting of food: whole grains, real butter and milk and fruit and vegetables. You will experience for yourself that good quality food becomes as habitual as “fast food.” The highly processed devitalized food bioengineered and with chemicals added are up and down grocery stores’ shelves. Read the labels. The long lists of ingredients, sometimes so tiny and unreadable are a message: return it to the shelf.

As I began the "science" of cooking, I made plenty of mistakes. Now, at fifty-one years of marriage and growing in understanding, it has become obvious. God has provided and put in front of us powerful things grown, natural, whole milk, butter, honey, pure olive oil, unprocessed meat, vegetables and fruit and whole grains, all in “the things He has made…” and intended for our health.

The simplicity is amazing. But it will require you to believe God and the Bible and the Truth of it to avoid “positive” and very enticing messages that differ from Scripture, which is undiluted wisdom.

Our focus is on God’s Word; the food He created right within the stories and teaching through the pages of the Bible. 

I challenge you, read the Bible and like us you will find in the most surprising places in Scripture what is good inferred by God Himself. "Ho, every one that thirsts, come to the waters, and he that has no money; come, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which satisfies not. Hearken diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live..." Isaiah 55:1-3.

Health and good food was and always will be a priority. God's promise to His people was emphasized by a land flowing with milk and honey. "And hast given them this land, which thou didst swear to their fathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey..." Jeremiah 32:22.  

IT’S WRITTEN ON YOUR HEART

If your six year old grabs a toy from your two year old, the baby screams at best. Right and wrong is written in their hearts. When a lady sits in her car at a red light and a thief opens the door, pulls her out and takes off in her car, right and wrong is written in their hearts.

Does not the threat of a catastrophic end to the world come into the minds of people all over the world! When wars and nation rising against nation is the headline in the news morning after morning, good and evil continues.

What is good? What is evil? It is written in our hearts. It is because we are created in God’s image: with a spirit, soul and body. The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 incapsulates it.

Exodus 20:1-17

And God spoke all these words, saying, 

I am the LORD thy God…

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 

And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 

Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 

For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. 

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 

Thou shalt not kill. 

Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

Thou shalt not steal. 

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. 

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.” Exodus 20: 1-17

Romans_2:15 that our conscience can inform us: “Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another”)

You know when you’ve been wronged: it’s written on your heart. You know The Ten Commandments are good. It’s written on your heart.

“Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endures for ever.” Psalm 119:160 

BE AN OVERCOMER

True, the secular culture is everywhere…in our face! But there is a way to travel through life, this gift of life we’re given, rising above and walking away from the darkness. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” You can overcome the temptation and darkness (as every believer in Jesus can) by following the light. 

"I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness." Jesus. John 11:46.

As you look through the Bible, this supernatural Word of God, it is life giving, strength giving, wisdom giving…Light on the path. "Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." Psalm 16:11.

Love, Comfort, Guidance …it is all there for you in the Word of God, the Bible. We read from beginning to end. Eric and I have for our fifty-two years of marriage read through the Old Testament, and the New Testament in an alternating way. We read the first Old Testament book, Genesis. Then after this Matthew, the first New Testament Book. Then Exodus in the Old, then Mark the second in the New. Until we go from beginning to end. Right now, we are two chapters from the end of the Book of Revelations. This is where the word “Overcomer” appears again and again.

The Bible is becoming more “alive” and pungent, more understandable (yes, with deep mysteries still). It is the path of life. God will give you the strength to overcome the sin which so easily besets every one of us… "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God" Hebrews 12:1,2