A carrot, an egg, and a cup of coffee...You will never look at a cup of coffee the same way again. A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how  things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make  it and wanted to give up, She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed  as one problem was solved, a new one arose. Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and  placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil; without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them  in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, ' Tell me what you see."Carrots, eggs, and coffee,' she replied. Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hardboiled egg. Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. The  daughter then asked, 'What does it mean, mother?' Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity: boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling  water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the  boiling  water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water. 'Which are you?' she asked her daughter. 'When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?  Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with  pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength? Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a  financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit  and hardened heart? Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water,  the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it  releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when  things are at  their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?  May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human and enough hope to make you happy. The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything;  they  just make the most of everything that comes along their way. The brightest  future will always be based on a forgotten past; you can't go forward in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches. When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Be blessed, Pray, be a cup of coffee! 

I can't see you anyway, so raise your hand if you need to have more faith! FOOLED YOU! I can see, yes there are a lot of hands raised up saying "That is me! I need more faith, so  many things I need to believe for and so little faith!" The first thing that comes to my mind is the daddy that brought his son to Jesus to be healed, when Jesus asked him if he believed, He answered honestly, Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Mark 9:24 Jesus then healed the boy! Why do we try to lie to the Lord when we KNOW that He already knows the thoughts and intents of our heart? Don't you hate it when you have promised someone something and they keep badgering you, afraid that you will forget, or keep reminding you that you said it? (I know someone like that so this is not just "supposing") Don't you think God gets tired of our wishy washy ways? Well (you knew this was coming), I can PROVE it! James 1:2-8 Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. If you don't know what you're doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You'll get his help, and won't be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who "worry their prayers" are like wind-whipped waves. Don't think you're going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open. King James said (V 7-8) When you doubt let not that man suppose he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. So yes, I would say God wants you to make up your mind and stick with it. Revelation 3:16 "So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth" Sounds like He meant what He said! It is easy for me to have faith, I have SEEN miracles with my own two eyes, and you must think what I say is of value or you would not be reading this, so I am telling you that God can do ANYthing! If you ask your child to trust you, say to jump into your arms in the swimming pool, and you can see that they are still afraid, wouldn't it hurt you just a bit? Wouldn't you wonder why? Especially if you have never let them down. Now, as humans, there might have been a time that you  made them a promise like "trust me, I can do it" and maybe you even KNEW that you couldn't keep  your word..example: When I was about 6 or 7, my whole family was at the lake. I didn't know how to swim and one of my well-meaning uncles held me with his arms just under me holding me on top of the water, he promised that he would not let me go, I believed him. He took his arms out from underneath me and I sank like a rock down into the water and I believed that I would drown. I have never learned how to swim and cannot stand to have water in my face. I have a huge pool in my yard and keep it clean but never go in it...but God is not like that uncle, the Bible says that "underneath are the everlasting arms", He is our refuge and strength, our healer. Did you know that to have a heart of unbelief is called evil? Hebrews 3:12 Beware lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief..
Be blessed, Pray, know that God can do ANYthing if you ask in faith, believing! I am living proof!

Have you ever tried to do anything you weren't supposed to do and in trying to be discreet, get caught anyway? When I was about four, daddy had gotten a new car and it had a "lighter" in it. You pushed in and it got red-hot, so interesting for a little girl to see. I was told that I should NEVER touch it as it would burn me! I caught my parents not looking and pushed it in and when it popped out and was glowing red, I wanted to (for some un-known reason) smell it! Sooo, I put it up to my nose and BURNED the end of my nose! I went in the house and my nose was burning so bad that I wanted to cry..no way to hide it from my mother's eagle eye! Busted! Adam and Eve got caught big time when God came for his evening walk with them and found them cowering behind a bush, ashamed of their nakedness!(Genesis 3) When we read of Cain and Able (Genesis 4:7-10) that had to be the way Cain felt when God asked where his brother was, busted! Joshua 7:1-26 is the story of Achan who took the clothes and the wedge of gold when they were directly told NOT to do so! he really WAS busted when his whole family was thrown into a pit and stoned! Samson must have felt like a dope when he was duped by Delilah, sinning against everything he had been taught. Isaiah 59:12 For our sins are piled up before God and testify against us. Today something happend that brought this subject to my attention. A young person had put some disparaging remarks on a picture on one of the popular friend sites. I guess he wasn't thinking about getting caught..but caught he got! Busted, with the punishment being restricted from the site! He didn't mean any harm, just trying to be funny, but how many times we as adults do things that are just not right, and sometimes that is getting busted gossiping about someone when the wrong person overhears! We all know the feeling of knowing you have been wrong about something and being very sorry, maybe not that you did wrong, but that you got caught! Numbers 32:23...and you may be sure that your sin will find you out. I can't tell you the number of times my mother said that to me in my growing up years, and here I am quoting it to YOU! Well there is GOOD news coming up...Romans 5:20-21 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn't, and doesn't, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it's sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end. Did you read that? Read it AGAIN...OK, don't you feel better now? I know there are people who teach "sloppy grace", which is that anything goes and you just get by with it...that is not true either, especially if you forsake Jesus as the ONLY Savior, or offend the Holy Spirit, but somehow I don't think any of YOU Readers are guilty of that! If you are feeling "busted" just know that Jesus died to cover you and the Word also says, 1Peter 4:8 And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins."  When we get busted in an act of wrong doing, Jesus stands at the Throne and reminds God that he died for us to cover our sins!

