God Speaks Bible: “His Very Breath”

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God Speaks Bible:

His Very Breath 4/7/13

In God’s time
And in God’s ways
I see the light
Of His face.

I stay in wait
For His voice,
And when I hear
I rejoice!

Not just to hear,
But then to do,
The way He sees,
Within His view.

My own eyes
Seem so dim
Until I look
Only to Him.

Thank You, Lord,
For all Your ways
That You give
Within Your days!

Your good will
Is full and wise,
And within You
There never lies

The fear of life
Or fear of death,
For You give
Your very breath

To my soul,
So wide, so deep,
Is Your love
That always keeps.

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

Copyright 2013 by Brenda LaVelle

 

I really feel like this poem is the essence of the divine conception of Richard Mull in bringing the God Speaks Bible into creation!  I see this revolutionary, revealing Bible as God’s gift to the world of His very breath and will for the understanding and clarity of His Word!

On my 60th birthday God is speaking to me about the things that are important in my life today.  As I shared early on, He is “First, Second, and Third.”  And as I was looking back through my journal this morning He pointed me to this poem He gave me a few weeks back, and now I know it was intended for this very purpose..

Does God speak to you?  He wants to speak to all of us is in His Word!   Many people don’t read their Bible because they have a difficult time understanding much of its meaning

But God does work in mysterious ways, as I am very excited to get you acquainted with the passion and zeal  I have for the “Good News” for all of you today about the new God Speaks Bible!  It is on the presses and will be ready for distribution hopefully the last of May or the first part of June.

This is not a new translation, but a color-coded enhancement of the New English Translation, of all ways God speaks to us within His Word where His words are highlighted in different colors, be it in first person, through an angel, a passage where God is speaking, through man, words of Jesus, and miracles and acts of God.

This is a Bible you will become enthusiastic about reading!  The God Speaks Bible is eliminating so much confusion about what God is saying and how. God wants us to hear Him, and I honestly believe that He is totally behind and in this project Richard Mull has begun to help all of us better understand not only His Word, but also Who He is!

This Bible will surely be an absolute encouragement as a vital tool to help all begin or pursue their personal relationship with God.  This is a Light and a Gift to the world!  And to God!

Can human beings really hear God speak about His will for and interest in our personal lives?  Yes, definitely!  The Bible is much of the information He wants us to have concerning His thoughts, values, attributes, and wisdom of all His Creation.  When we are hearing God speak, we begin to know Him.  And He WANTS us to know Him intimately, as He knows us!

In reading the Bible, praying, meditating, and speaking to Him about His Word, each individual seeking in sincerity and humility the Al-mightiness of God Himself, will have as his Helper, the Holy Spirit of God imparting upon him how to hear His voice.  We weren’t meant to live in ignorance of God’s thoughts and will, but have been given His clear, concise instructions for living a Christ-like life.  And how to please and obey Him His way.

This Bible clearly distinguishes every verse spoken by God, such as Exodus 15:26:

And said, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and will do that which is right in his sight, and will give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases on you, which I have brought on the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that heals you.”

Click on the links to God Speaks Bible!

Want to help promote the reading of God’s Word and encourage people to learn how to hear God’s voice? Imagine a color coded study Bible and multi-media application highlighting when God speaks to you. Operation Light Force (OLF) is a ministry devoted to equipping people to do what Jesus did, setting captives free, healing and preaching. Richard Mull is the President and Founder of OLF and the General Editor of the God Speaks Bible and many other books and was featured on TV and media. Help us spread the word.

In Christ,

Brenda

Copyright 2013 by Brenda LaVelle

 

More on “On the Potter’s Wheel Again” Part II- “Trusting the Answers”- Visions Becoming Reality- Matthew 6:25-34- Big and Rich Video

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Dear readers, fans, and followers (I hope you’re still following me after all this time), this has been a very trying time for me, for after my last post to you my home was broken into and my computer destroyed!  It is almost as if Satan himself is trying to stop me from using this blog for God’s honor and glory, but I will not let even him stop me!  I heartily apologize for taking so long to get this post to you!  Please, please, forgive me!  I know you don’t want excuses, but POSTS!  I had been actually avoiding finishing this and wondering why it had looked like so formidable a task?  I’d been talking to God about it and listening for His answers, but finally “broken” enough about it to go ahead and get started back up when my computer got destroyed.   I am more determined than ever to get this site back up and running as smoothly as possible!  I’ve not been able to replace my computer until now, since I got my disability check and could not get to one because I have no transportation.  Thank God  I am back on track with a way to communicate with you, but I will never leave my laptop at home again.

But also, maybe God has let me come to the point of brokenness and put me on the Potter’s Wheel again so I could myself be in genuine touch with this matter to better expound upon it to you and let it speak to me at the same time.  It’s said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, and I also believe that we teach sometimes what we need to learn (or relearn).  And getting back to Dr. Stanley’s book, The Blessings of Brokenness, was definitely where I ended up and needed to be.  The joy of the Lord had left me, as I had taken my eyes off Him, and I was living in utter misery without a way to get back to you!  When I finally came back to the point where I was placing all my faith in Him to provide all I need, things have just seemed to fallen into place once again.

Enough of the past.  Let’s begin where we left off:

Now, as we’re looking at some of the obstacles to brokenness, I can share one of the perspectives I found myself coming from:  Self!  I was definitely feeling sorry for myself when disaster befell me!  The more I asked the Lord, “Why me?”, the more I heard, “Why not you?” from Him.  Did I think I was immune from what felt like the world coming against me just because I am a servant of His?  Jesus was the greatest servant of all, and He paid for it with suffering here on this earth and His bodily life!  God did not spare even His only begotten Son in the fulfilling of His will.  What was my suffering compared to His?  As I was asking the Lord for answers to my question, He brought me back to the blessing of this poem He had given me in the past:

Trusting the Answers 11/5/09

When I pray I trust You
To give me the right answer.
I know it is through
Your wisdom and candor

That You give when You deem fit
And withhold when You know best.
It is always by Your wit
When You make me so blessed,

And in Your grander scheme
When You answer, “Wait,” or, “No.”
But I will never scream
When the waiting seems so slow,

Because You see all time
And I see only now.
You’re the Master of the rhyme
And the reasons You allow

Things to go the way they do
In my life because You love.
I will keep on praising You,
As the angels up above,

And keep on trusting Your plans,
That they’re all the best for me,
Knowing You understand
The things I cannot see.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

There’s where the “self” comes in:  When it’s US who has a load to carry we take it personally, but we needn’t!  I now consider it fortunate that my computer was dead, and not me.  Not that “I” am that important, but I feel like God thinks my mission for Him is.  It is more important now than ever before, because I want to try to make a difference for God as long as I live!  And though I am not afraid of dying, I am grateful for every breath He lets me take but my “self” is what I need to die to so Jesus can live in and through my life.  In the midst of my time together with Him this morning, I took the time out to take my dog outside and watch the sun rise with him.  It was so glorious to watch the new day dawn, the pastel peach, pink, and purple hues turning my mind to the One who paints the sky each morning and evening, and reminding me just how awesome God is!  And it’s all for each and every one of us to pay attention to it and the One Who created it!

And God reminded me again that I am not the center of the universe.  He is!  And that is why “self” can be a hindrance to our becoming “broken” and refusing to let Him put us on the Potter’s Wheel again to refine and reshape us to make us more like His Son.  Yes I did let myself succumb to discouragement and depression.  And He let me lay as a fallow field, waiting, in His infinite wisdom, for the rains and His Son to bring my life back into me again.  You might say Christians shouldn’t do that, but we’re all only human, and yes, some Christians do succumb to discouragement and depression unless they KEEP their eyes on God and don’t turn to themselves for the answers to life’s puzzling questions.  But God will let anyone turn back to “self” if only to bring them to the point of brokenness again to learn the lessons He intends them to learn.

I’m only human and you have my greatest apologies for abandoning you. Part of this comes back to what I addressed before about co-dependency and I let the world overwhelm me.  It’s part of Satan’s deceiving tricks and I couldn’t see the forest for the trees as he played his cards in my life.  I allowed other people to lead me to believe that what I’m attempting to accomplish here for God isn’t important, that God’s will for my life and the mission He’s given me wasn’t as important as attending to their wants and wishes.  I listened to someone who believes that saying a prayer over your food at the meal table is paramount, but spending time with God, one-on-one, on a regular basis is “frivolous.”  That is so untrue, for me, because I NEED my TIME with God and I need that close “relationship” with Him as with no one else!  One thing I truly believe is that “love” is spelled: T-I-M-E, whether that relationship is with God, our families, or friends.  And as “time” is one of God’s blessings to me, I believe that I need to “tithe” my precious time with my Heavenly Father with my best, which for me is the first thing in the morning.  When I start my day with God I am getting attuned to His plans for me for the rest of the day.

This next excerpt from My Utmost For His Highest is a prime example of my personal experience from this:

Visions Becoming Reality    July 6

“The parched ground shall become a pool….”                                                                 Isaiah 35:7

“We always have a vision of something before it actually becomes real to us.  When we realize that the vision is real, but it is not yet real in us, Satan comes to us with his temptations, and we are inclined to say that there is no point in even trying to continue.  Instead of the vision becoming real to us, we have entered into a valley of humiliation.                                                 Life is not as idle ore,                                                                                                               But iron dug from central gloom,                                                                                                          And battered by the shocks of doom                                                                                       To shape and use.                                                                                                              God gives us a vision, and then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision.  It is in the valley that so many of us give up and faint.  Every God-given vision will become real if we will only have patience.  Just think of the enormous amount of free time God has!  He is never in a hurry.  Yet we are always in such a frantic hurry.  While still in the light of the glory of the vision, we go right out to do things, but the vision is not yet real in us.   God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision.  Ever since God gave us the vision, He has been at work.  He is getting us into the shape of the goal He has for us, and yet over and over again we try to escape from the  Sculptor’s hand in an effort to batter ourselves into the shape of our own goal.                     The vision that God gives is not some unattainable castle in the sky, but a vision of what God wants you to be down here.  Allow the Potter to put you on His wheel and whirl you around as He desires.  Then as sure as God is God and you are you, you will turn out as an exact likeness of the vision.  But don’t lose heart in the process.   If you have ever had a vision from God, you may try as you will to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never allow it.”

And I became “of” the world instead of just “in” it, which is not my way as a Christian.  And yes, I have my failures and my faults, and God kept nagging at me and urging me to return to you but I needed a time of resting and waiting and allowing God to remove the blinders from my eyes to see it was Satan getting me down with his lies and deceit.  As I turned to my “self” to try to find the way out of my trials and tribulations, I allowed myself to see myself as a victim of circumstances beyond my control.  Operating in the “self” mode removes me from my core knowledge that only God is in control and I become “out of control” in my thinking and behavior.  I am only a victim of my own circumstances when I don’t hold on to the truths I know from God and His Word!  And when I am in the “victim mode” as with co-dependency, I also victimize others, including my Lord.  I start seeking a “fix” to my situations myself instead of depending on God.  As God had me on the Potter’s Wheel He was reminding me of some of the following Scriptures:

Matthew 6:25-34

Do Not Worry

25 “Therefore I say to you, ‘do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  26 “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?  27 “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?  28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin:  29 “and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  30 “Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?  31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  32 “For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.  34 “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

And as I was studying this Scripture, the Lord showed me how I had been looking to myself for the answers to each day’s trouble instead of heeding verse 33, seeking first Him and  His righteousness!  How I thanked Him for the remembrance of His Word!  And turning to Him for His wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.  I renounced the victim image as I remembered His description of me: Beloved Daughter, Blessed, a Saint, and a Royal Princess.  The next post will bless you with two poems about this that God has blessed me with. But I am leaving you now with one of the most awesome videos and songs that I have seen and heard in a long time:

God bless you all today and always!

Brenda

Copyright 2013 by Brenda LaVelle

Happy Easter and Welcome Back- Perfect Gifts- Perfectly Imperfect- Journal Entry For Today

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Dear followers, past and present, I beg your very needed forgiveness for my delay in getting this post to you, but as a result, I am in a better position to share more personal details from  my “experience” On The Potter’s Wheel.  You have all never been out of my heart and thoughts, but God has let Satan sift me so God could get working through my life once again, to you.  This is to say that God has been “working” on me to get me back to the place where you might better be able to relate to what I have gone through to in your own lives.  Through my experiences on the Potter’s Wheel, you may have an “aha!” experience yourselves with your own situations and become more drawn to God in an even more sacred way than you thought possible.  I know I have.

You may be able to see where God is allowing Satan to sift you in your life for God’s own best for you.  This has been my personal experience over the past few months.  I spoke before about how the Evil One will use all his wiles and deceit to pull us away from God at the strongest points in our lives.  I was not pulled “away” from God, but brought closer to Him as a result of Satan’s sifting.  The Light of God finally shone so brightly upon what Satan was attempting to do and had done, that my faith in Jesus and our Heavenly Father and His Holy Spirit has been increased a hundred-fold!  God IS FAITHFUL, ALWAYS HAS BEEN, and ALWAYS WILL BE!!!

Maybe you, as I was, are questioning this aspect of our God.  And maybe, through my words, given through the Holy Spirit, you can find the Light of God shining through your life in ways you have never grasped before.  That is my true hope for you with this posting and all subsequent others.  My spirit and my conviction that HERE is where God wants me has been renewed with vigor!

It is late, Easter Sunday, and it seems only fitting to me to give you the “resurrection” of My Poems From God on the Resurrection Day of out Lord Jesus Christ.  My thoughts and heart have been with Him today and with our Heavenly Father who asked for and received obedience to His plan of redemption for the sins of His people.  So much has been “seen anew” and revealed, once again today by the Holy Spirit in my quiet time with the Father and Son.  I have so much to speak to you about from my absence here over the last few months that I hardly know where to start, except to begin by sharing some of the entry from my journal today:

“Easter Sunday, 3/31/13- Dear Almighty Heavenly Father, God of Lights and the Universe, thank you for this glorious new Easter Sunday!  Thank you for raising Your Son, Jesus Christ from the dead on this day!  Let me arise with Him from my slumber to resurrect our blog today!  Oh, to be waking up at 5 a.m. in the mornings again to come to You in the early morning hours before the world and its distractions are awake!  How I long for the peaceful days gone by!  So many times I wish I could enter a convent, or such, and live there amid a holy environment, surrounded by quiet and meditation and sacredness!  But I, like Paul, must be content in whatever circumstances You place me and remember each moment is sacred no matter where I am.  I keep asking, “Why?” and sometimes You give me answers, or let me form my own conclusions, however erroneous they may be.  The answer I am hearing today is, “Overcome, by the strength of Jesus!”  Maybe to help me learn more lessons of how to be “in” the world, but not “of” it.  Oh, Lord, what a struggle I have with that!  Only You know my pain from it!”

(At this point I could no longer stand the distraction of my roomer’s loud voice on the other side of my bedroom wall talking on the phone so I picked up my pencil, journal, lap desk, and went outside to the back porch to resume my “God time.”)  From there, in a comfy antique chair after a fairly heavy rain, I commenced with God:

“Why is Billy’s voice so loud?  Is it to “train” me to listen harder for Your still, small voice?  I DO hear it, Abba, even within the noise and din!  But now I’m out in the cool, clean, rain-washed, bird-song filled air.  Closer to You in a way.  Not perfect, but more conducive to communion with You.  ”If’s” and “if only’s” fill my mind.  But I hear You say, “acceptance.” Like “accept” my Mother, as You command me to love all people.  I must accept that she is human, just like me, only she has no sense of You and Your Kingdom in her life, which is sad!  No, Father, this is not a perfect world like Your Heavenly Kingdom.  You created a “perfect world” in the Garden of Eden, but Adam and Eve chose to sin in disobedience to Your command.  And it cost Your Son’s human life as atonement for our sins.  He became human and was tempted but remained true to You, Your plan, and Your will for Him!!!  He was perfectly obedient!  Would, may, that I be more like Him!  Please help me to see Him not only as my Savior, but as my Brother and Friend who knows of my personal struggles.  And I hate, in myself and in the world, all that You hate about sin!!!  It all makes me feel much closer to You and Him!  How awesome You ARE GOD!!!  How perfectly perfect You are and how “perfectly imperfect” am I and all mankind!  This imperfect world only gives us that much more reason to look forward to Your Kingdom on earth and in Heaven!!!  Oh, how much You teach and instruct when I come humbly before You, asking, seeking, and knocking!”

