GUARD

GUARD / January 27, 2014

Atherosclerosis is defined as the hardening of your arteries due to accumulated cholesterol plaques and scarring in the artery walls.  The result over time is an unhealthy heart because blood cannot flow easily towards it.  This disease is very similar to what I call the “ALL ABOUT ME, MYSELF and I” terminal illness.  This illness over time BLOCKS God from your heart, and when your heart can no longer except instruction from the God of the universe, it becomes hardened.

This leads me to my WORD of the day.  GUARD.  Above all else, GUARD your heart, for everything you do flows from it.  Proverbs 4:23.  This command to GUARD your heart is a warning for protect our hearts from becoming hardened.  How does one guard their heart?  I’m going to share with you what I have learned the HARDENED WAY. 

I have spent several years NOT guarding my Spiritual heart, without realizing it.  It all began when I started putting myself FIRST in my life.  I would complain about one thing, then grumble about two, sometimes I judged others unfairly, I worried about many pointless things and worse I focused on myself.  While each of these separately, seemed little and justifiable at the moment, like a little bag of chips or a little scoop of ice cream isn’t good for the heart, over time when combined, my spiritual heart became hardened.  It was clogged up with WRONG THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS, so the ultimate result was an overflowing of wrong thoughts, words and emotions.  I became very sad when the Lord revealed a x-ray of my heart to me.

I would like to share something with you today in hopes you can bypass a hardened heart in your own life.  I was blessed enough to grow up in church and surrounded by very Godly family members.  The older I became the more I thought I knew about the ways of God, and became “TOO COMFORTABLE” in my walk with the Lord.  A too comfortable attitude, led to a, “I know all things” attitude, which led to “I’m better than others” attitude.  YUCK! Just like our heart is the most important organ in our body, our inner self and spirit is vital to our connection with our Creator.  In this verse, “Above all else, Guard your heart…”  heart represents are inner selves, our emotions, intellect, desires and our wills.   Basically, like Matthew 12:34 says, “The words we speak flow out of our hearts.”  When “I, myself, and Me” become a part of your vocabulary, it says your heart is focused on YOU, not God.  God challenged me during my quiet time with Him one day, “LISTEN to how many times you make statements regarding your own well-being and not that of others.”  The results weren’t pretty. 

I am thankful because I am living with a soft, pliable heart before the LORD today because God continued to rescue me from myself and all my careless acts that I justified as “no big deal.”  He took my heart and wrapped it in his great BIG TRUTH, bringing His WORD alive to me as my WORD for the day.  “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will GUARD your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7 The TRUTH in this WORD is heart changing.  God sent his son, Jesus Christ to GUARD our heart. God is our GUARD from a hardened heart. BUT we have to humble ourselves and admit we can’t GUARD our hearts on our own.  My WORD from the WORD today is GUARD.  Exchange all the I’s and Me’s in your life and lay them down at the GUARD’s feet and ask him to GUARD your heart from becoming hardened.  He will joyfully GUARD you, because YOU MATTER to Him enough to be created in His great big world.

HUGS.  SMJ.

HEALING

HEALING / 1/19/14

What does it feel like to be broken in spirit from the wounds of someone, to then turn around and be so broken in the presence of the Lord in such a deep way, that you heal? 

The saying goes, “You can’t fix what’s not broken.”  TRUE.   You would never take a brand new anything that works perfectly back to the store and say “fix this,” if nothing was wrong with it. Same reason we can’t go to God and tell him we need a Savior, if we are perfect. 

So to be BROKEN before God, when inside you already feel like someone else broke you, can be a deep and painful surgery.  Imagine a beautiful ceramic pot, glazed and painted for display, and someone comes in and whacks it with a bat into a million different sized pieces.  Would you go get a glue gun?  Or a trash can?  This is my visual every time I think about being truly BROKEN before God.  I visualize, being broken into so many pieces, that I can’t even attempt to glue my life back together.  I think to myself, the only thing I have as a solution is a trash can.

