MIND OF TRUTH

Doubt can be a power, deceptively crippling force in our lives. When we find ourselves in the middle of a fight, in the middle of a difficult and trying time, we can so easily allow doubt to creep into our mind. Doubt can be comforting to us in a way as we allow it to provide an escape for us. It delays the cross of the matter for us, it gives us a chance to loosen our grip in the line we have to hold tight. We allow our doubt to be expressed so we can gain sympathy from others. We don't want to press in to get a word from the Lord so we use doubt to get others to give us encouragement and give us a word, but when we get it, there is something empty about it like Saul's armor on David. We find their word doesn't fit and doesn't hold the power we thought it would. God will and can give us powerful words from others, but they will not come through our doubting place. Doubt will take our focus off of the Lord and refocus us on our self. When we focus on our self t

Have you ever felt like God has put you in a testing place? Have you ever felt like you have been there so long, it begins to become a new normal for you as you begin to forget where you once were and who you used to be? I find myself everyday looking out on the world around me like I'm in a strange unfamiliar place. There is a certain feeling of emptiness and detachment about this place. I find God brings me to a place where the things of the world begin to grow strangely dim and I let them go because they have lost their value to me. Like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings, I have forgotten the taste of food and the feeling of grass under my feet. I find every morning I have to run to the Lord because He is the only thing that makes any sense. I hide myself in His strong tower while the darkness passes by and people speak their words and men choose their own destiny. I wish I could remain there, hidden in Him, but He pushes me out into the world of men. There I see nothing b

Every time I read the story in Luke 8:22-25 about when Jesus fell asleep in the boat with the disciples during a fierce storm, I wonder why Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith. I can very easily put myself in their place and I probably would have been the first one to run over and wake Jesus. When the disciples woke Him, He calmed the storm, then asked His disciples, where is your faith? What did He expect of them? I know there have been times in my life when I'm doing my thing with Jesus by my side and then a fierce storm rises. My first reaction is to cry out to Him to save me and bring me out of the circumstances I find pressing in around me ready to overtake my life. I'm thankful though that His ways are higher than mine and He does not always bring me out right away. Sometimes we need to weather the storm to grow. I remember when our son was a baby and he would not let us put him in his crib without crying. We finally left him cry for over two hours. We che

In Matthew 19, Jesus is approached by a rich young man who asks Jesus a question. How many times do we go to Jesus asking Him a question? What is it that we ask Him? This young man wanted to know how he could have eternal life. The thing about asking Jesus a question is that He always gives us an answer. Often we don't understand the answer or think it isn't the answer we wanted. In reality its not that we don't understand the answer, but that we never understood the question. I am so thankful that Jesus knows the questions and the answer and He gives me the right answer in spite of myself. Jesus tells this man that if he wants to have eternal life, then he has to obey the commandments, but this man had done all that. What he maybe did not realize though was that deep inside all of us, we don't necessarily long for eternal life as much as we long for relationship and fulfillment of who we were created to be. So he asks Jesus what he was still lacking. He knew s