Then His Holy Spirit came from within me and gave me this poem for me and you:

Perfect Gifts   3/31/13

I ask, I seek, I knock,                                                                                                               And You give me the Rock                                                                                                                               Upon which the foundation                                                                                                                     Was built, His Creation!

He was perfect, not we,                                                                                                                          But You give eyes to see.                                                                                                                               Blind beggars want no more                                                                                                                     If they come to Your door!

You gave Your love for free                                                                                                                                  That day upon the tree,                                                                                                                                     For all the world and me,                                                                                                                                   ‘Twas only Thou and Thee!

Copyright 2013 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

The gift of this poem urged me on to convey my gratitude and thanksgiving for all God is to me and all He has done for me:

“Oh, Lord, thank You so much for that poem, as I feel it signifies the sealing of the bond between us and Resurrection Day!  How fitting!  Only You, Holy Spirit, can fit me for the work God has prepared for me my whole life!  Life and Spirit come together only through You!  Thank You for resurrecting not only Your Son, but also my spirit and zeal for Jesus,  to and for Your honor and glory!!!  Thank You for sending me “into” the world and helping me learn to be not “of” it!  Thank You for Your mission to share Your love and story!  In Jesus’ Most Holy, sacred, precious name I pray!                                                                                                               Amen and Always!”

 

I am so thankful to be back here again and hope some of my former friends will rejoin me  here.  I will be posting again shortly and regularly.  In my next post I’ll update you on my ups and downs on the Potter’s Wheel and fill you in on why I’ve been away so long.  I’m leaving you this morning with a poem I’ve given you before, but applies here too.

Happy Easter!  Jesus is Risen and alive!  Let Him live in you!

Blessings,                                                                                                                                 Brenda LaVelle

Copyright 2013 by Brenda LaVelle

 

Perfectly Imperfect

I know my only will is to be
God’s perfect soul in eternity,
But here on this earth I fall far short
Of anything of that kind or sort.

My imperfections, God knows abound,
Mistakes everywhere can always be found.
My will is strong, but my body’s weak,
So often I have to fall at His feet.

I chide myself and frustrations come quick.
I ask myself, “How can you be so sick?”
Then I look to the Lord’s love in His eyes,
And no longer can I myself despise,

Because only He was the perfect One,
And at the setting of the sun,
It’s my heart He looks into and there He sees
My soul and my tears and my lonely pleas,

To be forgiven for all my wrongs,
And He sings me His Redemption songs.
His heart goes out to me, so wide,
Because He knows I’m on His side.

He knows that in my frail humanity,
I’ll never be all I want to be,
And with calm assurance comforts me,
And tells me, “Not you, but only we.”

And I know I go down this road not alone,
But though willing, I will always be prone,
To be imperfect in my own eyes,
But perfectly imperfect until I die.

And my sins, past, present, and future,
Will always be covered in the picture
Of Jesus Christ’s bloodied form on the Cross,
And never again will I ever be lost.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!


I’m Not Gone, Just a Little Overwhelmed!- “Weak and Forlorn”

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Dear friends, fans, and readers, I deeply apologize for my lingering absence here with you,   but I have been working on my next post, but it is a long, involved one, and my life has just seemed out of control lately too.  Financial burdens abound, weighing heavily on my mind and forcing me to try to find ways to scrape together more money urgently.  But you are not forgotten nor abandoned and your next post will arrive within the next few days, God willing, and He has let me know He is.

Another thing I’ve been trying to deal with is the spam issue on this site and trying to get it resolved, but in the process of getting that under control, your approved comments are not showing up and I apologize for that too.  The customer support for the company controlling the spam does not have phone support and my e-mails about the good comments not showing up on the blog are not being comprehended correctly and I’m having problems getting the issue addressed, so please bear with me as I work diligently on this!  Your comments are important to me and I’m really angry about not getting them!

I’m going to God much of late for the strength and patience to deal with all of this at the same time, but I know He is with me and there is a reason and He will reveal the answers in His time, so let’s all hang in there together and hopefully as I get this next post done we will get everything worked out and back on track.  At least most of the spam IS being caught and I’m not having to deal with that!  Do you ever feel like this next poem?

Weak and Forlorn 3/7/08

Oh Lord, when trouble
Comes by day,
Please show me only
Your holy way.

Let me not stumble,
Trip, or fall,
But give me Yourself,
Hand and all,

That I may see
My way through,
To lay my head
On the breast of You.

When I have grown weary,
Weak, forlorn,
Let me know You will help
Me weather the storm.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 

Sometimes these days turn into weeks and drag on, but then there is the rainbow at the end of the storm, and God’s beauty shines through!  In His time, in His way!

God bless you all for bearing my trials with me!

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

 

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


More on “On the Potter’s Wheel Again” Part I- “God’s Plan of Redemption”- “Perfectly Imperfect”- “When I Can’t See”

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Going way back to my first post, “On the Potter’s Wheel Again,” I’ll be elaborating on this subject since it was really only touched upon there.  I have had so many requests for more information on most of my posts, saying that most people need more details.  So it’s back to the beginning and some re-dos.  With this topic I’m starting you out with what I call my “epic” poem on the Bible:

God’s Plan of Redemption 4/14/08 (Revised 4/20/08)

You knew from the start what You would do,
Your Creation a thought in Your mind.
You wanted to create something of You,
But You knew in the end what You’d find.

You gave man a start in Paradise
Where the fall of man began so soon.
The serpent tempted Eve with his lies
And she succumbed to his evil tune.

This brought upon man a Holy curse,
And he was cast out of Paradise,
But things from there only got worse and worse,
Man was disobedient, surely not wise.

You pleaded with man to come back to You,
To be Your people once again.
Then they promised and made altars new,
But immediately returned to sin.

You would send Your righteous punishment down,
To help them see their ungodly ways,
To turn their hearts back to You and around,
To help lighten and lengthen their days.

They would repent and obey for a while,
But soon turn back to their wicked ways.
They went on in their evil and guile,
Until You decided to end their days.

There was one righteous man upon the earth,
To him You gave Your excellent plan.
And though he was questioned the worth,
Worked on as he’d heard from the Man.

He and his sons built an ark that would hold
A pair of each creature on the earth.
For his God and this task, he was bold,
To give Creation a new birth.

After the flood and new beginning,
God hoped man would know He meant what He said.
But man, again, began in his sinning,
And man, in his trespasses, was dead.

God had known from the start how it all would end.
The thing He did not want to have to do,
Was to the earth, His only Son send,
To pay for the cost that had accrued.

But send Him He did, out of the love,
Of a Father Who knew the deadly fate,
Of a people who will not move
Out of a greedy, sinful, lustful state.

And Jesus Christ came out of the love
Of His Father and people He gave.
He let Himself come down from above
To help and save the whole human race.

Christ knew His mission here on this earth,
The horror and shame He would have to face,
But in each human being He saw worth,
And for us He took on the disgrace.

While He was here, He taught and He loved,
He healed the sick and raised the dead.
He never thought Himself to be above
Healing lepers and with them breaking bread.

He bent so low as the washing of feet,
To show us how to love one another.
His Father’s commands, all He did meet,
He called all His sisters and brothers.

He came for one thing; to die in our place,
To take the whip, the thorns, and the rod.
He also gave us mercy and grace
To have a relationship with God,

To have our many sins forgiven,
To come to our Father to pray,
Let us not with ourselves be smitten,
Let us kneel and humbly obey.

The best news is that Jesus is risen,
Sitting in Heaven at God’s right hand,
Which gives us all hope and peace within
The knowledge we’re going to that Land.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 

I talked last time about “The Blessings of Brokenness,” the title of one of Dr. Charles Stanley’s books.  I started out with that poem about the Bible because throughout it we see examples of those blessings of brokenness as well as the consequences of self-will versus surrender to God’s will.  That is basically why we spend so much time on God’s “potter’s wheel” being molded into the image of Christ Jesus.  Jesus came to this earth in human form to completely submit to His Father’s will to save humanity from the penalty of his trespasses against God.  He had exact knowledge of what He would have to go through, yet He yielded fully for our sake.

We, on the other hand, either don’t even acknowledge God exists, or, for the majority of us  who do acknowledge God, don’t really even want to know what His will for us is for fear we might be held accountable for not doing it.  You know, the old “ignorance is bliss” thing.  Well, going back to the Bible, the Israelites found out the hard way how God reacted when they groaned, murmured, complained, and ignored His will for them.  They spent forty years wandering in the desert, on the potter’s wheel, with the only two faithful of the original group finally entering the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey.

.Even poor old Moses who led the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt, putting up with their whining and disrespect for forty years in the wilderness, was not allowed to enter the Promised  Land because of disobedience to the Lord.  But the descendants of the original group fleeing Egypt got the reward of their lineage by entering with Caleb and Joshua, the two faithful spies who had urged the ancestors to follow God’s word and go in and take the land at the beginning of their journey.

Even during their years in the wilderness, on the potter’s wheel, the Lord was good to the Israelites by things like providing them with the manna and never letting their sandals wear out.  But their disobedience cost them their heritage.  So what does that mean for us today?  Will one instance of disobedience cost us our salvation like Moses’ did him his place in the Promised Land?  The answer is, “No,” because the Old Testament was under the Law and in New Testament times we are under grace.  What does that mean?

It means once we are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, nothing can take away our salvation.  But from the time of our salvation on, we need to be growing into the likeness of Jesus.  One of my favorite books is “Just Like Jesus” by Max Lucado, and in it he says that God loves us just the way we are, but too much to leave us this way.  Thus, the potter’s wheel, where God is shaping and reshaping us more to the image of His Son.  He wants to break us of all our self-sufficiency and self-will so we will totally submit to His will for our lives and depend on Him only for all our needs.  How hard is that?

For most of us, pretty hard to nearly impossible.  Why?  I think partly because we don’t even realize how tightly we are holding on to things.  Do we think we’re smarter than God? Well, only when it comes to certain things, right?  What things?  Ask yourself that question!  Now, why would you think you know ANYTHING better than God?  Ask yourself THAT question!  And if you have an answer for that, I believe you have some wrong beliefs either about God or yourself.  Sorry, that’s just the way I believe.  After all, God IS Omnipotent (all-powerful; limitless power).                                                                             It is he (God) who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.- Jeremiah 10:12 RSV

Really, are you that awesome?  God IS Omnipresent (Is everywhere, including here.).    For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things.- Romans 11:36 BBE           God IS Omniscient (Knows all things.).                                                                                            By wisdom the Lord founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.  By his knowledge the deep fountains of the earth burst forth, and the clouds poured down rain.- Proverbs 3:19-20 NLT

I’m really not trying to insult you or smart-off here, I’m just making a statement from a Biblical point of view.  I stand in awe of the majesty and magnitude of God, and know He knows ALL and that’s why in my morning journal I usually ask Him for HIS wisdom, knowledge, and understanding for that day.  I know pride goes before a fall and I know WHO God IS.  And who and what I’m not.  And I am nothing without Him!  But I am His!

So…why am I on the potter’s wheel so much?  Because God loves me too much to leave me the way I am and I don’t mind being on the potter’s wheel because it means He loves me enough to be molding me more into Christ-likeness.  Read the next poem:

Perfectly Imperfect

I know my only will is to be
God’s perfect soul in eternity,
But here on this earth I fall far short
Of anything of that kind or sort.

My imperfections, God knows abound,
Mistakes everywhere can always be found.
My will is strong, but my body’s weak,
So often I have to fall at His feet.

I chide myself and frustrations come quick.
I ask myself, “How can you be so sick?”
Then I look to the Lord’s love in His eyes,
And no longer can I myself despise,

Because only He was the perfect One,
And at the setting of the sun,
It’s my heart He looks into and there He sees
My soul and my tears and my lonely pleas,

To be forgiven for all my wrongs,
And He sings me His Redemption songs.
His heart goes out to me, so wide,
Because He knows I’m on His side.

He knows that in my frail humanity,
I’ll never be all I want to be,
And with calm assurance comforts me,
And tells me, “Not you, but only we.”

And I know I go down this road not alone,
But though willing, I will always be prone,
To be imperfect in my own eyes,
But perfectly imperfect until I die.

And my sins, past, present, and future,
Will always be covered in the picture
Of Jesus Christ’s bloodied form on the Cross,
And never again will I ever be lost.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

I’ll tell you how I came to see myself as perfectly imperfect.  I had this beautiful part-Siamese kitten who had gorgeous baby-blue eyes and half her nose was pink and the other half black.  As I was gazing at her one day, I was thinking how “perfect” she was, when I realized that the color line on her nose was crooked.  Then I thought about how God had made her perfectly imperfect!  And when I learned about God and me and how God loves me just the way I am, and that I won’t ever be “perfect” until I get to heaven, I knew I was perfectly imperfect!

Now I could use that as an excuse to never want to improve myself.  But my friends, that is NO excuse to not “raise the bar” and become more like Jesus.  The reason God puts us on the potter’s wheel until we squeal with pain is because He wants to work out the flaws in our personalities, minds, and hearts so we will come to repentance and full submission to His will for our lives.  He really wants the BEST for us, when we are willing to settle for just the good or the mediocre.  I know He loves me so very, very much, but I also know that I really have no concept of the breadth and depth of that love, except in knowing He sacrificed His only begotten Son for my redemption.  And that is really almost inconceivable that GOD would do that for me!  And He did it for you!

 

When I Can’t See 8/15/08

When I can’t see the forest for the trees,
I come to You on my unsteady knees,
Asking and begging and praying, just, “Please!”
I know only You know what are my needs.

I trust in the Holy Spirit, so wise,
To read what is in my pitiful cries,
And knowing my Father never denies,
Know that His best I will never despise.

My heart is broken and crumbling inside,
But by His wishes I will abide,
Knowing only that He is my Guide,
And He is more than able to provide.

In this knowledge I find my secure rest,
And in my mind’s eye, I lean on His breast.
No longer am I obsessed and distressed,
Knowing His goal is for me to be blessed.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 

That’s where God wants me on the potter’s wheel; broken.  Broken-hearted over any and all sins I have committed, broken of my pride, my self-sufficiency, self-will.  If I’m not “broken” I can’t be “fixed,” or molded to His will and be depending on Him, trusting in Him, surrendering my all to Him to do with as He pleases.  I have to know that He is God and I am not and never will be, and that He is the most capable One of taking care of all my affairs.  I do, and I want you to, too!  Soon we’re going to continue this discussion with some comments from Dr. Stanley’s “The Blessings of Brokenness” with some of the obstacles we might encounter that keep us from coming to the point of relinquishing control and letting God work on us.

It’s great being back on track with my posting and being able to satisfy your requests for more details on these subjects.  God bless all you until you hear from me soon!

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

I Haven’t Been Away, But I’ve Been Busy- Answers to Frequently Asked Questions-FAQ SHEET

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Dear readers and fans, I know it’s been a long time since I posted on here, but I’ve been frantically searching for a way to get your hundreds of comments a day moderated and answered and have consulted with an expert in this area and tried one of her suggestions on Saturday and Sunday, but it didn’t work for our situation, mainly because that solution only deals with English language and this blog is multi-lingual in its commentaries, plus, with being a new format, I don’t think anyone could figure it out because in the several hours I had the new plug-in activated there was absolutely no activity.  But the minute I deactivated it, the comments started pouring in again.  Friends, I have been continually, night and day trying to catch up on your prior and current comments, but I am still lagging far behind, I’m sorry to say, for your sake.  And mine!  I’m not giving up, though, but I do badly need an outside sourced moderation system in place to remove the spam and trash and give me a chance to be able to try to keep up with answering the legitimate comments coming in.  This is one of the biggest reasons I need some donations from you so badly!

I want to be giving you more posts like you want but until this frustrating issue gets resolved, I don’t know what to do but keep plugging along.  I am still researching alternatives, and one is to do one thing I am going to do now, which is to answer some of your most frequently asked questions here, and save me from answering each of you individually in an e-mail, as I just do not have the time to do at them moment or foreseeable future!  I will try to answer each of these as completely as possible so hopefully you will have no more questions about them.  Please read these over carefully and see if any of these FAQ’s answer a question you would like to ask me, and if it does, please refrain from asking for the same quesion again.  It will save me a lot of time and effort in not having to even read the same questions over again. let alone approve or spam them.