To go before God BROKEN, means to humble yourself and lay every broken piece before Him, holding NOTHING back.  It says to God, “I’ve got nothing worthy to offer you, I am nothing, You, LORD are everything, and I need ALL of you, to hold my BROKENESS together.  I am BROKEN without you.”  Sure, we can all mumble a prayer that seems humble, and we can say all the right words out loud among peers, but God KNOWS and SEES His BROKEN children, and when he does, he calls you by name to come to Him, so he can put the pieces back together again.

“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and HEAL their land.”  2 Chronicles 7:14  God cannot heal someone who doesn’t even know they are broken.  He cannot work with HARD clay or HARD hearts.  But with BROKENNESS and humility he HEALS you completely.   God can take all my tiny, fragmented broken mess of a life and put it all back on His Wheel, The Potter’s Wheel, and add his special pliable dose of mercy, love, grace and forgiveness and suddenly, my brokenness is put all back together by a GREAT BIG GOD!

God wants to HEAL our land.  He wants us to replace the words that tear us down and steal the power He offers to us with His WORDS from His WORD.  Let’s replace our BROKENNESS today with HEALING.  Let’s lay down EVERY BROKEN hard chipped part of the beautiful pot he originally created in each of us, and let his HEALING WORDS HEAL our land.  Humble ourselves, pray and seek HIS face only and turn from what is BREAKING our lives apart, SIN.  It’s no easy journey, but laying around BROKEN into a million pieces serves NO purpose!  BRING IT ON GOD, I choose to speak the WORD HEALING TODAY.

HUGS.  SMJ

PRESENCE

PRESENCE Jan. 19^th, 2014

I am in a very RAW place this early Monday Morning.  This church chorus from over a decade ago, possibly even longer, came to me during the night as one word has continued to roll around in my heart over this long, emotional weekend: PRESENCE.  If you remember this song, sing it with me in spirit today…

“Surely the PRESENCE of the Lord is in this place

I can feel His might power and His Grace

I can see the touch of angels wings I see glory on each face

Surely the PRESENCE of the Lord is in this place”

 

We all have experienced those “dry desert experiences.”  You know those moments frozen in time, when you take one small step forward and it feels like someone has pushed you 5 steps backwards and knocked you off your feet.  Laying flat on your back, breathless you reach out for someone to rescue you from this place, and with most of the air from the fall being knocked out of you, you can barely gasp, “Is anybody out there?  Anyone? Help?”

I often go to the book of Exodus, when I am personally experiencing an emotional desert.  I could read these ancient pages forever and always gleam a new insight.  This weekend, I saw PRESENCEover and over as I read.  Moses life stories of valley’s and desert’s and mountaintop’s weave themselves in such a similar way to each of us. This is where I was drawn in DEEP this weekend.  Moses had already received the 10 commandments, inscribed by the very finger of God….and around chapter 31 and 32 when he is returning to the people that God had CHOSEN, and gifted and poured into blessing after blessing…gold and silver and abundance, God’s provisions day and night had been with His CHOSEN….and then this moment of utter defiance… they took EVERY single blessing from GOD and turned it all into another GOD, a Golden Calf.  Chapter 32.  Then in Chapter 33, I shiver at this statement…”The Lord said to Moses, Tell the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff –necked people.  If I were to go with you even for a moment, I might destroy you!!!!” Exodus 33:5  Their creator, the God of the Universe, the one they have worshipped and saw miracles falling from Heaven in the form of food, HIS PRESENCE had been lifted from them at this moment in time.  I can’t even imagine the anger, frustration, knocked off your feet and punched in the gut feeling deep within Moses.  He had just been with the Lord on the mountaintop, and now this.  In his desert place, he cries out in verse 13, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. “  and verse 14 “The LORD replied, “My PRESENCE will go with you and I will give you rest.” And in verses 15 and 16 it is all sewn together at this moment..”Moses said to him “If your PRESENCE does not go with us, do not send us from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us?  What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?’