Be blessed, Pray, you are forgiven!

There is an ice cream flavor, can't remember the name or maybe I am inventing it as I write, the base flavor is creamy vanilla, there are ribbons of caramel and dark fudge running through it. Those ribbons of flavor are thick and rich and make the vanilla special by just being in it. I think that life is like that particular ice cream flavor. We have an every day routine of coming and going and doing and undoing that comes to be simply vanilla, nothing outstanding, smooth but bland. Then there are times that a great love will come along, we will call that the band of dark chocolate fudge, so good and so sweet but almost bitter it is so dark. Other flavors represent marriage, (sprinkles), or children, (bits of marshmallow), relatives, (nuts)...death which would be that bitter piece of nut that sometimes finds it's way into butter pecan ice cream, I know you have found one...makes your mouth pucker and you have to spit it out! But without all the things that happen, our life, like the vanilla ice cream, would remain bland. Do you quit buying Butter Pecan because of the rancid nut you found in it? No, and with life the same, you keep experiencing all of it, the good,the bad,and the ugly. I think it is hard to find the perfect blend in a person with whom you want to share the rest of your life. So far, for me, Jesus Christ remains my faithful husband and, even though my eyes have roamed at times, I remain faithful to Him and He loves me..just the way I am, warts and all. We have the perfect example of how love should be that includes all the flavors and nuts and whipped cream of the sundae, it is  1 Corinthians 13 (the message)If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. Love never gives up.Love cares more for others than for self.Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut,Doesn't have a swelled head,Doesn't force itself on others,Isn't always "me first,"Doesn't fly off the handle,Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel,Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,Puts up with anything,Trusts God always,  Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. Enjoy all the flavors of your life, but as we see from this chapter, the best flavor of all is love, love for God, our fellow man and ourselves!

Be blessed, Pray, Love!

I was watching a program called "Magic's Biggest Secrets Revealed". In this show a "spoiler" shows how all the greatest, most breath taking tricks are accomplished. Everything from making an assistant disappear into thin air, a girl transportated from one barrell to another, IMPOSSIBLE there are steel bars there, a fish bowl full of water..and fish appear from underneath a silk cloth, amazing? Deception! While you are being distracted, he is fooling you right in front of your own eyes! The FIRST deceiver, the inventor of deception, was Satan! He transformed himself in the Garden and deceived Eve into taking the forbidden fruit and then convincing Adam to do the same! Then Adam, himself, became a deceiver by denying to God his wrong blaming it on "the woman You gave me!" The deception spread to the son, Cain when he murdered his brother, Able, because of jealousy! Satan tried his tricks on Jesus in the desert, but Jesus answered him with the Word of God! "Turn those stones into bread, you know you can", he tried to work on Jesus' ego, but Jesus said "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God" Satan will come at you, stroking your ego, or the opposite, making you feel abused, the victim, not as good as others, why not just do what I want? Fear is great too: a storm coming, symptoms of every disease, a new strain of flu, the recession (I refuse to participate in that one!) The list goes on! I choose to live, as the children of Israel, in the Land of Goshen, where the plagues of Egypt never touched them! No frogs, bloody water, flies, and the blood of the lamb on the doorpost spared the eldest child! Well, the Blood of the Lamd, Jesus, is on my spiritual door posts, my body, my family, belongings, all that concerns me, I choose, rather than be deceived by the great Magician, to live in Psalm 91 You who sit down in the High God's presence, spend the night in Shaddai's shadow, Say this: "God, you're my refuge. I trust in you and I'm safe!"That's right—he rescues you from hidden traps, shields you from deadly hazards.His huge outstretched arms protect you— under them you're perfectly safe;his arms fend off all harm. Fear nothing—not wild wolves in the night, not flying arrows in the day, Not disease that prowls through the darkness, not disaster that erupts at high noon. Evil can't get close to you, harm can't get through the door. He ordered his angels to guard you wherever you go. If you stumble, they'll catch you; their job is to keep you from falling. You'll walk unharmed among lions and snakes, and kick young lions and serpents from the path.  "If you'll hold on to me for dear life," says God, "I'll get you out of any trouble. I'll give you the best of care if you'll only get to know and trust me. Call me and I'll answer, be at your side in bad times;I'll rescue you, then throw you a party. I'll give you a long life, give you a long drink of salvation!"

Be blessed, Pray, don't be deceived, stay protected!