First, let me give you some ground rules and facts about commenting on my blog:

TRASH is anything NOT related to my blog or Christianity or God.  It is irrelevant news briefs from Korea or China or anywhere else spamming me, it is advertisements for handbags, payday loans, viagra, cialis, generic antibiotics, or anything, it is promotion of a website or product totally unrelated to my blog or posts and IT WILL BE TRASHED!

SPAM includes all of the above, but is a little trickier sometimes.  It can be a seemingly legitimate comment, but instead of a person giving his or her name as the author, they more or less advertise their “product” or “line”  (Click this…), in the Author space so if it is approved and you look at it you might be inclined to click on their link or website in their URL.  This is happening over and over again and I am just catching on to it and now am  spamming most of them.  I am checking out websites and links so you aren’t led to porn or other unacceptable sites from mine.  Please forgive me if I have missed something in the past.  And if you are some of the spammers trying to pull the wool over my eyes, God has opened them to you and I will be spamming you too, so don’t bother spamming my website anymore!

If you want your comment taken seriously, please use your real name in the Author box and a real website and e-mail address, as I will be checking them out to filter out the trash and spam from the honest-to-goodness comments and readers.

I haven’t had the time to respond to all the requests for interviews, link exchanges, guest  posts on my blog or mine on others or vice versa, but am open to all, so if I haven’t gotten back with you yet, please e-mail Brenda LaVelle at blessed53@mypoemsfromgod.com about any of these!

Yes, I am Brenda LaVelle, owner and author of this blog and my CONTACT E-MAIL is blesses53@mypoemsfromgod.com.

Now, for some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and my answers:

FAQ:  Wow, incredible blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The overall look of your website is magnificent, let alone the content!

Answer:  Altogether, I have only been blogging for about a year or a little less.  And it is only God’s help that makes it look easy!  I usually spend quite a few hours on each post with much prayer and meditation on my presentation to get a feel for exactly what it is that God wants me to say and how.  There is also research into relevant Scripture and other references on some subjects that I use and copying them takes time.  And that is just the writing.  As you can see from the first part of this post, there is more to a blog than just writing the posts, especially if you end up with a large reader base and a lot of comments and questions and requests of you that you need to answer.  And then there is the issue of getting your site set up exactly the way you want it and learning about your blog platform and how best to utilize it and work with it to your best advantage.  Looks can be deceiving! But all in all, it is all worth it if you are in love with what you are doing and have a real passion for it!

MY AFFILIATE LINK & HOW TO SUBSCRIBE FOR A BLOG SITE: 

FAQ:  Magnificent beat ! I would like to apprentice while you amend your website, how could i subscribe for a blog site? The account helped me a acceptable deal. I had been a little bit acquainted of this your broadcast offered bright clear idea

FAQ:  Excellent blog here! Also your web site loads up fast! What web host are you using? Can I get your affiliate link to your host? I wish my site loaded up as quickly as yours lol

FAQ:  Nice blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere? A design like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make my blog stand out. Please let me know where you got your theme. Kudos

FAQ: Hey this is somewhat of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding knowledge so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be enormously appreciated!

Answers:  I want to answer all 4 of these questions here because this answer includes all of them.  To subscribe for a website, I recommend following my affiliate link below to GoDaddy, which I believe is the best in the business for all your website needs and is tops in customer service 24/7!  Their rates for domain names, hosting, and all the bells and whistles are very reasonable and their hosting INCLUDES free blogging platforms.  I chose WordPress.org because I was the most familiar with it and it does use a WYSIWYG editor.  My WordPress site and theme was downloaded and set up for me free by GoDaddy and I easily customized it myself for the things I wanted. To go a little farther witth what I want to do with my site I’ll have to learn a little Codex coding, but there is an excellent Codex WordPress Tutorial that will teach me all I need to know.  And if you use my affiliate link, if you don’t do your order online under my link I won’t get the credit and commission for your purchase, so don’t let them talk you into taking your order over the phone, but gather your needed information and go back and enter your order online under my link, please!

MY WEB HOST AFFILIATE LINK:                                                                             http://x.co/bpl53

Thanks, and blessings!

FOR ASPIRING WRITERS & HOW TO GET STARTED: 

FAQ:  I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own weblog and was curious what all is needed to get set up? I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny? I’m not very web smart so I’m not 100% certain. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Kudos

FAQ:  Amazing blog! Do you have any hints for aspiring writers? I’m planning to start my own website soon but I’m a little lost on everything. Would you suggest starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m totally overwhelmed .. Any tips? Appreciate it!

Answers:  First of all, for aspiring writers, you need to have a real passion for what you’re going to be writing about and a good grasp of grammar and communication skills.  Then you need to put yourself in your audience’s mind to try to figure out what it is they might want from you.  And always, always, follow your heart!!!  As for free or paid?  I usually believe you get what you pay for and there are so many free WordPress users out there who say their sites have been hacked and they have lost months of hard work they put into their blogs.  I definitely say go back up to my last answer and get a hosted WordPress site from GoDaddy!  A free WordPress site is a .com site and the paid one is a .org site, and WordPress.org just has so much free information to help you with all of your needs and tutorials on just about everything connected with their platform.  And GoDaddy customer service can always point you in the right direction for whatever you need.

As far as what is needed to get set up:  First you need a good theme, then a good domain name, then a good hosting account and I always recommend you at least get a SSL security certificate for you site, but there are more security features available as well as business certificates and the such.  With a good discount coupon code, you can get set up probably around $100 or less to begin with and always come back and add on.  Just Google “GoDaddy discount codes” to find the best ones available at the time and use it on your order.  You’d be surprised how much a 30%, 25%, or even 20% discount can take off your total order!  And then become a proud GoDaddy affiliate!  And incorporate other affiliate programs into your website.

One word of caution:  You need to have patience, persevere, and always be learning!  If it works, don’t fix it.  If it doesn’t work, improve it or try something else.

Go for it!!!  Hope this has helped, and best of luck and blessings!                                         Brenda LaVelle

 

FAQ:  My developer is trying to convince me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the costs. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on a variety of websites for about a year and am worried about switching to another platform. I have heard fantastic things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can transfer all my wordpress content into it? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer:  Sorry, wish I could help, but I am totally clueless on this entire subject!

 

FAQ:  {Awesome|Very good|Superb|Wonderful|Fantastic|Excellent|Great} {site|website|blog} you have here but I was {curious|wanting to know|curious about|wondering} if you knew of any {user discussion forums|message boards|community forums|discussion boards|… Greetings! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I genuinely enjoy reading through your articles.  Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that cover the same subjects? Thank you so much!…

Answer:  I am in the process of doing some research for you on this and will be getting up a listing soon but here are two sites I recommend:

www.shelovesgod.com                                                                                                                               www.thecypresstimes.com (a Cypress, TX online Christian newspaper)

 

FAQ:  I was recommended this website by my cousin. I’m not sure whether this post is written by him as no one else know such detailed about my problem. You are amazing! Thanks!

Answer:  I don’t know if this is one cousin who has the most cousins in the world, or if this is just a God/cousin thing, but I get at least one or two if not more of these a day.  All I can tell you is, no, your cousin didn’t write that post, and I don’t have a clue about your problem.  I am glad your cousin guided you here for an answer to your problem or problems, but it is not me who is amazing.  But God IS, for He is the One who uses me as a vessel to help heal some of His children here in my ministry with the words, images, and poetry He gives me.  Just consider yourself welcome from me and blessed by God and your cousin!

(This comment is usually on the post “I Need You Now” and “God is in Control, All is Well”

 

FAQ:  With having so much content and articles do you ever run into any issues of plagiarism or copyright infringement? My site has a lot of unique content I’ve either written myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the internet without my permission. Do you know any methods to help prevent content from being ripped off? I’d certainly appreciate it.

I’m sure there is a lot of it I am not aware of because I’ve gotten a few comments accusing me of using somebody else’s material.  I let them know this is all MY own original material and if they know of someone else using it, kindly drop me an e-mail letting me know who it is.  I had a rash of some people only leaving some people’s names in comments and am going to check them out to see if they are using my content.  I get all those comments that say, “I think I saw where you visited my website and I’m returning the favor.  Guess it’s OK to use some of your ideas on my site.”  I answer all of those with this answer:

You may quote me if you give credit due and a link back to my site.  Use my ideas as your own?  No.  Thanks.

I let them know it’s NOT OK just to “use” my ideas.  I don’t know what else to do.  Just let them know that your material is copyrighted by you.

 

FAQ:  We’re a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your website offered us with valuable information to work on. You have done a formidable job and our whole community will be thankful to you.

Answer:  This isn’t a question, but I get a lot of these comments and they pique my interest.  If you are a volunteer who is making a comment like this, I’d really appreciate it if you’d shoot me a quick e-mail to Brenda LaVelle at blessed53@mypoemsfromgod.com and give me a short heads-up as to how exactly my writing has blessed you and what community you are working with and how your new information is going to bless them.  Just out of curiosity and to bless me for blessing you.  Thanks.

Blessings,                                                                                                                                 Brenda LaVelle

HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH ME:

FAQ:  Thank you for the good writeup. It in fact was a amusement account it. Look advanced to far added agreeable from you! By the way, how could we communicate?

Answer:  I have contact information under my blogroll but no one seems to find it.  I also have comments from many people wanting to talk to me more about my article on AOL.  I’m in the dark there, because I didn’t even know I had an article on AOL, but if someone could enlighten me as to what it was, I’d be glad to discuss it with them.  Below is my contact information:

Brenda LaVelle at blessed53@mypoemsfromgod.com

I’d love to communicate with any of you.  Feel free to drop me an e-mail and I will reply!

WHERE TO EMPLOY PROFESSIONAL WRITERS:

FAQ:  Very nice post and straight to the point. I am not sure if this is actually the best place to ask but do you guys have any idea where to employ some professional writers? Thanks.

Answer:  I don’t know of anywhere but here.  I am actually in the market for hire, depending on the type of assignment, and am excellent at research.  Inquiries may be sent to:

Brenda LaVelle at blessed53@myppoemsfromgod.com

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

 

Well, that wraps up my FAQ’s but within the next day I will be posting a follow-up to “On the Potter’s Wheel Again” by popular demand for more details and exposition on that post to be followed by follow-ups on my other posts as well, again, by popular demand!  Don’t worry, there will be plenty on new poems in each post and fresh insights to share going into greater depth than before, at your request.

For now, I hope I have answered a lot of your questions, maybe even some you were afraid to ask.  Have blessed moments until you hear from me soon!

With love in Christ,                                                                                                                   Brenda LaVelle

 

 

“Do I Suffer Thee, Lord?”- Meditation From Haggai- “The Slippery One”

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Do I suffer Thee, Lord? 7/12/08

Do I suffer Thee, Lord,
With my sloth and distrust,
With the things I hang on to,
That will rot and just rust?

Do I suffer Thee, Lord,
With my haphazard ways,
When I put the things off
That would lengthen my days?

Do I suffer Thee, Lord,
With my wants and my wishes,
For new clothes on my back,
Or new plates and new dishes?

Do I suffer Thee, Lord,
When My prayers get cut short,
Because the telephone rings,
Or I’m just out of sorts?

Do I suffer Thee, Lord,
When I have anger arise,t
And bring it all to You,overloaded, moral
Though I know it’s no surprise?

Do I suffer Thee, Lord,
When my patience wears thin,
When I get overloaded
Because I’ve let the world in?

Do I suffer Thee, Lord?
Yes, I know that I do,
Though You know that’s the last thing
I want to put You through.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 

I have learned over the years that taking a regular honest  moral inventory of myself is a preventive measure to avoid the suffering that comes along with a disobedient heart and mind.  The above poem came from God as I was in such a time of inventory.  Do any of us want to be a burden on or suffer a loved one or friend?  Then especially if God is the most important person in your life and your personal Friend and Savior, is it not necessary to go directly to Him in prayer about the areas of your life that need “housecleaning?”  I felt it so.  Jesus is the most important person in my life and out of my love for Him I want to let Him know that!  God only knows imperfect I am!  And I would rather take the time here on this earth to judge myself through God’s eyes and change what needs to be changed, than to get to Heaven and not hear that, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”  Wouldn’t you?

Our God is a loving God, but He is also a righteous and jealous God.  He wants  obedience, but He wants it to be given freely and with a glad heart.  If we sow disobedience, we reap consequences, but if we sow obedience, we reap rewards, and such it is with tithing.  Since the beginning of time man has had free will.  God doesn’t give it to us to just give us enough room to hang ourselves in His eyes, but to give each person the option of choosing to really commit themselves to Him out of love, or to live “in the world.”  He wants our love so badly that He gave His only begotten Son to die in our place for our sins so that we may partake of His mercy and grace through repentance and salvation in Jesus Christ.  He wants us to choose for Him, but it is each individual’s choice alone.  That way when we decide that His ways are really better than the ways of the world and come to Him in total surrender of our lives to His will for us, He knows that we truly love Him!

It is my belief that the choice to be a bondservant of Jesus is the highest calling one can come to.  And to be that bondservant means that we give all of ourselves to the Lord. And He does want all of each of us, including the good, the bad, and the ugly.  He, of all, knows each of us better than we even know ourselves.  (Isn’t that a scary thought?)  He predestined each of our days before the beginning of time and knew us in our mother’s womb.  After all, God bought us each with such a great price that He deserves to own everyone who calls Him, “Lord.”  And if He owns us, He also owns everything that we own.  God doesn’t need our money, but He commands us to bring the firstfruits of our labor into His storehouse not only to further His Kingdom, but to give us the privilege of showing our love for Him by being obedient to His Word.,

Rick Joyner, in his booklet “Overcoming the Spirit of Poverty” tells us “when slavery is freedom.”  He states: “It is obvious not all believers are bondservants.  Many really do come to an understanding of the sacrifice of Jesus for their sins, but they still go on living their lives for themselves.  We were the slaves of sin and were purchased by the cross.  If we are Christ’s, we are no longer our own, we belong to Him.  A bondslave does not live for himself, but for his master.  This commitment is not just an intellectual agreement with certain biblical principles; it is the commitment to a radical lifestyle of obedience.

“A bondservant does not have any money of his own, and he therefore cannot spend freely what he has been entrusted with, since it is not his.  His time, and even the family of a bondservant, belongs to his master.  To voluntarily become a slave is the ultimate commitment that can be made in this world.  That is what it really means to embrace the cross.”

“Even though the Lord purchased us with His blood, He will not force anyone to be His bondservant.  In Scripture a bondservant was one who was able to go free, but loved his master so much that he  pchose to be his slave for the rest of his life.  We, too, are free to choose whether we will be a bonservant or not.  God allows us to choose whether we will serve Him or not because freedom is required for true worship, or for true obedience from the heart.  There can be no obedience from the heart unless there is the freedom to disobey.”

“We are free to go on living for ourselves, but it is the ultimate folly.  We must know the Lord as our Source and keep ore trust in Him.  The key to our survival in this time is being a bondslave.  Every master is obliged to provide for his slaves, and we have the most dependable Master of all.  He will take care of His own.

“Being a bondservant of the Lord is to become His slave, but it is also the greatest freedom we can ever know in this life.  When we are united with Him, by taking His yoke, we die to this world just as He did.  When we are truly dead to the world there is nothing the world can do to us.  It is impossible for a dead man to fear, to be offended, or to feel remorse because he loses some of his possessions.  To the degree that we fear the loss of our possessions, or positions, that is probably the degree to which we are still not dead to these things.  The enemy uses fear to bind us just as the Lord uses faith to set us free.”

“When we are dead to this world but alive to Christ, when we have Him, all of the treasures of this earth seem pretty insignificant.  When we are seated with the King of Kings on His throne, what pull can any earthly possession have for us?  This does not mean that we do not have a genuine care for our jobs or ministries here, but we care for them because they have been entrusted to us by Him, and we engage in them as worship unto Him.  If our positions here are taken from us, we are still seated with Him, and we will worship Him in whatever way He calls us to next.  We are His slaves, and we must be content with whatever job He gives us.