It is in these verses I weep, not a slow falling tear, a gut wrenching, gasping for air sobering mess of a weeping fit….Because in relating these verses to my seasons over the years, I recognize over how often I have sinfully tried to step out in “MY PRESENCE”, “MY POWER”, “MY WILL” and in so doing, I just fall further backwards into a big fat MESS, without the PRESENCE of God being minute by minute the intention of my heart, the voice on my lips of His name, the song in my spirit.  Without His PRESENCE in my life, what distinguishes me from any other people? 

So my WORD today from the WORD to begin this work week and chew on is PRESENCE. Is God’s PRESENCE with me today?  Or have I allowed my circumstances to keep me on my back in the dirt?  Have I spent so much time in the PRESENCE of the Lord that HE is seen on my face, NOT ME, but HIM?  I will close with this… “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD.” Exodus 34:29

Go out into this NEW week, IN HIS PRESENCE!

HUGS.  SMJ

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FAMOUS

FAMOUS / 1/17/14

I’ve always been told WHAT you spend your money on, is what you LOVE, And what you LOVE, you make important, and if it’s important enough you do everything to make it matter to others, which is pretty much making it or a person FAMOUS.  This leads me to my WORD from the WORD.  FAMOUS.

“Come,let’s build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven.  Let’s make ourselves FAMOUS so we won’t be scattered here and there across the Earth.”  Genesis 11:4 and also “Knowing the correct password – saying “Master, Master” for instance – isn’t going to get you anywhere with me.  What is required is serious obedience – DOING what my Father wills.  I can see it now at the Final Judgement thousands strutting up to me and saying “Master we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God sponsored projects had everyone talking. And do you know what I am going to say?  You missed the boat.  All you did was use me to make yourselves FAMOUS!  You don’t impress me one bit.  You’re out of here.”  Matthew 7:21-23.

God’s WORD says, if you are FAMOUS because you use my name and yet you are NOT doing my will, then you will not inherit His Kingdom.  The key is DOING God’s will, not YOUR will.  The solution is to spend all your time, energy and resources in this life making GOD FAMOUS and no one else.

This week I have pondered about what FAMOUS means.  How does one become famous into today’s world?  And as I thought of all the ways, through technology, a special talent, even a dangerous and stupid public act can get overnight FAME.  No matter what I came up with, there was still ONE thread that made each person who is FAMOUS similar….they ALL eventually DIE.  They may get hung on a wall, or put in a History book, but eventually, all the talk about them withers away as more and more people become FAMOUS in the eyes of the world, every second of every day.  BUT there is ONE whose FAME remains the same, who created all people who are FAMOUS.  And GOD has been, and will forever be FAMOUS whether you decide to spend your time making Him FAMOUS or not.  He will never die, and his WORD will never die, because “In the Beginning was the WORD and the WORD was with God, and the WORD was God.”  John 1:1  His FAME will always be. 

There’s really nothing else to say.

HUGS. SMJ

 

Grace and Geese

GRACE AND GEESE

I was driving 55mph this past week in the middle of rush hour when suddenly the traffic on both sides of a 4 lane road came to a COMPLETE stop and I noticed a family of 9 geese took their time crossing over to the other side.  In that moment, I laughed.  Cute little 2ft creatures completing stopping traffic at rush hour, interesting thought….

Traffic rarely stops for anything.  Including people!  We teach our children at early ages NOT to run into the street.  We would never say, son, go get 9 of your best friends and cross the highway at rush hour to the other side.  And Yet we do this in our personal lives much too often.  Not with traffic of course but spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally we do right down stupid things. 

That leads me to my WORD for the day from GOD’s WORD.  GRACE.  This visual of geese crossing the street is my reminder that when I step into SIN it is like walking out into the middle of rush hour traffic and facing it.  And God is like the cars that stop and say “Here child, take my hand, I am going to walk you over to the other side safely.” 

But where sin increased and abounded grace has surpassed it and increased the more and superabounded.  Romans 5:20

So the next time you step into a street of oncoming traffic and need  saving grace, call on the ONLY one who can supply it.  Jesus Christ died to give us the most awesome gift we will EVER need in this life.  Amazing Grace how sweet the sound… I once was lost and now am found.

HUGS!  SMJ

BLESSED

BLESSED

I chose BLESSED to be my WORD for the day from God’s WORD.  Oh how I believe God wants to BLESS our lives, and we all know how good those moments are when we can genuinely sit back and say “I am BLESSED.”  We all experience different kinds of BLESSINGS, from health, to money, to family, to job, to friends, and hundreds of other ways.  Today I would like to take you on the journey I went on, regarding the word BLESSED….

In the book of Matthew chapter 5, Jesus came to teach his disciples on a mountainside regarding the meaning of BLESSED.  Many of you may know this teaching as The Beatitudes.  But what you may not know or remember is where Jesus had just come from.  He had just come from crowds of very sick, diseased and ill people.  He had healed many, people, and the crowds kept coming, so he went up on a mountainside and that is when he began to teach the Disciples The Beatitudes.   I am going to write a few so you can go with me on this journey… Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. 

I became so humbled today.  These well-known verses that I have even memorized over the years, really spoke to my heart today.  To be BLESSED, is to be broken, humbled, lowly, sad, poor, even bullied (in today’s terms).  I have MISSED what the word BLESSED truly means in life.  BLESSED in Jesus definition is very different than what the world considers BLESSED.   Jesus knew that if we received blessings in abundance with no price we would be like a spoiled child.  BLESSINGS come at a price, an effort, and today I was humbled as I read Matthew 5.    Now my heart prays, God I want to be BLESSED in these ways.  These BLESSINGS are eternal, and eternity with you is much more of a BLESSING than things of this earth.  And with this prayer, I now also understand, an easy BLESSING I didn’t have to work for or be humbled for, is probably not a BLESSING I want to receive.

So my friends, I pray you are BLESSED by this teaching of Jesus Christ on a mountainside thousands of years ago.  Because, this WORD spoken then, is still very much TRUTH for today, for YOU and ME.  So let’s cherish the BLESSING of God’s WORD this day.

HUGS SMJ

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RAINBOWS

RAINBOWS

Something occurred to me today about rainbows as I read the story of Noah.  Every day when we are outside, we see nature, trees, grass, animals, flowers, etc.  Not often do we yell at the family, “HEY come outside and look at this tree in the front yard!”  We only call everybody to something they don’t see every day, like a rainbow.  I have even called family before when I see a beautiful rainbow, and I will ask, “Do you see that rainbow outside?”  WHY is it that we make such a big deal about a rainbow? 

I am amazed everytime I read God’s WORD because it doesn’t matter how many times I have read it, there is ALWAYS something new to gleam from it.  Today, my readings led me through a few stories; the story of Noah from the Old Testament and the stories of Jesus’s arrival on earth as a baby and John the Baptist from the New Testament.  And the WORDS that kept replaying in my mind, came from Genesis 8:21 Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.  And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.  I have read this over and over today.  I even wrote it in my phone notes so I can recall it, because this is one of those statements that makes your heart kind beat faster, more intensely.  It’s a TRUTH that you cannot deny.  If a spouse or friend made this comment to you as a person, “ Hey ____________, every inclination of your heart is evil!”  You would probably want to punch them in the face.  Nobody wants to be known as a person with an evil heart. 

What does this have to do with Rainbows?  EVERYTHING!  I chose RAINBOWS as my WORD from GOD’s WORD to be my WORD for the day.  That’s a mouthful or sentence full.  Because the word RAINBOW is MY promise!  YOUR PROMISE!  Genesis 9:13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  You see, no matter what ANY of us do, we were born with an evil heart, BUT at the moment of this RAINBOW promise, NONE of that mattered anymore.  Because this promise would illuminate the skies forever as a promise written across the sky, that God will NOT destroy us, just because we are evil…..He is giving us an opportunity to OBEY Him.  His RAINBOWS are invitations to each and every one of us to OBEY Him during the storms of life and we will receive a RAINBOW when it stops raining. 