“When Christ is our Life, our Trust, and the true Desire of our hearts, He can trust us with the earthly possessions and positions that we are called to rule over.  But if He is not our Life, our Trust, and the Desire of our hearts, our possessions and positions will rule over us.  Whoever or whatever rules over us is in fact our lord.  We are entering a time when the Lordship of Jesus must be more than a doctrine–it must be a profound and continuing reality in our lives.  Then we will be free indeed.  When we are fully yoked to Him, having cast off all of the yokes of this present evil age, He will then be free to trust us with the unlimited resources of His kingdom.”

We need to see God not only as a God of love, but a God who expects His commands to be obeyed, then we come to realize He wants His people to love Him in awe and fear.  He sets high standards for those He calls His own and expects them to live up to those standards in obedience to His Word in word and deed.  The book of Haggai is one of my favorite examples of God’s call to obedience.  It is only two chapters long, and I have included it for your benefit here:

1 In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying,  2 Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD’s house should be built. 3 Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying,  4 Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?  5 Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.  6 Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.  7 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.  8 Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD.  9 Ye looked for much, and, lo it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the LORD of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house.  10 Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit.  11 And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands.  12 Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the LORD. 13 Then spake Haggai the LORD’s messenger in the LORD’s message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith the LORD.  14 And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the LORD of hosts, their God,  15 In the four and twentieth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.

1 In the seventh month, in the one and twentieth day of the month, came the word of the LORD by the prophet Haggai, saying,  2 Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and to the residue of the people, saying,  3 Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?  4 Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the LORD; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the LORD, and work: for I am with you, saith the LORD of hosts:  5 According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not.  6 For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;  7 And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts.  8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts.  9 The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.  10 In the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying,  11 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying,  12 If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No.  13 Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean.  14 Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the LORD; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean.  15 And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the LORD:  16 Since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.  17 I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the LORD.  18 Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid, consider it.  19 Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth: from this day will I bless you.  20 And again the word of the LORD came unto Haggai in the four and twentieth day of the month, saying,  21 Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I will shake the heavens and the earth;  22 And I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen; and I will overthrow the chariots, and those that ride in them; and the horses and their riders shall come down, every one by the sword of his brother.  23 In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the LORD, and will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee, saith the LORD of hosts.  (Haggai 1,2  ENG)

God had returned a portion of the captives back to Judah from exile to begin rebuilding His temple.  But there became roadblocks, or stumbling blocks, along the way so the freed people just gave up on the project and began rebuilding their own personal lives and homes while the temple lay in ruins.  God became displeased with them and sent them a blight to open their eyes to turn them back to Him.  They ignored all the signs and warnings about their disobedience until God used Zerubbabel to verbally rouse them from their ungodly slumber and return them to a place where they became obedient once again.

Meditation on Haggai    5/17/08

“Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses. and this temple to lie in ruins?” Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!”
Haggai 1:4-5 (NKJV)

The book of Haggai is a short book, and I think often overlooked. But it has a powerful message about the importance of obedience to the Lord’s commands. If we see the message in it to us, it hits home hard. I encourage everyone to read the whole book and ask themselves honestly, “Where is my temple lying in ruins while I’m living in my paneled house?” Read verse 6. See if it applies to you. The Lord gives as a reward for obedience and the Lord withholds for disobedience. What is He doing in your life? I read Haggai over and over again and try to take an inventory of my “temples” that are lying in ruins that the Lord has told me to rebuild. When I am seeing verse 6 in my life, I know I have commands from God I have not obeyed. Have you been returned from exile and been asked to rebuild a temple?

With love in Christ,
Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 

The Slippery One 5/26/08

Oh, Satan with your fiendish lies,
Why into my life did you fly?
You led me to believe it was God’s best,
But now I find it was your bequest.

How easily we are deceived,
When all we want is to believe,
But the evil slippery one
Will have his dirty deeds done,

When we think we are wide awake,
Satan can still claim his stake,
If to the left or to the right,
We move our eyes from Jesus’ sight.

Then captured one, in angst to fall,
And in the process, lose it all,
Return with spirit contrite,
To the One Who loves with all might.

Repent and humbly bow your head,
Back to the Father’s arms be led,
For you are not the only one,
In Satan’s snare to have come.

The closer we are to our God,
The harder Satan tries to prod
Us away into his traps,
Deceiving us into relapse.

That is why we need to stand
With our God so close at hand,
Into Jesus’ eyes fix our gaze,
To keep from evil in our days.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and Glory!

 

As I evaluate and re-evaluate my life and my relationship with God, as I see Satan’s strongholds appear such as this one about tithing, I repent of my sins and ask for and accept God’s forgiveness, and then make the necessary changes in my life I need to make to become obedient in that area.  I know I have been called to be a bojndservant of Jesus Christ in my life and this ministry and know the freedom that comes from submitting to God’s will for my life.  Rick was writing about “the commitment to a radical lifestyle of obedience,” and more than one comment has been made about me being radical in my writing, but I do have a radical love for my Savior and commitment to being His bondservant.  And as I follow my heart, I feel no need to apologize for anything about my zeal for God!

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

I hope you all enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed writing it.  See you again soon loved ones!  Blessings to all,

Brenda

 

 

  


Follow-up to the $1 Challenge- My Commitment to Obey God in Tithing- “Open Mind, Open Hands, Open Heart”

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Dear readers, followers, and fans, when I posted the $1 Challenge to you earlier last week,  I really didn’t have any “specific” expectations, except for my prayers to God for financial help with this ministry to be answered in the way He chose, but I did not expect Him, or you to be “silent.”  I was very disappointed to see that did not only not a very few of you  answer my plea for help, but not one of you so much as donated one small dollar.  I started this post yesterday, but God “checked” me on it, and today after much prayer and meditation and the reading of a small booklet titled “Overcoming the Spirit of Poverty” by Rick Joyner, I came to see the reasons why I was totally off base in my approach and reasoning in my intended post to you yesterday, and that is why I am so indebted to my relationship to God for His interventions in my life and my ministry and writing.. I guess in my disappointment to not having my will answered in my time, I was about to react out of anger and frustration instead of acting out of love and God’s will, heaven forbid!  For I never want to do that to you or against God and myself.  Today, as a result of my time with God and His revelations to me in that time and in this booklet, I have a different perspective and attitude which is much more pleasing to me and I know to God.  I have really learned and am going to apply some things to my life now which I have been “intending” to apply for ages now.  As of today, I am prepared to become more obedient to God’s will for me in my life and I will share these things with you Yesterday’s post started out to be one of almost trying to shame you into.helping me financially with my ministry and pointing the finger for not doing so.  But one thing occurred to me yesterday, and that was about how ridiculous my $1 Challenge was!  And today God confronted me on putting such a small value on His wisdom and worth!  And after abandoning my post yesterday and spending hours on approving and answering comments and really evaluating them, I thought of the worth of this site to most of you.  Below are just a few examples of some of the really great comments you are leaving for me about this blog:

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Saved on: 6/24/2012 5:32:54 PM; Folder: MPFG comments;
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Saved on: 6/24/2012 4:41:14 PM; Folder: MPFG comments;
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Saved on: 6/24/2012 4:32:03 PM; Folder: MPFG comments
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The $1 Challenge!- “Answer the Call”- “Will You Call?”

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The $1 CHALLENGE!!!

Friends and loved ones, the time has come where I am in a formidable condition as far as the continued maintenance of this blog is concerned.  I am spending hours of my days and nights just trying to catch up on answering comments, let alone posting!  This website is costing me money every month and time is coming up for renewal on the domain name and everything.  I am on Social Security Disability on a limited income and am having to try to find ways to supplement that.  Plus I have the immediate need to get the oral surgery done.

Your response here is overwhelming and I really think that to have to shut this site down would grieve many of you, as well as me and God.  I have one big question for you:

 Is it worth one dollar to each of you to help keep this website alive and well and growing?  The growth is not a problem, as I’m seeing between 250 to well over 500 new comments a day coming in.  But that leaves me with a “good” problem if you will all help me out just one little bit.  I have considered taking on other writing assignments or something to help solve my financial difficulties.  I know I need to monetize this site with Amazon sales, an eBay link, and other things, but these take time and some training on my part to figure out how to do them.  And I plan on coming out with an e-book to offer you with other content and poems you won’t find here.

But until that point, I still have to keep going and with all the work to be done right here, right now, it is impossible.  I have considered hiring someone to help answer your comments, but I really want to do most, if not all of it myself.  So where do we go from here.  Here is a solution I want to propose to you:

If you come on this site and like what you see (as most people seem to), please seriously consider using my Donate button on the right hand side of the first post you come to on this site and donate just ONE MEASLY DOLLAR, but feel free to give more as the Lord leads you, to help keep this ministry going!

My plan, if it meets with your approval, is to:

1.- Get this ministry set up as a Non-Profit organization so you can deduct your contributions from your taxes.                                                                                                                                   2.- Pay myself minimum wage for every hour I spend on posting and answering comments on the website.                                                                                                                         3.- Get a PollDaddy account so I can get your opinions on things to do with this site.-Cost=$200 a year for 5,000 responds a month.                                                                   4.- Pay for 2 years of hosting up front so we can get ranked higher with the search engines.                                                                                                                                                                 5.- Get more security features for this site.                                                                             6.- Keep this blog up and running at maximum efficiency for everyone’s benefit.                                                   7. Be accountable to you in a newsletter for how much money is coming in and how it is spent.

I also have short-term and long-term goals for this ministry.  A short-term goal is to be able to help in my community with helping the Community Action Counsel help give fans and air conditioners for at-risk people, like the elderly and the homeless Tent City people who have all just become relocated, in the summer.  And in the winter, to help the needy at-risk people with heaters or help with their heating bills.  Does that meet with your approval?  I will save elaborating on long-term goals for a future post that I have in mind.

We are a growing community of believers here, and all helpers in God’s Kingdom.  I have outlined my needs for the help I have to have from you to keep on thriving and growing!  Will you come along for the WHOLE ride?  One action thrives on other actions!

If you are new here, read on for a while and then make your decision if you think your time here was worth $1 and if it was, please come back up to the first post and make your donation!  And if you are a regular reader, please make it a goal to give at least $1 on your next visit!  As many people have pointed out, I could be selling this all in an e-book to make money and not give you all this free content, but I’d rather do it this way on a voluntary basis, but if I don’t get the help I need, I might have to consider other alternatives.  That’s the bottom line.  I want to grow this ministry, but I can’t do it on comments alone!

PLEASE HELP keep these posts flowing freely and your comments answered!

Please help me to make this one of the BEST DEALS on the internet for you!

I won’t go on and on anymore, but pray that you’ll spend $1 for God’s Kingdom.

Any feedback from you would be greatly appreciated!

 

Now, to our features:

 

Answer the Call 2/3/08

Isaiah 6:8                                                                                                                                           Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:

“Whom shall I send,                                                                                                                                                 And who will go for us?”

Then I said, “Here am I!  Send me.”

Here am I Lord,
Tattered and torn,
Bruised and worn.
You care not how,
Only that I come,
Whether as a beggar
Off the streets,
Or a rich man
Knowing he’s poor.
I bring myself,
Lots or none,
For Your Good Will
Only
To be done.
It is in Your Presence
I find my peace,
In Your will,
I find my place.
I heard you call
Many times before,
My name,
So soft, so low,
But I brushed it off,
Always scoffed,
“Surely He doesn’t mean me!”
I doubted Your love,
Rejected Your grace,
Refused to get on my knees,
But now that I’m down
I’m turning around
And asking You, “Please,
“Send me!”

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

When I asked God to please give me poetry for His honor and glory back in late 2007, I had no earthly idea where that plea would take me.  The next morning when the poems started showing up on paper, I was not really surprised, but a little overtaken that He had answered my prayers so quickly.  At first I thought that He would give me just a few and it would end as quickly as it had started, but the poems just kept on coming, day after day, sometimes two or three a morning.  These poems blessed me greatly and I shared them with other people and they were amazed and delighted with them and me for them.  They told me I needed to write a book of them.  I thought that was a great idea too, and went into prayer over it and God let me know that these blessings to me were for me to pass on to the world!

I could envision small volumes of My Poems From God sitting on shelves in bookstores, maybe even becoming sort of popular, maybe even very popular, but probably not enough for a publisher to translate and distribute them to the whole world.  I looked into publishing and it was too expensive for me to really consider then.  I was passing out poems all over the place, sometimes just walking up to people in hospital waiting rooms or other places, asking them if I could bless them with a Christian poem.  I was waiting on further instructions from God.

Soon I received an e-mail about a company that would set up a website for me for free and I would be getting income from ads on it.  I thought, “Here’s my chance to get God’s poems to other people.  I went for it and the site was great.  It took a couple of months, but my reader base was quickly building up and I was receiving over 100 comments a day.  (But I never saw a cent in income.)  My blog was going virally global with glowing comments!  After a few weeks of all those comments a day, when I went to my blog it was shut down due to “insufficient bandwidth.”  I tried to contact the company that had set the blog up for me, but to no avail.  I was heartbroken because here were all these followers depending on another post from me and I was out of business.  In a week or so when I kept checking back on it, it was up and running again and I was overjoyed!  But it only lasted about two or three weeks and it was shut down permanently.  I went to the WHOIS for the domain name and it was registered in the company’s name.  And no contact, e-mail, customer support, or even their telephones were being answered.

GoDaddy was the registrar of the account and I went to them to explain the situation and try to get my site back.  The long and the short of it is that I had to put in a back-order for my domain name and wait until it came up for renewal.  It was a few months wait, and even after their contract ran out there was red tape that kept me from actually owning the domain for about six weeks.  But it all worked out in God’s time and here we are and hopefully to stay and impact the world for God’s Kingdom!  Glory Hallelujah!

Anyway, as far as “Answer the Call” goes, that is how my call from God to bring His message of Good News to the world ended up after I said, “Here am I!  Send me.”  He will always find a way to help those who are willing to answer His call, and become the “chosen.”  I have been called, and I know I have been chosen to serve in the capacity with the spiritual gifts I have been endowed with.  And I come to serve you!

“So the last will be first, and the first last,  For many are called, but few chosen.”  (Matthew 20:16 NKJV)  (From the parable of the workers in the vineyard.)

And as my poem states, He cares not “how” we come; only that we do.!  I offered myself up as I was, dirt and all, after I realized how long He had been calling me.  I was broken and that is the only way we can come to Jesus, when we come to the end of ourselves and our self-sufficiency.  He wants to be our “all,” and for us to trust Him in faith that our needs will all be taken care of by Him!  Of course, we have our part to do too.  He “did” for me what I could not do for myself for such a long time, but now that He has redeemed me with His capable hands, I don’t depend on Him to do for me what I’m not “willing” to do for myself with His help.

“…but with God all things are possible.”   (Matthew 19:26)

 

Will You Call? 4/13/08

Will you call someone today through me,
Through this, Your God-given poetry,
That’s given for all the world to see
Your honor, glory, grace, mercy, beauty?

Will You call someone today through tears
For the sinful days and nights and years?
Will You give someone today the blessed ears
To stop unbelief and take away fears?

Will You call someone today to Your Son,
Through Whom only such things can be done?
Will someone at the setting of the sun,
Have in their heart, Your’s, forever won?

Will You call someone today to the Cross,
Where souls have been won who once were lost,
Where they can see that Jesus paid the cost,
For all their mistakes, for all their lust?

Will You call someone today to Your love,
The Holy Spirit, soft as a dove,
Who lives within, not as You above,
But surrounds one’s soul as a Holy glove?

Will You call someone today to Your grace,
To let them know they don’t have to save face,
But Jesus Christ on the Cross made safe,
Our passage to Heaven, our Home, our Place?

Will You call someone today to Your heart,
Never again from You to depart,
But let them know that they’ve made a start
On the road to peace with Your sacred mark?

Will You call someone today, Lord, please?
I say my prayers, I make my fervent pleas,                                                                                                                                  For another soul won to Your armies,
That would my heart gratefully appease.

Will You call me today, God, to call all?
Will You help me to put a Holy call?
Will You help me bring within Your wall
More saints for You to save from the fall?

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

For this poem, I want to share a devotional from “My Utmost For His Highest” as part of a review from the Updated Edition In Today’s Language, edited by James Reimann:

June 16- Will You Lay Down Your Life?