Let me rewind to Genesis 6:9 Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time.  You see Noah was the one God CHOSE to receive the rainbow promise because of his righteousness even during a very sinful period of time.  And then let’s fast forward to during the flood, Genesis 8:1 God remembered Noah….WOW!  Can you imagine being the chosen one to LIVE during a flood that drowned EVERYBODY but you and your family?  Noah was remembered because he did everything God asked of him. 

RAINBOWS are promises to each of us, if we OBEY God’s WORD.  Those rainbows will come in different wrappings, they represent blessings.  BUT the cool thing is, every time we see one for REAL in the sky, it can be a reminder that even though our hearts our naturally evil, we have a Great BIG GOD that makes RAINBOWS anyway, as a promise to save us from ourselves, if we allow Him complete control of our lives, the good, the bad, the ugly and the STORMS. 

I pray you experience a RAINBOW in your life soon!  And when you do, please SHARE it with others.

HUGS. SMJ.

JUICY FRUIT

JUICY FRUITY

The WORD I heard today from God’s word was “ fruitful…full of fruit…bearing fruit…BE fruitful and multiply.”  Gen 1:22, 28, Col 1:10.

Imagine biting into a rotten apple, or peach or pear.  Yuck!  There is not much you can do with bad fruit except spit it out and throw it away.  If you bought a shiny red apple today at the grocery store and went home and took a big bite and it was rotten, would you keep eating it?  And yet that is exactly what we do with ROTTEN WORDS.  We say them to ourselves, “ I can’t, I hate, I will never be.”   We say them about others, “they are stupid, they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re lazy.”  We spit them out about our lives, “ I hate my job, I will never get promoted, they don’t like me, I hate Monday’s, I hate rainy days, I wish I didn’t have to go to school.”  ROTTEN WORDS are hurtful, BUT most importantly they are NOT fruitful to anyone in anyway. 

So my WORD challenge today…..JUICY FRUIT. 

What must I do to take these WORDS from God’s WORD and obey them?  I have to purposely STOP speaking, eating and living ROTTEN FRUIT.  I have to purposely sow God seeds in my life so later I will reap JUICY FRUIT. 

My kids hear me say often, “you will reap what you sow.”  And like most of us, we usually don’t “get it” until we are reaping something pretty hard, and we say to ourselves, “where did this come from?”  And then it clicks, “OH, yeah….”  Perhaps you have lazy tendencies and never complete projects, then one day your roof is leaking and you realize you never fixed it?  Or perhaps you yell at your kids, then one day they turn around and yell at you what you yelled at them?  Or maybe you are always late to everything, your job, meetings, dates, school, and then one day when you are too late to something, you discover that was the time it really mattered, and you lose your job, or can’t go to college, or disappoint a spouse or child?  Regardless, of your circumstances, one day you will be reaping what you have sown.  And I don’t know about you, but I would rather reap JUICY FRUIT than ROTTEN FRUIT!  But my flesh is weak with God’s help.

We all have some rotten fruit somewhere in our lives that have sprouted up.  BUT this is a NEW year and beginning today we can take this WORD from our GOD and ask for His help, to destroy old rotten fruit and replace every bit of it with juicy GOD fruit so we can obey His WORD and be fruitful for HIM.

Let’s agree together to lay all our rotten fruit down this year.  Let’s take a stand to be JUICY FRUIT for Him.  Let’s take God’s words from the WORD and let them make a difference in our lives.  Let’s be like this WORD in Psalm 107:37 They sowed fields and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful harvest.               HUGS SMJ

90% MATTERS

Sheri’s Word Journey

One year ago I embarked on a bible study journey with 3 other ladies.  We wanted and prayed for a revival in our own lives, we desperately wanted to SEEK GOD in those hard places.   For around 5 weeks we met together and prayed together and inspired each other to pray boldly and dig deeper into our souls for that spark that God was reaching for in each of us.  Yes, we all bought a book, you know those bible study books that you can write in.  Yes, we all made a commitment to do the study and meet every week even if someone was missing.  And Yes we did for around 5 weeks until….

One by one each lady’s life got turned upside down! From cancer, to a death,  to hard life choices, and financial strains, and job changes.   Each experience was different from the other, some more extreme and emotionally wearing than the others.  Some little experiences in light of others…they each dramatically changed our day to day family life, but one common thread was strung throughout the group and still remains to this day………….