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends…I have called you friends…”   (John15:13,15)

Jesus does not ask me to die for Him, but to lay down my life for Him.  Peter said to the Lord, “I will lay down my life for Your sake,” and he meant it.  (John 13:37)  He had a magnificent sense of the heroic.  For us to be incapable of making this same statement Peter made would be a bad thing–our sense of duty is only fully realized through our sense of heroism.  Has the Lord ever asked you, “Will you lay down your life for my sake?”  (John 13:38)  It is much easier to die than to lay down your life day in and day out with the sense of the high calling of God.  We are not made for the bright-shining moments of life, but we have to walk in the light of them in our everyday ways.  There was only one bright- shining moment in the life of Jesus, and that was on the Mount of Transfiguration.  It was there that He emptied Himself of His glory for the second time, and then came down into the demon-possessed valley (see Mark 9:1-29).  For thirty-three years Jesus laid down His life to do the will of His Father.  “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us.  And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren”  (1 John #:16).  Yet it is contrary to our human nature to do so.                                                                                                                            If I am a friend of Jesus, I must deliberately and carefully lay down my life for Him.  It is a difficult thing to do, and thank God that it is.  Salvation is easy for us, because it cost God so much.  But the exhibiting of salvation in my life is difficult.  God saves a person, fills him with the Holy Spirit, and then says, in effect, “Now you work it out in your life, and be faithful to Me even though the nature of everything around you is to cause you to be unfaithful.”  And Jesus says to us, “…I have called you friends,…”  Remain faithful to your Friend, and remember that His honor is at stake in your bodily life.

 

I am laying down my life for Jesus here for you.  Now, what will you do for Jesus?

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

Have a blessed evening and think of me as I am allowing and answering comments.  It looks like another 500+ day!

In Jesus’ name and love to you,

Brenda

 

 

 

 

 


Catching Up!,- 6/15/12/ Journal With God, “Only You, Lord”, (Added to 6/16/12)

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Blessed day, dear friends!  This will be a busy day and busy blog as I have been severely detained from you for a while, unwillingly.  The latest news on my root canal abscess is that I need oral surgery to remove a crown, post, and root canal before the poisons from the abscess go to my brain or heart.  And the lowest amount of money that will cost me will be $150, maybe more, depending on the difficulty of the removal.  I haven’t scheduled the appointment yet because I don’t know when I will have at least the first half, but am urged to do so ASAP because I have already been on the antibiotics almost ten days.  I am feeling a good bit better, but this is nothing to fool around with.  And I really don’t think God or you are done with me yet! (Smile!)

On that note, I have to thank you, my readers, followers, and fans, for sharing this site in all your social networks, with your friends, families, and coworkers, etc., because I am getting new readers every day and night from all over everywhere.  About a week ago I was getting around a hundred comments a day, but three days ago there were over 250, two days ago over 500, and yesterday over 440!  And they’re coming from Google, Yahoo News, Digg, Reddit, and other places too and I’m not even trying to rank with SEO or anything like that.  Friends, I feel like God is really trying to show His hand to the world with this website and His poetry using me as a vessel.  And we need to talk about that:

I physically and financially own this website, but I have given my life over to Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit.  So I, like Paul, am not my own, but God owns me and all I own.  And as I have already told you, God “gives” me His poems to bless me to bless the whole world with.  Yes, I share my life with you here, but this whole message is not “about” “me,” but “about” God, His Kingdom, His will for you and me and eternity!  I am merely here as a means and not an end, to help you see what God wants you to see.  It’s like Job said in Chapter 29, verse 15, ” I was eyes to the blind, and I was feet to the lame!” I don’t want you to see me here in these posts, but I want you to see Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit through my heart, eyes, mind, and words.

Let me share my personal journal with God with you from this morning to help you maybe see where I’m coming from and how I prepare to come to you for my posts:

“Fri. 6/15/12-11:29 a.m.-Dear Almighty Heavenly Father, God of Lights, thank you for this glorious new morning and this glorious new day!  Although You know I am anxious to get to our new posts, I know I must come to You first to get filled with the Holy Spirit and to get in the right frame of mind!  I need You, Your strength and power, wisdom, knowledge, and understanding!  It is only through You that my writing to our followers must be done.  They need to hear from You, not from me!  I am only the vessel you send.! But a holy vessel it is.  And I thank You so much Lord for that!  I only want to pass along Your Divine inspirations.  They deserve no less!   What is it You want me to give them today?  It will be a long one or two since they have waited so long!  Oh, that Your Words may come through me!  My dear, dear Abba, how I love You so!  And how grateful I am for this anointing You have lain upon my heart and head!  So many exclamation marks are used in my writings but it is because of the extreme emotions of love and joy that You stir up in me!  And of the thankfulness for Your extreme mercy and grace!  You are PURE LOVE!!!   Let us now go attend to the pleasures in store for us in our work for Your Kingdom and help spread the Good News In Jesus’ name!  In His Most Holy, sacred, precious name I now pray, Father! Amen!”

I hope maybe that has given you a glimpse into my motives, intentions, and inspiration for these posts to you.  I am only the messenger trying to let God’s words spread before your eyes to see Him in everything I write.  My greatest hope is for you to know that and my heart will be still and filled with joy!  Now, how about a poem from God for His glory which I hope we are now clear about that is why we are here:

Only You, Lord 4/16/08

As I meditate upon Your things,
To my heart a gladness it brings,
For You are all my worldly joy
And up, my spirits You always buoy.

The mountaintop experience
Where You have brought deliverance,
Rings in my memory so high
And brings me up when I am dry.

You’ve done so many Divine things
To take me flying on holy wings,
That I cannot a future see,
Alone, afraid, and without Thee.

I’ve taken a look back to see
All that You have done for me
Before You became my One and All,
And I had answered Your Holy call.

I had been Your beloved before,
Only I didn’t know the score
Of Your deep love held all for me,
I was too blind then, yet to see.

I was on a destructive course,
But You were my Holy, saving force.
You kept me from death’s door many times,
Kept me out of trouble of all kinds.

I had no fear of dying, You see,
That was the ultimate peace for me.
It was living I feared with the hole
That ran so very deep in my soul.

I didn’t know that hole was for You,
I only knew my skies were not blue.
I had dug myself into a pit
And knew that only I was not fit.

But You, Your love, has different eyes,
And You saw me beneath my disguise
As a precious stone, redeemable,
In Your hands, so capable.

You lifted me out of my dark hole,
Brought me warmth, took away the cold.
You washed me new in Jesus’ blood,
And then, only then, I understood,

The love of a Father, so true,
That all along it had been all You
Who had kept this lost and lonely waif
Alive and well and always safe.

You have captured my heart, so dear,
And brought me joy and brought me tears,
For the holy love of a lifetime,
That only now I know is mine.

I sing Your praises, loud and clear,
For all the world to listen and hear
What a faithful God we have above,
And the length He’ll go to show His love,

A God who no distinction brings,
But is good and righteous in all things.
A God who wants His people’s love
So much, He shed His own Son’s blood,

A God, It’s a privilege, a joy,
To celebrate, obey, enjoy,
A Father who in His own right,
Gives all blind beggars back their sight.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 

Illumination always comes in retrospect.  Once I turned my life over to Jesus Christ and took a look back, I was astounded at all the ways He had been caring for me all my life, unbeknownst to me!  What a love He had had for me even though I did not even acknowledge or know Him!  And then when my eyes became opened to all He had done for me when I came to really know Him, I was even more astonished!   “The holy love of a lifetime.”  That is really what a relationship with our Savior is all about!  This is more than a testimony; it is a call to you, if you have not accepted Jesus Christ as you Lord and Savior of your life to do so NOW!  I can guarantee you it is a decision you will never regret and it is God’s free gift to you that He wants you to have more t han anything else in this world.  Money and works can’t buy it, but it is free for the asking!  I beg of you, if you have not accepted Christ into your life yet, don’t wait a moment longer!!!

Read and reread this poem again and reevaluate your life against it and see how your’s stacks up against this, for me, please!  But better yet, do it for yourself!!!

 

6/16/12- 9:03 a.m.-I sort of felt like I just dumped you off here yesterday with unfinished business.  Why would you want to give your life to Christ?  Well, frankly, He can do so many more things with your life than you can do.  You say, “Yeah, well I think I’m managing my own life pretty well, thank you!”  Really?  I mean really?  Are you sure there’s not a hole in your soul somewhere?  Do you really want to be master of your own fate and captain of your own soul?  That’s a big responsibility and in reality, only one Man has hands big enough to handle that job “capably!”  And that One Man is Jesus Christ.  And He is a living Man, although God too, sitting at His Father’s right hand in Heaven.  Don’t you think He has the “big picture” from up there?  And He has all the angels in Heaven and earth at His beck and call to help assist Him and you if He wishes.  Do you?

Think long and hard about all this.  Aren’t a lot of decisions in life hard?  Isn’t the total responsibility for you and your family’s life hard?  What if you gave your life to Jesus and when you had a tough decision to make you could turn to Him and ask Him what His will would be and know that going with that was the right decision for all!?  My friend, that is one of the easiest stress-busters I know of!  And that’s what life with Jesus, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit is all about.  Taking the “load” off your own shoulders and sharing and giving the burdens to Jesus and trusting Him to take care of them.

“But what if I don’t like the way Jesus handles my life or the ones of those I love?”  One must learn to have faith and trust in Jesus and part of that is believing in the Bible where it says, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28 NKJV)  What is faith and trust in God?  Let me tell you one of the greatest lessons I have ever learned about this:

I was about ten years clean and sober and on the A.A. answering service.  Well, drunks usually only call in the middle of the night for help when they’re drunk and sick and only think they’re sincere about getting sober.  The phone rang about 2 or 3 in the morning and it was the answering service saying they had a woman needing to talk to someone, so I told her to put her on the line, leaning over to grab a cigarette and lighter to try to rouse myself.  A woman came on the other end and told me she was drunk and that she had come to A.A. before for a long time and stayed sober, but that now she was drinking and wanted to come back.  I told her we would love to have her come back and when our next meeting was and that I’d be glad to meet her there.  As drunks do, she babbled on and on for about half an hour and I knew it was time to cut her short, but suddenly something occurred to me:  I was only five years sober talking to a woman who said she had stayed sober for longer than I had been and I was on my spiritual quest at that time.  She talked very spiritually so I suddenly asked her, “What is your view on faith and trusting in God?”

Her answer was so simple, honest, trusting, and spiritual that it blew me away.  She told me that it was like if she was driving down a road and it forked off into two roads and she didn’t know which one to take, she would pray about it and follow the answer she was guided toward.  I thought that sounded too simple so I made it harder and asked her, “But what if the road you takes leads you to where you are maybe in an accident?  Then wouldn’t you be mad at God for leading you down the wrong road?”  She said, “No, I would just trust that if I had taken the other road something worse would have happened to me.”  I was stunned!  I thanked her for sharing that with me and told her I had to get back to sleep and hoped I see her at that meeting.

When I hung up the phone I just sat there in amazement.  Here I was on a “spiritual quest” to find God for almost ten years, and a drunk on the other end of a telephone line has just handed me a huge link that I had never encountered on my journey!  The more I thought about it, the more I grasped the deep meaning of it all and it was like the light bulb had been turned on and I could see God.  I couldn’t sleep anymore because I was so excited about my enlightenment and all I wanted to do was read my Bible that I had started reading, searching for all the examples of my new knowledge that I could find and relate to.  I was not the same person again after that night.  I had asked, and it had been given to me!  I felt like I had found the missing key to my quest’s door and now I could pass through it to God, and I did

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”   (Matthew 7:7,8  NKJV)

How do I ask Jesus into my life?  Ask Him to forgive you for your sins, and you will automatically receive that forgiveness, seek to have Him come into your life and you will find Him there, knock for the door to His will and His Kingdom to be opened to you, and it shall be so!

Simple.  Yes, and no, because it is so hard for some people to swallow their false pride and say they need a Savior.  And in my opinion, that’s when we need one most, to save us from ourselves!

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

Have a blessed rest of the day and “Come!”

Brenda (see you on the next post later today!)

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FOREVER MY PLEA

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Oh my dear ones, please forgive me for not tending my garden here as I should have been doing!  I have let you, God, and myself down until now by being so absent from here for reasons I will not bore you with.  But as of this morning, I have committed to God, you, and myself, that I will be the good shepherd that tends her flocks here in my humble way to you.  And I will be responding to your comments personally.

Please bear with me as I work with this program to make this site better and better as time goes along!

I am SO joyful to be here this morning!  Now, here is your poem for the day:

Forever My Plea 8/9/08

So many things crowd you out today,
I let everything get in the way.
I’m so busy serving I forget to love
The One who has made me from above.

But I do love You so much, dear Father,
Or why would I take the time to bother
With meeting the needs of those here on earth,
The ones to whom also You gave their birth?

But I must find my way and the ime right now
To get back to Your heavenly arms somehow,
For in all this busyness I’m fading fast
And know I cannot much longer last.

At this frenzied pace I’ve set for myself,
I need Your Kingdom, with all of it’s wealth
To stay this one pilgrim on her course,
I need my personal Godly force.

So I come before Your throne today,
In my plain and simple way to say,
Let me not now from Your face depart,
Let my one plea be, “My God, Thou art!”

And my God You will be from this time on,
Whether alone or within the throng.
Jesus’ face I see and can almost feel,
And at His feet I’ll continually kneel.

As the minutes tick on throughout the day
I’ll reach for Him in every way
To be my anchor and lift my load
Along life’s twisting and winding road.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

You might be asking yourself why I’m posting such an old poem here today.  As I was just going back through an old journal flagging poems God had given me I found this one and it spoke to me because of a situation I’ve been in lately.  This might seem like a silly question to some of you, and some of you might think about it a little bit.  Do you know how to take “care” of yourself?  I mean really take care of yourself?  Or are you so busy taking care of all those “needy” people you always seem to end up surrounding yourself with that you don’t even know what taking care of yourself looks like?  Sometimes, and I think especially Christians, who are taught to deny themselves, get caught up in the trap of losing themselves in other people’s needs to the point of ignoring their own.  I have found myself in this before and once again, but when it interferes with my one and only TRUE relationship with my God, I know I have to get back on track, whatever the cost!  You say, whatever the cost?  Yes!!!  Jesus is and always will be my best friend, and He will never , leave nor forsake me.  And I owe Him my all because He gave me the mercy and grace of my salvation in Him and new life in Him and made it so I could have a right relationship with my heavenly Father, which is why I’m here with you, and for you.  It’s God first, second, and third for me.  Come back later to see what I mean!

Copyright 2012 by  Brenda LaVelle

Have a very blessed day indeed1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD

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My next poem was inspired by a devotional from one of my favorite Christian writer heroes,     Oswald Chambers.  I’ll use this particular devotion as a book review until I can get permission from the publisher to use quotes out of My Utmost For His Highest.  This is the devotion for July 13:

THE PRICE OF VISION

“in the year that king Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord”  (Isa. 6:1)

Our soul’s history with God is frequently the history of the “passing of the hero.”  Over and over again God has to remove our friends in order to bring Himself in their place, and that is where we faint and fail and get discouraged.  Take it personally: In the year that the one who stood to me for all that God was, died–I gave up everything?  I became ill?  I got disheartened? or–I saw the Lord?

My vision of God depends upon the state of my character.  Character determines revelation.  Before I can say “I saw also the Lord,” there must be something corresponding to God in my character.  Until I am born again and begin to see the Kingdom of God, I see along the line of my prejudices only; I need the surgical operation of external events and an internal purification.

It must be God first, God second, and God third, until the life is faced steadily with God and no one else is of any account whatever.   “In all the world there is none but thee, my God, there is none but thee.”

Keep paying the price.  Let God see that you are willing to live up to the vision.

 

Does this sound tough and impossible and fanatical to you?  At first glance it did to me to, until I was able to honestly look back over my life and circumstances and decisions I had made for all the wrong reasons, and where I was right at that moment in time…and it became clear to me.  I’ll explain more later.  Now the Poem From God:

First, Second, and Third       4/10/08

The Father Who sits on High,
Jesus Christ at His right side,
And then within the Trinity,
Is the Holy Spirit, my Guide.

There are Three within One.
How more awesome can it be?
It makes the most powerful team
That man has ever seen.

We go to our Father in prayer,
Jesus intercedes for us,
And with His Holy Spirit,
We are filled with His own trust.

They are First, Second, and Third
For the rest of my whole life.
I want no other before them,
As long as I am alive.

To All of them I give thanks,
Praise and honor and glory.
They give me the confidence,
So I don’t have to worry,

About my salvation and grace,
Or where I will go from here,
Because there’s a place in heaven,
A place for me, so dear.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

God, my Heavenly Father First, God, His Son Jesus Christ, my Redeemer and Friend, Second, and God, the Holy Spirit Third in the order of importance of all in my life!  As I meditated upon and prayed about Oswald Chambers’ devotion, I could see where in my life I had let friends, family, lovers, and external circumstances come between me and God, my first love, if I am to live a truly fulfilled life here on this earth.  I am not a religious fanatic, but a spiritual seeker who has found in God the most faithful, loving, merciful, gracious, giving, and wise Counselor and leader for my life I could ever want and so much more!  In my next post I will give you my testimony as to how I came to be where God could find me and claim me as His own, how I have developed such a close relationship with Him that it is the most precious thing in the world to me (and how you can do it), and why I am on fire for Jesus today to help spread the “Good News” of His love and sacrifice to the whole world!  And not for any glory and honor for me, but..

Copyright 2012  by Brenda LaVelle.

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!!!

Have a blessed day indeed, and I’m always open to feedback (positive or otherwise) on what your thoughts are about my posts.!

 

 


HOW COULD I NOT?

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This next poem I am giving you is one that many people I have given it to say they have put  on their bathroom mirror so they can see it first thing in the morning as a sort of devotional to help get them in the “attitude of gratitude” for the upcoming day.  I feel it has given God great honor and glory for His having given it to me and to be so used!  Feel free to make yourself a copy of it for your own use in that way if you feel so led.

How Could I Not 3/27/08 (Edited 3/28/08)

How could I not
Praise You, Lord,
For all the things You do?

How could I not
Love You, Lord,
When You’ve loved me so true?

How could I not
Adore You, Lord,
For all You’ve done for me?

How could I not
Worship You, Lord,
When You’ve been to Calvary?

How could I not
Shout Your name
From the rooftops of the world?

How could I not
In Your name,
Do everything to help I could?

How could I not
Give to You
All the honor and glory?

How could I not
Tell the world
The Good News and Your story?

How could I not
Get on my knees,
And to You to humbly pray?

How could I not
To You first,
Give my all in every way?

How could In not?

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

In our world of so much complication and competition to try to climb to the top of corporate ladders or social circles, I love the simplicity of most of the words and phrases my Lord gives me to convey what I consider to be deep messages  He isn’t looking for the most eloquent or glamorous of His people to help carry His message to the world.  He is more than content to use ordinary, and even “broken” people, just like me and maybe you, in His ministry for His Kingdom here on earth.

At first, I started t say God isn’t choosy, but He really is because He chose each of His people from before the beginning of time.  All He cares about is where our heart is, and when it is with and for Him, He can perform any miracle He chooses with any one of us!  Isn’t that great news!!?  Each of us has one or more gifts or talents that the Lord has endowed each of us with to help serve in His Kingdom.  All we need is the willingness to find that gift or talent and give it to the Lord unconditionally, just the way He loves each and every one of us!  We are His works of art!  I love the saying that, “My life is God’s gift to me, and what I do with my life is my gift back to God.”  What a gift He gave me, and nothing I can do with my life for Him is too extravagant!

And has my life been a bed of roses?  Only if you remember they have thorns in them.  But oh, how God has shown me that for each thorn, the fragrance of the rose has been sweeter in the end!

I know I said my next post here would be a testimony, and in a way this has been, but the real one is yet to come!  I will be back later today to expound on my post “FOREVER MY PLEA.” since several of you have wanted more information on that topic.  For now, have a very blessed Sunday indeed!

Copyright 2012 by  Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!


FOLLOW-UP TO “FOREVER MY PLEA”- THE CO-DEPENDENCY TRAP (BY REQUEST)

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Dear friends and readers, this is a follow-up post to “Forever My Plea” which, from some of your comments left you wanting some clarification or more information on what I was talking about, and I have to say that I was not “down-to-the-bones” on my contents and I will sort of explain why now.  It has been a couple of days since I said I was going to get back to you on this, and the “condition” behind it is exactly why I have been dragging my feet.

I am going to be gut-level honest with all of you here, basically because that is my nature and I promised God to be transparent enough with you so you will know that I speak from my heart and what He gives me, and not from my head or any beating around the bush.  Now some people don’t want to hear truth; it makes them nervous or something.  Or it confronts them about their own inability to confront their own truths.  And for me, it sort of makes me nervous, because I am telling you exactly “who” I am, and you may not like it or what I have to say, but that is about you, not about me.  But to “expose” yourself for who you really are is either going to turn someone off, or gain their respect for your courage to be yourelf, and tthat is really what this whole thing I am bringing up is all about.

Get ready- and the weak of heart may depart now!   Curiosity-seekers and the brave-hearted and knowledge-seekers, come along for the journey!  As you saw in the title for this post, I said the word, “co-dependency,” which is what I was alluding to in the post I am expounding upon today.  This is something you might or might not be familiar with, might or might not be dealing with, might or might not know you have.  It is something I have been trying to deal with for many years, sometimes with more success than others, sometimes not even being aware of it, and sometimes being aware of it and just succumbing to it for lack of wanting to deal with it or having the energy or wherewith-all to even face it.

Co-dependency: Ugly, powerful, all-consuming, deadly, painful, a disease?  Yes, yes, and yes!!!  A type of mental illness?  I believe so.  And this is where I face you all head-on, head-up, and say, yes, I have had mental illnesses since as early as the age of 5 or 6 when I first  remember contemplating suicide.  I have suffered from major depression, anxiety, panic attacks, ADHD, suicidal tendencies and attempts, self-mutilation, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and alcohol and drug addiction, only to name a few.  These are inherited and environmentally developed illnesses which I am not ashamed to tell you about because I have learned from God how He has allowed each of these illnesses into my life to be used for His honor and glory!  Surprised that I can say that?  I only can because it is the truth, which you will find out if you stick withy me long enough through this website and glean even some of the truths God has taught me through my relationship with Him in my journaling to Him and prayer and meditation and other people.  And I think if you have an open mind and are honest with yourself, will see how He has touched my life and blessed me with a ministry to bless others.

But this whole thing is not “about” me, but about God, and Who He is and what He is capable of doing in anyone’s life!.  And I feel like that is where God shows his honor and glory as an example in my life for you to see and experience second-hand, hopefully to grasp firmly onto His hand for the same miracles in your life!

I don’t have the “official definition” of co-dependency, but my synopsis is that it is “when I give all my power and my life, decisions, dreams, and feelings over to the control of another human being out of my own low self-esteem or insecurity or fear due to a history of abuse or neglect, probably in my childhood.  I tend to hook up with either persons who I feel I need to “rescue” from their own problems to keep from focusing on my own, probably because I’ve never learned to face or know how to deal with my own, or turn to a dominating or passive/aggressive type personality who repeats the familiar patterns of control, abuse, neglect, or abandonment, out of an inability to release the past or else an inability to make my own decisions or feel my own feelings, or fear of both.

These type of relationships are ways of sabotaging my own personal growth or any chance of it, which I am usually in denial about in the first place.  Is anyone getting a little nervous or feeling like running from the post about now?  If you are…STOP!  You are probably right where you need to be…not where maybe you want to be, but perhaps where   God has gently guided you.  Don’t be afraid, for if God led you here and is speaking to you, then you know He cares for you and KNOW…He will never leave you nor forsake you, and that He makes ALL things come together for GOOD to those who love Him!

There is hope, for I am living proof of that, even though I have struggles too.  He is in them with me and for me with all of them and each struggle develops character and each victory helps develop more faith in the Lord and love for Him and knowledge of His love for me.  Personal growth is not an event, it is a process!  But it is never too late to begin the process!!!  His tender mercies are new each morning, and each day is the first day of the rest of your life!

The best good news about co-dependency is that it is very treatable once it is recognized and counseling or joining a co-dependency (CODA- a 12-step group) is sought and continued with with an open mind and a determination to do it for yourself and God.  I highly recommend CODA after at least a short time of counseling with a knowledgeable therapist or reading up with some of the many self-help books available on the subject if you feel more comfortable with that.  But definitely get outside support and turn to God for His wisdom and help!  Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock, and the door will be opened!

As I was journaling to God about my own situation and coming back to all of you on this subject, the following poem is the one God gave me for myself and to give to you:

The Co-dependency Trap    3/23/12

Satan’s trap of co-dependency
Is the disease that makes “me” lose “me.”
When someone else is more important
And my life becomes more discontent,

Then it is time to make a big change,
My priorities to rearrange,
Where I am the first after my Lord
And fight all invaders with a sword.

To get outside help, if it need be,
To find my way back into the “me.”
For if I do not have my own self,
I cannot share me with anyone else.

I cannot give my all to my God
If all I have is only a fraud.
So help me find the “me” that is real,
So it is my own feelings I feel.

Oh Lord, I place myself in Your hands,
So You may withdraw all other bands
Of deceit and falsehood deep in me,
To set this prisoner finally free!

And then all honor and glory Your’s be,
To help the blind man at last to see
That You have made Him perfect in You,
And only Christ’s nature will he imbue!

Thank You, God , for Your glorious works,
And let me know that in me there lurks
No image but Christ, my Savior so true,
Who brings me back home, only to You!

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

I hope some of this has clarified a lot of the vagueness of my earlier posting and will give any of you concerned with this subject some useful information, guidance, and hope.  And if any of it applies to you I also hope you will seriously consider taking action toward recovery from this devastating disease.  You are not crazy, just sick.  I also hope that my personal sharing and honesty has not scared you away from my desire to bring more of God’s blessings to you.  Any feedback you may want to give is welcome, and if you want to contact me personally, let me know and how to reach you and I will respond, as I really care about you as a shepherd cares about his flock.  Jesus said, “Feed my sheep,” and that is my intent here in this site.  My heart beats for each and every one of you with our Heavenly Father’s and I want for you what He wants for each of you…not just what’s good, but the BEST!

Even if this does not apply to you, it might apply to someone you love or know who might benefit from some of this information.  Knowledge IS THE BEGINNING OF POWER!

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

 

God bless you all, my little flock!

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

P.S.- I will be replying to all of your comments that I have gone ahead and approved and not answered yet.  I am having trouble keeping up with all the comments but will be trying to do a better job from here on out and figure out how to get this fool program to put each reply with the comment it goes with! lol!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


I NEED YOU NOW! & GOD IS IN CONTROL, ALL IS WELL

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Dear friends, sisters and brothers in Christ, I’m not going to elaborate a lot today on my last post except to say a few things in relation to it.  First of all, no relationship can be any healthier than the sickest person in that relationship.  Yes,you read that right!  So if I get into a relationship either looking to be “fixed” or to “fix” someone else, the chances of that happening aren’t very good for either of us.  Secondly, life and relationships aren’t all just “black and white.”  There are always shades of grays mixed in with most everything except    God and Satan, in my opinion.  And no relationship can be perfect except with God.  I rest my case.  As for those of you who had a hard time grasping what I was talking about with co-dependency, my best suggestion for you is to get some of the good books out there on the subject, as I’m not a therapist, but more of an expert from the inside out.  But I do support you on researching the subject further if you have questions or suspect you have problems with it

As far as today, I’m going to share a poem God gave me this morning in my journaling to Him as I was questioning Him why He brought this certain person into my life, and what is His will in dealing with the situation?  This is what I wrote to Him:

“Oh, my dear God, why have you sent (this man) into my life?  Is it to teach me that Jesus’ ‘grace is sufficient for’ me?  Or is it to force me to learn ‘tough love?’  Or is it to teach me that I ‘must’ endure hardships to keep your commandments about love?  I was so clear two days ago, and now I’m confused, cloudy, and torn!  Is it to teach me that I ‘am’ my brother’s keeper, and that I MUST learn to set and keep boundaries with him for my own sanity and to be faithful to You?  These are some really hard questions!  And in a way I feel like you’re telling me I ‘know’ the answers, and it’s my ‘challenge’ to do them, and learn to do them with love and grow from them!”

You see, I come to my will, then when God get’s hold of me in one way or another, I come             to the end of my will and ask God what His will for me is, and He answers.  I then groaned about how hard it would be to do His will and just listed some facts about the whole situation and then He gave me this poem:

 

I NEED YOU NOW! 3/30/12

When things are pressing all around
And I can’t let them get me down,
I have to turn to God in prayer,
To seek His face and find Him there!

I need His help, as ne’er before,
To help me decide what’s in store
For the life that’s ahead of me,
And in His will always to be.

Oh my dear Lord, please hear me now,
And let me know what you’ll allow
Within this pilgrim’s heart to be,
For my one wish, to follow Thee!

Decisions are upon the scene,
And only on You, I must lean
Never forsaken in the past,
I’ll see Your will be shown at last.

And whatever that will might be
You will stand right beside of me.
And even in my darkest hour,
You will be the purest flower!

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

I thanked Him for this poem and told Him I felt more centered and great knowing He was in control and I was glad to hand it over to Him because I can’t handle anything without Him!  And that brought to mind this next older poem He gave me before that I’m going to share with you now:

God is in Control, All is Well 6/9/08

You are in control
And all is well.
The fish are in the ocean,
The snail is in his shell.
The tree stands tall
On the hillside,
The flowers bloom so fragrant,
And bird and beast abide.

Who can know the way
Of a God Who is so true?
Why do we fret and tremble,
Wail and become so blue?
Everything is as it should be,
From God’s point of view,
If only you and I
Would do what we are supposed to do.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

OK now, tell me, isn’t our God an AWESOME GOD?

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

 

For all of you asking about my website, follow my affiliate link:

http://x.co/Yneppt

to GoDaddy where I get my blog site and hosting and domain names from.  I think they’re the best in the business and their customer support can’t be beat!

Blessings until next post, thanks for all the great comments, (and there’s no “guy’s” here except God- it’s just little ol’ me), and I’ll get to answering your comments later today!


THE SEEDS HE SOWED

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 The Seeds He Sowed 9/29/08

The many life experiences
That all seemed to be for naught,
Are the backbone of the story
That this blessed life has wrought.

What started out so bleak and dark
Turned out blacker still,
Became to be known in the end
As God’s own holy will.

Suicidal thoughts and hate
Were where it all began,
And alcohol and drugs
Were more precious to me than

A relationship, a home,
A child, a job, or paying bills.
Through my foggy mind I could not
See all my mental ills

And the threat I posed to myself
And others just as well.
But my precious Jesus Christ
Would to me one day tell

Of His grand scheme of things,
And why He let me survive.
I had resented His
Interference, being alive,

But when He met me in that pew
And dragged me to the altar,
I knew that He had chosen me
And I must not falter.

He drew me to His breast and said,
“My child, I’ve been waiting for you,”
And the tears I cried that morning
Felt like the mourning dew.

I grieved the life I’d led ’til now,
Of greed and selfishness,
As my Lord stood in front of me
In all His holiness.

I’d never known a love like this,
A heart so understanding.
He’d been calling all along,
But never been demanding.

It was a few days before
My birthday, a day I hated
Most. But this became my real one,
Now to God related.

I asked for His forgiveness
For the sinner I’d become,
And acknowledged all His glory
As my Savior and the Son.

When I knew that He’d forgiven me,
The pain all flushed away,
Leaving me feeling pure,
Knowing Jesus was here to stay.

Then a softness flooded
Over me, joy so sublime,
That has only grown greater
With my Jesus over time.

I know the Lord has led me
Down a darkened path for His good.
He knew that I would use it
To help the lost if it could.

There are so many ways that I
Can relate to others in need,
And He sends them right to my door
So I might plant a seed.

They know I am but another
Pilgrim, here upon this earth,
To be Jesus’ hands and feet
And tell them of their worth.

He’s blessed me with a gentle touch
And patience overflowing,
So I can plow His fields of stone
And keep on ever sowing.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

On: My Poems From God

Why are they called my poems from God? Well, really it is sort of a misnomer because they are only mine to give away, the blessings He gives me in my morning journaling with Him to bless others with as He wishes to be done. As a teenager I spent time writing poems about death and how I felt it was the only way I would ever feel any peace in my life. I was suicidal from about the age of five or six until the age of thirty-three when I got clean and sober and a counselor in treatment asked me why didn’t I try wanting to live for just a year and I agreed. I was in Twelve Step programs and early on in treatment I had my eyes opened to the fact that there was some power greater than myself who had been keeping me alive all those years. So I started a ten year quest to “find God.” What I didn’t know was that He had already found me! More on that story later.