Because we chose to SEEK GOD our lives will never be the same.

So, does seeking God mean tragedy, heartache, deep loss and pain will occur in our lives?  ABSOLUTELY NOT!  Those things are going to happen anyway!  It’s life.  The reason none of us will be the same is because once you OPEN that chapter in your life to SEEKING GOD in intimate ways, there is NO going back.

I’m a quote person.  I LOVE, LOVE a good quote.  Today my calendar read….” Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.”  WOW I thought to myself.  My mind immediately went to these ladies and all that happened last year.  There were some pretty hard months, painful days of weeping, days of hurting so bad you aren’t even sure you want  to live another day.  BUT then I witnessed something remarkable amongst these ladies I call mentors, and accountability partners and women of GREAT FAITH…. I witnessed strength in them that only comes from SEEKING GOD, I witnessed love outpouring from them in sacrificial ways to reach the community, I witnessed peace in them when I would’ve curled up in the fetal position and begged to die, I witnessed GOD in a nutshell LIVING and BREATHING in my friends lives.  Helping them get up each day, and just brush their teeth and hair and then face another day, whatever that would bring.  I realized today, that their REACTIONS to the 10% life threw at them last year…..has inspired me to even MORE SEEK GOD. 

So why am I starting a blog?  Because  I want to invite anyone who is just a “good person”, to decide to be  MORE than good, and be an all out GOD SEEKER!  I want to invite the couch potatoes, or the hum drum livers, or the too busy moms and dads to embark with me this year on a WORD JOURNEY.    And I don’t want to do it alone, I want to celebrate with as many people as possible what our great BIG GOD can do when we SEEK Him more.  When life HITS us right in the face, like it did my good friends last year…..we our lifted back up to our feet by a GOD who wants to carry us through that fire. 

I decided to call this SHERI’s WORD JOURNEY, because I believe words are powerful, but THE WORD, THE BIBLE, GOD’s WORD is life changing if we SEEK HIM in the words he spoke to His chosen authors.  I experienced some pretty crappy months in 2013.  I allowed negative words to penetrate my heart and mind, I allowed words to hurt me, and I used words to hurt others.  God’s word says to “guard your heart above all else.”  This WORD from God is exactly how we REACT to what life hands us in a more life changing way.  Life handed one of my friends the death of a young child, but she has REACTED by giving all of his things to the community to people in need, she spent very difficult holiday seasons, loving on others, thinking of others.  And through her SEEKING GOD in everything she does, she is healing.  She is showing the world that GOD’s WORD is ALIVE in US if we choose to seek Him.  My other friend was handed a grandchild with cancer.  She not only took God’s word into her own life, but she wrote endlessly on a blog about what God was doing every single day, and she has changed people’s  REACTIONS to life’s tragedies all over the country.  She is still meeting people in other states that have said how much her WORDS have helped them this year.  

Each of us were designed to SEEK something for total fulfillment, and when we move away from our pursuit of Him to something earthly then we end up empty…..GUESS WHAT?  His WORD is still alive, still true, still changing lives and most importantly still GIVING GOD all the glory for the great things he has done.

I desperately want God’s WORD to change ME.  I want to seek God even more in 2014.  I want to invite you to join me and share with me on this journey, because we are all in this together.  LIFE.  And I believe at the end of it, our REACTIONS to our LIFE will be what saves us or KILLS us.  It’s our choice.  I truly believe if God’s WORD was not hidden deep into the hearts of my friends during this last year, they would be in very different places this year.  WORDS can make us or break us but, THE WORD can GIVE US LIFE! 

In my blog this year I plan to SEEK GOD and His word with everything I face, from the good to the bad to the ugly and share as many of my SEEKINGS with you.  My goal or resolution is to GUARD MY HEART from words that tear down and hurt myself or others, and instead allow GOD’s WORD to change MY WORDS in every single situation I face.  Hope you will join me…..HUGS to you all!  SMJ