After I became a Christian in 1996 I had already been journaling for quite some time, and it just felt like the right thing to do to start journaling to God. Many years passed and I had mountaintop experiences with Him, learned so much about Who He is and who I am and was and wanted to be, and our relationship grew dearer and dearer to me all the time and my faith became firm in Him.  In 2000 I became disabled and could no longer work publicly and I questioned and questioned Him about that.  I felt that I had become “useless.”  As time passed and there was more of it to spend with Him I finally felt very grateful for that because He had become my very joy!  I’m really very shy and feel awkward and out of place around a lot of other people, but as I began to see myself through His eyes and knew I was a precious child of His, a lot of my self-conscioousness left me.  After all, I was theKing’s own!

This didn’t put me on a plane higher than anyone else, it just evened out the playing field because He loves all of us the same, and what an awesome love that is, and how grateful I am to know that love and mercy.  One thing I had a hard time with was asking Him for anything for myself.  But just before the end of 2007, one morning in my journaling I asked Him to please give me poetry again, but this time for His honor and glory!  And He immediately answered me the next morning as I was journaling along and out of thin air words and phrases and verses that I wasn’t even thinking about came into my mind and I automatically started putting them on the page.  And when it ended, there was my first poem from God, for His honor and glory!  That has kept on now over the years and it is not something I think up,but it is like the quiet whispering of the Holy Spirit in my inner heart that must come out.  What a blessing to me, but God let me know that these were blessings He intended for me to “share with the world.”  And I have been doing that now every chance I get and they have been gifts of love.  I  know He wants me to publish books of His poetry, but I guess I will know when the time is right.

I hope you receive these poems as gifts of love from Him, for His honor and glory.  It is my honor to be able to pass them along to you.

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!


“Satan is Real” & “Don’t Let Satan Have His Way”

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Dear readers, friends, and Sisters and Brothers in Christ, I have gotten so far behind in replying to your comments because they are increasing steadily, which is a good thing.  But where I started out intending to try to answer each one individually, I am now going to  address mainly the ones with questions or issues needing a reply.  To all of you who make the really great and positive remarks on the posts or blog, I really appreciate your kind compliments very much and want you to know how much they mean to me and help me know I am doing the right things and really reaching a lot of people for the good og God!  I will be going back through the comments I have approved and not replied to yet and be “catching up” on you little by little.  Also to those of you I need to get back in touch with, I will be contacting you shortly.  And I’ll be keeping up with your new ones as they come in and approve and reply right away.

So much for the comments update, except that when you ask me to further address a certain topic, please tell me what topic it is or post it is from, as I am left in the dark as to what exactly it is you want more information on if you don;t tell me which one you are referring to.  And where do I get the “guidelines” for my posts?  I am just divinely inspired for each one by the Holy Spirit who literally “gives” me My Poems From God in my morning journaling with Him, as I go to Him in worship, praise, prayer, and just basking in His Presence and talking to Him to deepen our relationship.  More about that in my next post about how and why I journal to God.

These next two poems were given in revelation to me about Satan and his ever-present schemes in our world, the heavenly realms, and each of our lives.  And I have found it true in my own life that the closer I get to God and doing His will, the stronger Satan uses his wiles to try to distract or pull me away from God.  As it has been revealed to to me now, I see more and more clearly how this is all true, and true to the devil’s method of operation in His quest to destroy Christianity and the lives of all who truly follow our God.  So…

Satan is real!

Be aware- Satan IS there!!!

I feel like this next poem is probably one of my most important poems so far, because whether we realize it or not, many Christians don’t even believe in the devil and it is imperative that there is more education on this subject. . I feel very strongly that this is a topic that is not expounded upon near enough in “religious” circles and there is much ignorance surrounding it which leads to the susceptibility to the Father of Lies deceiving and attacking Christians unknowingly. This is definitely an area where knowledge IS power!

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
1 Peter 5:8

Satan is Real!

Oh, you fallen angel,
Dark ruler of this world,
There are countless who deny you,
The Lord’s banner is unfurled!

You’re full of deceit and lies,
And prey on the unsuspecting,
And Christians in their love of God,
You keep on disrespecting.

For those devoted to the Christ
You fling your arrows with glee,
In hopes to catch them unaware
Of the evil they cannot see.

You come and seek to kill, destroy,
The lambs within God’s fold.
But He is on the outlook for you,
And in His arms He will hold

His flock, so dear, so precious.
And one day you will be sold
To the fiery blast of Hades
When Christ comes back so bold!

You will reap what you have sown,
In God’s heaven and Creation.
You were cast down here for trying
To usurp God’s deification.

And here on earth you set up rule,
With your evil principalities.
Now we, as God’s own children,
Must be wary of your realities!

But prayer is our best weapon,
For you hate the Lord’s own name,
And when we pit Him against you,
You’re beaten at your game.

So all Sisters and Brothers,
When evil does appear,
Use the name of Jesus Christ
To send the Evil One to the rear!

Copyright 2011 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

Dear ones, the devil, Satan, the Father of All Lies, is written about all through Scripture!  But I know I, for one, did not really take it all so seriously until I delved deeper into the Bible, really believing that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God!  And that being the case, I began to see most of the evil in this world as being the result of Satan’s work, just as the writers of the Bible were talking about.  As I went to God about my concerns and questions on this subject, the Holy Spirit gave me revelations about my own prior ignorance, and gave me these poems and prompted me to help alert a sleeping world of the dangers we are warned about,  but do not take as seriously as we ought and guard against this Father of Lies.  He also drew me back to God’s Word to find the tools Jesus taught about to defend ourselves against the devil, and the need to always be vigilant and aware.  This awareness has been ever-growing in my life since then, and has only made my relationship with God stronger, and my desire to serve Him in whatever ways I can more convicting!  And my heart tells me that sharing My Poems From God and my divinely-inspired writing to the world CAN and HAS made some sort of difference for God’s Kingdom!  Your comments help me realize this!  Thank you!  Now…

Don’t Let Satan Have His Way! 10/14/11

Help the Lord fight evil today.
Don’t let fear stand in the way.
“vengeance is Mine,” saith the Lord,
But this is an ungodly world,

And we must each do our own part.
Jesus needs our helping heart
To drive out Satan, make him flee
With the Cross of the Trinity.

We are God’s holy servants here
Until the day He appears.
We are the Lord’s army of saints
Doing His will without complaints.

We must war and go to battle
Against each evil rattle
Of the Evil One’s fist at God,
Take the sword and don’t spare the rod.

Be brave and don’t faint in the day!
God is with you all the way!
His will is that you give it all
Once He has given you the call.

Copyright 2011 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

I have been sorely grieved, as I know God has, by some of the atrocious greed, corruption, and pure evil I have seen happening around me concerning people I loved and cared about in the last couple of years. I am convicted, as God has brought to my attention in my journaling with Him, that if I don’t do my part in sharing the revelations He has given me about Satan’s grip on our society, on Christianity, on the whole world including myself, I am failing Him. I was blessed to have a deep conversation with my younger brother recently on a trip we took together about these issues that are so important to me and he admitted to me about his own reluctance to “get involved” in matters that we DO have some control over. I am talking here about things like people getting away with serious offenses against other people including possible murder! My position here is that I not only have the right to report evidence of crimes like this to the proper authorities, but it is my belief that I have the “responsibility” as a law-abiding citizen, a human who cares about other people, and as a Christian committed to fighting against evil, to take action. That is my only moral choice!

I don’t take the law into my own hands, but I don’t turn my head the other way either out of fear, either of retaliation or inconvenience. That’s what Satan would like me to do. When I was a child, I didn’t know I had rights, and I was victimized, but today I don’t have to be a victim and I won’t stand around and watch others be victimized if I can help it. The Father of Lies would have you and me think he doesn’t even exist and that is the biggest lie of them all and I have vowed to expose him for ALL  that he is and isn’t, for the honor and glory of God and His Kingdom here on earth. I will expound on this as the Truth of Scripture reveals who our real enemy is and how we can stand undefeated! I hope you will join me.

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

Until the next time,

Blessings!

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 


Dear God- My Holy, Sacred Time- How and Why I Journal To God

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Dear God 9/19/86
My deepest gratitude to you is for the protection and love you have had for my life all these years during my addiction and insanity. With these few 24 hours of sobriety, I can already see how you have worked your miracles through so many people and even animals to help get me through the so many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years of my self-destructiveness. Realizing more each day how hard I worked against myself helps me realize how much harder you have had to work to keep me alive and even protect other people from me. I have to stand in awe and humbleness at the strength and power you exerted to overcome the roadblocks I tried to place in your path. It helps me to come face-to-face with how sick I have been, how self-centered I have been to not to have been able to see how you were caring and doing for me what I could not do for myself, and how you were working through other people who have done for me what I could not do for myself. It truly had to have been insanity on my part, because even ignorance could not have held out so long, or been so blind to the obvious love you have guided my life with. I can honestly say that I never thought I would live this long, and I know countless others who either doubted my survival or prayed for my death.
Today, I am truly grateful to be alive, to have the chance I have been given to face myself and reality. I am so grateful to not have knowingly taken another’s life. I’m thankful for the body and mind that I have left, for the temporary and permanent damage that you have spared me from even through the years of my abuse of my body and mind from drugs, alcohol, and various sharp and blunt instruments. Even as I am grateful for the new life opening up to me from the moment of my second trip to an A.A. meeting after 10 or 11 years, I can be thankful too, for the years of living hell from my addictions, because from all the cumulative experiences, I can see the strength and insight I have been given.

How and why are two big questions that keep running through my mind. How could you have loved me so much in face of my denial of your very existence? Why did you not abandon me when I abandoned you and the responsibility for my own life? How could my life have been so important to you when it meant nothing to me but a huge resentment?

________

As you can see from the date on this letter to God, it was fall of 1986.  I was 33 years old, in a treatment center starting recovery from alcohol and drug addiction and had just spent days on what they called a First-Step Inventory.  This was where I was supposed to reflect and write down ten things out of my using and drinking that made my life unmanageable, and ten things that were examples of the “insanity” of my drinking and using.  Only about a month clean and sober, my mind still spinning and scared to death of facing me after years of running from my feelings through numbing myself, the lists wouldn’t stop at ten things each.  I made up my mind then and there that I needed to take a notebook and pen and make as complete a list of both of them as I could, for my own benefit and the sake of my recovery.

This was the real thing here!  And looking back at the almost 21 years of
“blow-it-out, party-’til-you-puke” career-alcoholic and drug addict I had been, I really felt like it was going to take an all-out effort for me to stay clean and sober.  So I decided I was going to get out of this treatment program what I put into it and spent days and nights scribbling lists of the craziness of my life into that notebook.  When I finally finished writing down all I could think of I had written page after page after page of what looked like a science-fiction story-book life.  But it was mine, and it really blew me away looking at all I had written and lived through, and it made me realize somewhere deep down inside that there had been “some” power greater than myself keeping me from self-destructing or destroying some one else!

This is what prompted this spontaneous letter to God, although I was just calling him that without having a clue at to Who God really was.  When I had first come into the rooms of 12-Step meetings, the word “God” was the last thing I wanted to hear because I felt if there had been a gracious God, he would have let me die many years before that time during my earlier suicide attempts.  Even my drinking and using was one great suicide attempt because I knew I was killing myself from it and very likely to die driving under the influence of alcohol and vast numbers of mood-altering chemicals at the same time.  The fact that I wasn’t dead already was what seemed insane to me now!

Not accepting the Christian “God” at this point in time, I started a 10 year quest to “find God.”  That is a whole other situation which I will get into at a later date, but suffice it to say that God finally found me in 1996.  But I had already been journaling to some god before that.  I had a book about discovering your creativity which I kept getting about halfway through the exercises and put down, only to return and start over again at a later time.  But one of the first exercises was to get up (I think first thing in the morning) and write three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing just to be writing and not worrying about complete sentences or anything like that.  You weren’t supposed to be “thinking” about what you were writing, just write.  But being the disciplined writer I am, I couldn’t get past the punctuation and complete sentences and so forth.  So it would take me about an hour and a half to accomplish what was supposed to take about thirty minutes as I found myself thinking about what I was writing.

Anyway, I just gave up on the stream-of-consciousness thing and just wrote, but since I was on this quest to find God, I just started journaling to him.  Then, when I became a Christian in 1996, I became even more serious about keeping up my writing to Him since I knew who He was.  And when I became disabled in 2000 I was totally dedicated to my journaling, and had read in a book where if you wanted to get to know God better and couldn’t always find the time to pray, you could make a decision to get up a half hour or hour earlier than you normally would to spend that time with God.  It just depended on how much time you wanted to dedicate to time with God.

I don’t remember about what time I was usually getting up around that time, but I really wanted to deepen my relationship with God, so I decided to get up at 4 or 5 a.m. in the morning and get in my journal with God first thing.  I had worked a midnight shift in a carpet mill for seven years before I became disabled and the early morning hours just seemed to fit for me and it left me all the time I wanted or needed to spend with God, all alone, most of the world asleep.  And just before dawn, a bird would start chirping outside my window in a tree, and the first chirp of the morning gave me the biggest smile inside and out and I thanked God profusely immediately after every morning for sending that bird to sing just for me!  This poem is about my holy, sacred time with God each morning:

 

My Holy, Sacred Time 2/23/08

I have found
The inner peace
That comes
Only
From knowing You.

Five A.M.
Finds me
Greeting,
Meeting
You.

You are waiting
On me, in the silence
Of the night.
Our time
Is holy, sacred.

I greet You,
“Dear
Almighty
Heavenly
Father,”
lingering, meditating
upon each word’s
deep meaning to me.

Then I thank You
“For this
Glorious new morning
And this glorious new day,”
For I know
They are,
And when I pray,
Expecting them to be,
You have already
Made it so.

Then comes more
Praise and thanksgiving
For all things done
And more to come,
And the love
Swells up
Within my soul,
Bringing it
Almost to bursting!

Your love,
Your grace,
Your mercy,
All so True and pure!
Your faithfulness!

It is all so plain to see!
And I count myself
Blessed,
Because You
Have shown these things
To me,
Because there was
A time
I could
Or would
Not see.

I pray for those
Who will not
Or cannot see,
For the void
And the loss
In their lives.
I pray for them
To find this precious time
To spend with Almighty God,

To be known
By God
As beloved daughter
Or son,
Chosen,
For eternity.

I cling
To my holy, sacred time
With my Lord
With my heart and soul,
And as
The early morning wanes on
The birds begin their songs
And my soul
Completes its round.

I am filled
To the brim
With the Holy Spirit
And my soul is abounding
With Joy indescribable!

I have seen
Night turn into day
With my God,
And already lived
The most precious
Time of my day.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

I can’t tell you how much I have benefited from this time and this way of spending my time with God in building a relationship with Him that is the love of my life!  It isn’t about “religion” or serving Him like I feel I am doing here, but it is just “being” with Him and feeling so loved and understood, unlike any human relationship possible!  For anyone who wants to grow their “relationship” with God, which is what He wants most of all from any one of us, I would recommend starting journaling to God first thing in the morning (as soon as you get your coffee or tea and get comfy).

This is my time of prayer, worship, adoration, reciprocation from God, gaining wisdom and knowledge and really getting to know who my God is!  And in the process, I get to know myself better as I learn to see myself through His eyes.  And answers!  You’d be surprised at all the answers to questions you didn’t even know you had, let alone the ones you are aware of.  The answers come out on paper in black and white, from within ourselves, because friends, we have all the answers inside because God is inside of us in our hearts.

And I’ve had answers I didn’t like very much or even at all.  But you know what?  He’s always right!  And He always gives the BEST!

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

Blessings for now, Brothers and Sisters!  May God bless you on this Lord’s Day and every day!  With love…me.


Don’t Go Away! Trying to Recover From Computer Crash!!!

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Dear blessed ones, I apologize for not answering comments & posting in the last few days, but I’m trying to recover from a computer crash and will be back with you within the next day or so!

Blessings to all, and hope you understand!

P.S.-I need a new laptop if any of you out there have an extra one!  lol!


Finally Back!- “Jesus is Waiting” and “Oh, Good Shepherd”

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Oh my dear ones, I am so, so sorry about the long wait for another post.  My computer has been on one continual crash after another and I have not had the money to take it to have it fixed.  I have worked on it myself day after day trying to figure out how to keep it up and running but with little success.  I seem to have it semi-working for the moment so will make the most of it now.  As soon as I get my Disability check next week I will get it fixed for the long haul or rent-to-own a new one.  I have added a Paypal Button for any of you who would care to make any amount of donation to help me out with some of my needs which do include a fixed or new computer and a vehicle to help get me to my doctor appointments, shopping, church, etc.  Some of you have already expressed an interest in doing so, and I would greatly appreciate any amount you would see fit to contribute as it does cost to keep up this website also.  God bless you NOW for any donations you make!.

Some have commented that they would like to make guest posts and I will be giving some of them a chance to do that to give all of you a broader reading aspect, at my discretion, of course.  I know I am not the “be all” and “end all” of God’s servants or vessels and will hopefully choose some fine posts and view points for you to ponder.  Your comments on these guest posts will give me an indication whether to give way to more or less.  After all. variety is the spice of life, but Biblical principles only will be allowed here and I will reserve the right to edit submits.

This all said and done, someone is waiting…

 

Jesus is Waiting 9/2/08

Oh, where would I be without You, Lord?
What trouble would I be heading toward?
You are the One I bring my pain to,
I come as only a pauper to You.

When I’m feeling frail and so worn down,
I look to You to bring me around.
I come and sit and weep at Your feet,
For Your holy touch on my cheek, so sweet.

No other can bring Your deep relief,
In that, I’m so sure of my belief.
Your hand so steady on the bow of love,
Your breath on my neck, as soft as a dove.

The Lord of the universe seems to be,
Giving all of His attention to me.
Never too busy to meet my needs,
He tends my garden and pulls the weeds.

Oh lost and lonely world, can’t you see,
That this is the Master, only He?
When you’ve come up empty-handed and bare,
You’ve not seen the One Who’s standing there.

Jesus is waiting for you by your side,
To take away your sins and to guide.
You will never regret this one choice,
When you hear the Savior’s merciful voice.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 

Is Jesus waiting on you?  Always!  When you feel lost and lonely, He’s waiting for you to see Him there, to call on Him in your darkest hour, to let Him into your life, your heart, your soul!  When you feel as if all others have forsaken you, Jesus is right by your side, waiting to be your Friend.  If you feel as if your life is sinking into the pits of hell, He is right there, waiting to be your Savior!  He knows you, He knows you more intimately than anyone else knows you, and He loves you, more deeply than anyone else- unconditionally.  He gave up His rights to all of Heaven to come to this earth to be born of a virgin in a lowly manger to take on the sin of the world for each one of us.  He fulfilled His Heavenly Father’s will by becoming human, so He could identify with the sinful temptations of man without sinning himself, but dying on a Cross at Calvary so that we could escape the penalty of death for our own sinful nature.  Was that not the epitome of love?

So many people come back with, “How can God be ‘love’ when He lets there be so much pain and atrocity in the world?”  Because in God’s love for us, He doesn’t “demand” our love in return, but has given man “free will” to either love Him and His commands, and “We love Him because He first loved us,” (I John 4:19 NKJV)  or we follow Satan, “the ruler of this world,” (John 9:31 NKJV)  and our own fleshly lusts like power and greed, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” (I Timothy 6:10 NKJV)  Notice it doesn’t say money, in itself is evil, but “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  And I frequently hear this as one of the most misquoted verses in the Bible as some people try to put to shame all people who have more money than them.

Is it not hard for even one like myself who has so much faith in the goodness of God to become embittered for a time when I see and experience the evil all around me?  Yes, even I am overcome by despair and discouragement at times, but I always know where my strength and my hope lies, and I refuse to spend long sitting on my pity-pot and invite others to my party when I know I have only to turn to the One who has all the answers and  my salvation and life secure!  Even if only to turn for a time of solace and comfort, He is whom I turn to.  For I want His comfort so that I may comfort and encourage others when they have come to the end of their ropes and be there to help pick them up when they fall.  And in this, I am comforted and encouraged!  And that is one of the things I have learned from God about adversity, challenges, and the sorrows of the world- that I can put my hand in God’s to reach out to others in need, forgetting my own troubles, gaining strength from Jesus, and comforting those other poor souls with that with which I was comforted myself, sharing my love of God and His love for all.

And Jesus will still be waiting for me to come home to tell him of my victories as well as my losses!  And I can give Him the praise, honor, and glory for all of those victories, and how sweet it is to His ears that a pauper like me has taken His love and shared it with a brother or sister.  Just as the tragedies in our lives must be shared, the beloved times in our lives must be shared in gladness and triumph over darkness not only in our lives, but also in those of our neighbors and friends, in Jesus’ name!

 

Oh, Good Shepherd 6/10/08

Oh, Good Shepherd,
Find Your lamb,
Bring him home,
Let him not be damned.
Gather him home
From far or near,
Set his face
Upon Your’s so dear.

Oh, Good Shepherd,
With rod or staff,
Let him not cry,
But learn to laugh.
Bring him back home
To Your flock.
Watch the ticking
Of eternity’s clock.

Oh, Good Shepherd,
He’s lone and lost.
He knows not what
His ways have cost.
Drag him home
With a tender word,
Or cut him quick
With Your flaming sword.

Oh, Good Shepherd,
Let none be lost.
The soul lives on
But the body rots.
Claim all of Your’s,
Do it now.
There is no time,
The Devil prowls.

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 

Is time running out for you or a loved one or even someone you barely know?  My hope is that you would read this poem over several times to really let it sink in!  I pray to Jesus to collect all of His chosen lambs from the jowls of the devil!  And I ask you to do the same!  In this poem I’m asking Jesus to bring His precious lambs home into the flock before Satan flees out of sight with them.  Satan IS out to steal any of Our Good Shepherd’s flock to take them into the damnation of hell where he is bound for once Christ comes back to earth.  I pray to God to let me help be a vessel with the poems He gives me to help wake people the world over up to the critical situation we are all in with Satan as the ruler of this world.

I come not to make people worry, but to take honest stock of their own lives and turn to the Lord and commit to His will for their lives.  Then to live in joy and thanksgiving for the salvation so freely given (yes, it’s free for the asking), and then share it so we can all help tell the rest of the world of :

God’s Everlasting Love   (Romans 8:31-39 NKJV)

31  What then shall we say to these things?  If God is for us , who can be against us?      32  He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?                                                                                         33  Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect?  It is God who justifies.                           34  Who is he who condemns?  It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.                                       35  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?                                                        36  As it is written:                                                                                                                         “For Your sake we are killed all day long;                                                                                                   We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

37  Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.              38  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come                                                                                     39  nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

 

I hope this has been worth the wait and I can assure you you’ll hear from me again soon!  I’ll be answering your questions from your comments as soon as I can get to them and for those of you wanting to know how we can be in contact, my contact information is on the first page if you hover over it.  It’s great to be back and look forward to hearing from you!

Blessings to all of you,

Brenda


I ask, I believe, I receive!- “Give it Back”, “Give and Give”

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I ask, I believe, I receive!  That is the way I first started getting My Poems From God, and subsequently started this blog.  Jesus said, “Believe in Me!”  And in Mark 11:24 as He was instructing about prayer He said, “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”

Late 2007, I believed that God could use my writing for His honor and glory, and I asked Him to “give me poetry” for that purpose.  I believed in my prayer, sincerely wanting to be a servant in God’s kingdom here on earth, believing that He could and would use me for His own purposes.  And the next morning as I was in my journal with Him, He started “dictating” my first poem from Him and it has continued ever since.

I believed that He wanted me to share these poetic blessings He bestowed upon me with the world.  I believed He wanted me to share these poems in a book to the world.  When that didn’t seem possible, and an opportunity came along for my own blog, I believed He wanted me to go in that direction at the time, so I turned my attention to that and look where it has brought me; right to the doorstep of the world!

As I have been having trouble with my computer for the past month, I am now believing Him to keep me going somehow, for my joy and His here with you.  As the laptop kept crashing and I didn’t have the money to get it fixed, I believed if I kept trying to get it up and running myself, I could and did.  (You and I have my older brother, two years younger than me, to thank for my being able to post again.  I was without a power supply for my laptop for two days and in a panic because your comments are coming in greater than 100 a day now, and I needed to get this post on the air.  When I called him yesterday about my power supply being dead he fit it in to his busy schedule and his wallet to help get me back up and running today.  What an angel in disguise this wonderful Christian man is to his sister, his employees, his church, and missions work over the world!  Not only did he deliver my new power supply to me this morning, but also two chicken biscuits for me and my roommate!  I am forever indebted to him for his kindness, brotherly love, and getting me back here to you!  His name is Scot, and if you are reading this I hope you will offer up a prayer of thanksgiving for his kindness.)

My brother is not a man of great wealth, but of great heart, sometimes to his own detriment, but this first poem is about something he lives out in his life on a daily basis and is what I strive to do for you here in this blog:

Give and Give        4/17/08

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”     Matthew 6:19-21

God’s gracious blessings from above
Show us His awesome merciful love,
Are to be used by us so wisely,
And not to be kept so miserly.

We must pass on what we’ve been given,
To those who on much less are living.
It is best to be the giving blesser,
And give our gifts to the poor lesser.

Most of us have more than we deserve,
And hold and withhold in reserve,
When we could give to those who have not,
Instead, we let what we have rot.

All we have from God is on loan,
None of it is ours alone to own.
Instead of saying, “This is mine,”
We should be saying, “This is Thine!”

So if this is His, why do we hold,
So tightly ’til our fingers are cold,
That which was never meant to be,
Only for I, myself, and me?

Give and give, some more ’til it hurts,
For what is a man really worth,
Who accumulates treasures and things,
What in the end does it really bring?

If you can’t give your things, give your time,
For that is also God’s Divine.
He gives you your days and length of years,
So spend them all wisely, my dear.

The point I’m trying to make, at last,
Is that our lives all go so fast,
And when our time on earth is done,
What is it that we want to have won?

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and glory!

 

Our awesome God is a “Giver!”  And we have all things through Him while all He asks us is to, “Believe!”  In John’s gospel, the word, “believe,” is used in one form or another 101 times.  Don’t believe me?  Take your own Bible and circle all forms of the word in John and you will see.  (I have mine done and just went back and counted them for you.)  Is “seeing,” :“believing?”  In this instance, yes, but God asks us to believe by FAITH!  And I have found that when I believe by faith, that faith is rewarded by “seeing.”

But you are going to tell me, “I prayed for something, really believing, and my prayer wasn’t answered!”  Ah, but were you praying for God’s will to really be done in your life, or were you praying for your own will?  And another question:  Are you sure it wasn’t answered?  I believe God answers all prayers.  It’s just that sometimes the answer is, “Yes,” sometimes, “No,” and a lot of times, “Wait!”  And many times our prayers are answered, not in the way we wanted, so we don’t SEE the answer because we’re looking elsewhere for the answer that is right in front of our eyes because God will answer with HIS will.  I believe that we miss many answers because of our own expectations of how we think our prayers ought to be answered.  How many times do we go to God and tell Him, “I want what I want and I want it NOW!”

And when we get what we want, what do we do with it?  Do we share with others, or do we hang on to it so tightly that it becomes our sole obsession and love, forgetting Who it was who gave it to us?  Think about this:

Give it Back      2/16/08 (Revised 3/11/08)

What is Thy will
Oh Lord. this day?
You say, “Ask,”
And so, I pray.

I know not what
You have in store.
I know You want me
To ask for more.

You want me to trust
In You alone,
Expect You to give me
All You own.

When I hold tightly
To my own selfish ways,
I don’t give You control
Of my nights and my days,

Who gave me not only
The moon and the stars
But also the Savior
With all of His scars,

I don’t come along
To life with You,
And see everything
As being brand new.

You want to give me
Your own holy ways,
Strengthen my faith,
Brighten my days.

I have to want You
More than anything else,
Belong to Jesus,
Forget myself.

And then, only then,
In my life will appear,
All You have loaned me
As being so dear.

My life, my breath,
ALL that is Your’s.
Your love and Your grace,
Through my soul will course.

All that You’ve given
I’ll give back to You,
Because that is what
You want me to do.

What You have given
Is not mine to keep,
But to give back
And place at Your feet.

Give to the poor,
The hungry, the lame,
Remember the Savior
And why He came.

I am to be
His hands and His feet,
And on this earth
Other’s needs to meet.

Your love, so sweet,
So dear to me,
Must always be
Returned to Thee!

Copyright 2008 by Brenda LaVelle

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

When I ask for God’s will in my life and don’t insist on my own limited wants, I know I am opening myself up for God’s best.  He doesn’t want me to settle for “good,” or “better,” but only His best.  And I truly believe when I asked Him for poems for His honor and glory, it was a pleasing prayer because He answered it promptly.  Yes, I was asking for myself, but He revealed to me the truths in the above poems about giving my blessings to the world.  And His rewards as far as strengthening my relationship with and understanding of Him have been great!

Before I gave my life over to Jesus, I was running it on my own limited thinking and perceptions of this world.  My quest before seeking God’s will in my life was for instant gratification and selfish desires.,  Today I see the blessings I missed before.  What greater lover could we have but God Almighty and what better Friend on our side than Jesus?  I am not saying my life today is “easy,” because it isn’t in so many ways, but the journey with God is the most joy I have known in my life.

Saturday, June 2, 1012;

It’s time to get down to the business of getting this posting finished!  I have had many distractions lately, but this is the first day of the rest of my life, and I’m making a new start! I WILL be getting down to answering a lot of your comments and returning answers to questions!  God is giving me a break from some of the frustrations in my life and I am going to make the most of it!  He and you are becoming my number one priority from this time on!  I will be getting this website updated with more content, some graphics, a sign-up for a newsletter, recommendations for some good reading and a way for you to have access to it, and much more!  Look for revisions coming up soon and hopefully still the type of quality posts you have complimented me on.  One of my main goals is to try to make this one of the best websites in this category and give you all my best effort in that.  I’m getting a lot of feedback and suggestions for things you are looking for here and will be adding new features and giving you at least three posts a week, so be ready to visit more often and have more of what you want here.

Please note the “DONATE” button at the beginning of every post on the right-hand side of the page and all help to keep this website up will be greatly appreciated, as my income is very limited and I have many needs that are unmet at this time!

Copyright 2012 by Brenda LaVelle

With the love of Christ, I wish you all blessings for this weekend and will be updating very soon!

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

 

 


Can and Will You Help?

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Dear friends, I have been in bed almost all week with a swollen left bottom jaw due to an abscess in an old root canal.  The pain is excruciating and the infection is getting worse and poisoning my whole system.  I went to the emergency room Wednesday, but all they could do for me was put me on antibiotics and pain medicine which is of little help and refer me to the local health department to get it taken care of.  A crown has come off of that tooth and the metal post is sticking up and I guess it has gotten infected underneath the post in the old root canal.

I have been wanting to get more posts up for you this week but this has set me back on that due to the poisons in my system making me sleep all the time.  I have been answering comments as I find the energy and time during times of pain keeping me awake.  I do not even have enough money to go to the health department to get this abscess taken care of at this point in time.  I am too sick right now to be updating my posts as you and I want, and desperately need your help if you can see your way fit to help me out by making even small donations for me to get this dire situation taken care of as soon as possible!

Please use my “Donate” button to help me in any way the Lord leads you to do!  Any and all help will be greatly appreciated!  Thank you now for your kindness and generosity!  I know that God will greatly reward you for any way you can and will help me!

Always, in all ways, to God the honor and praise!

 

Update 6/12/12- I have been too sick with fever, swelling, pain, and overall exhaustion to get you a post out or even answer comments these past few days.  I had no answers to my plea for help to find a way to get dental treatment, so finally my roommate has put up his car title to borrow the $150 I need to get help because the poisons from the infection are building up in my system and he is afraid of losing me.  I have an appointment at 11:30 and hopefully you can all at least be in prayer for me that they can do whatever is necessary to help get me well again.  I will update you as soon as I can and get back to catching up with you.