Buyer's Remorse

September 30, 2013

Good Morning My Beloved Ones,

            I pray that should the Lord suddenly return, He find you eagerly waiting and about His business.

            Today I want to talk to you about “Buyer’s Remorse”.  When we purchase something, we exchange something of value (usually money) for the object of our desire.  Sometimes, after the purchase is made, the buyer feels he paid too high a price or that the object purchased wasn’t worth the price he paid.  It’s called buyers remorse.  Have you experienced it?  I have.

            I Corinthians 6:20 tells us that we have been bought with a price.  The price was very costly.  We were paid for with the blood of One who chose to give His life in exchange for our eternal freedom.  I think sometimes about the humiliation and torture that Jesus endured upon that cross and think, “Lord, was I worth it?  Do you ever look at the life I’m choosing to live and wish you hadn’t?  Was the price too great to pay for what you got in exchange?”  It’s a sobering thought.  It’s a question I don’t take lightly.

        

   Jesus knew the price He would have to pay for our salvation.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed so earnestly to the Father asking if there was any other way (basically trying to negotiate a lower price) that the blood vessels in His forehead broke.  And when the Father said the price was non-negotiable, He agreed to pay it.

            What did Jesus get in return?  Romans 5:7,8 puts it this way:  “For scarcely a righteous man one will die; yet perhaps for a good man some would even dare to die.  But God commendeth His love toward us, in what while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”  Jesus knew what He was paying the ultimate price for:  people who didn’t know Him, didn’t love Him, and were openly rebelling against Him.  It really sounds like He got the raw end of the deal, doesn’t it?  How could He not have buyer’s remorse?

            But He doesn’t!  Listen to what Hebrews 12:2 says, “Looking unto

Jesus…who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross…”  We are that joy, beloved ones!  He not only felt that we, at our worst, were worth suffering and dying for, He counted it a joy!

            I don’t know about you, beloved, but that makes me determined to want to live a life worthy of such love, worthy of such sacrifice.  We can never repay Christ for what He did for us.  We can’t do enough good deeds or become holy enough.  Even if we spent every waking moment reading the Bible or in church or doing for others, it wouldn’t be enough.  But He doesn’t ask us to do any of those things.  All He wants from us is our love.  I love Jesus because He first loved me.  I will never, could never love anyone more.  I hope that is true of you as well.

Not worthy but worth it – His grateful servant - Raelynn

The Two Edged Sword

September 23, 2013

Good Morning My Beloved Ones,

            I pray with each day your confidence is growing in who you are and in your unique purpose in this world.

            Today I want to talk to you about “The Two-edged Sword”.  Hebrews 4:12 says, “The Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword…”  What is a two-edged sword?  Most blades have one sharp cutting edge and a duller, flatter edge.  A two-edged sword is one that cuts both ways.

            One of the most comforting scriptures in the Bible is Hebrews 13:5:  “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”  How many times when I’ve been in trouble, felt alone, was scared, have I clung to these words?  And I felt the Lord’s presence and the comfort these words were intended to convey.  But I’ve also felt the other edge of the sword.  When God said, “I will never leave thee…”, He meant I will never leave thee.  God is right there during those times when I am not feeling so spiritual, when I am making deliberate choices to sin or behave in a way that is not pleasing to God.  He doesn’t turn His back, look away or go for a walk during these times.  He never leaves me nor forsakes me.

            So, is the purpose of the two-edged sword to bless me when I’m good and punish me when I’m bad?  No.  The purpose is found in the rest of Hebrews 4:12: “…piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit…and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”  Your soul is your mind, will and emotions.  Your spirit is what was breathed into you by God.  The purpose of the two-edged sword is to separate soul and spirit so we will have a clear choice whether to serve self (soul) or God (spirit).

            Have you ever said or done something then had the thought, “Now why did I do that?”  Our scripture tells us that the two-edged sword is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

            Thank God for His precious word.  I love it more each day.  It brings me comfort from His promises but also cuts the other way and shows me who I am and who I need to be.  The wounds of a friend are faithful Proverbs 27:6 tells us.  We may get wounded by the two edged sword at times, but those wounds are faithful to make us into the child of God we are meant to be.

Love in Christ, Raelynn

Becoming Moses

September 16, 2013

Good Morning My Beloved Ones,

            I pray that God smiles on you today and that you feel the warmth from head to toe.

            Today I want to talk to you about “Becoming

Moses”.  If you could pick any personality in the Bible to be like (other than Jesus), who would you choose?  David was a man after God’s own heart, but I wouldn’t want to be at war as much as he was.  Solomon was wise and rich, but he also lost his anointing and had his eyes put out.  I’d love to preach and do miracles like Paul, but I could do without prison, being shipwrecked, beaten and left for dead, etc.  I think I would choose Moses.  Go used him to deliver His people, performed miracles through him and listen to what God says about Moses in Numbers chapter 12:  “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision and will speak to him in a dream.  My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.  With him will I speak mouth to mouth and not in dark places, and the likeness of the Lord shall he behold; why then are you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?”  Oh, to have God speak of me that way!  But Moses did not become this person overnight.  Indeed, there was a process to becoming this Moses that we all must follow if we wish to be like him.

            For the first 40 years of Moses’ life he lived in Egypt in Pharoah’s palace.  He was a prince in the land; a man of  authority.  He was somebody.  
The 2^nd 40 years of Moses’ life was spent tending sheep in the desert of Midian.  Egyptians regarded shepherds as an abomination.  No longer prince of Egypt, Moses was now nobody.  

The 3^rd 40 years of Moses’ life was spent heeding the call of God, delivering His people out of the bondage of Egypt and leading them to the Promised Land.  Moses became God’s body.

 We can have the kind of relationship Moses had with God.  We just have to follow the path he did.  We have to reach the place in our lives where it’s not all about us – where we allow God to take us from being somebody to realizing we are nobody without him.  In this broken and humbled state, we can hear the call of God on our lives and allow ourselves to be used as the Lord sees fit.  We can become God’s body.

            Do you see yourselves along this path, beloved ones?  Are you living the self-centered life of a somebody?  Have you been broken and humbled and are feeling like a nobody?  Maybe you’ve been through both these stages and have heard the call of God on your life and are ready to start being God’s body.  Wherever you are on the journey, keep pressing on.  It took Moses 120 years to become the man God spoke so highly of.  It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.

Living for the day I hear my Lord say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”, your sister in Christ, Raelynn.

Tinted - Tainted

September 9, 2013

Good Morning My Beloved Ones,

            I pray that you hear the still small voice of God amid all the noise and chaos of life around you.

            Today I want to talk to you about “tinted and tainted”.  There’s a country music song that talks about “these rose colored glasses that I’m looking through that show only the beauty and hide all the truth.”  Have you owned a pair of glasses like that?  We probably all have at one time or another.  These tinted glasses give us a distorted or tainted view of reality.

            Another pair of tinted glasses we are prone to look through at times are the sepia-toned glasses of Nostalgia, fondly known as the “good ole days”.  Remember when pot was something you cooked in, being gay meant you were happy and gas cost less than $1 per gallon?  Boy, those were the good ole days!  But just like the rose-colored glasses, our vision with the sepia-toned glasses of nostalgia is often tainted.

            A prime example of this is found in Numbers chapter 11.  The children of Israel were growing tired of the manna which God miraculously supplied for them in the wilderness and they started reminiscing about Egypt.  “We remember the fish we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic.”  They saw all the varieties of foods available in Egypt through their sepia-toned glasses, but somehow failed to see the back-breaking work of making bricks from sun-up to sun-down, being required to meet a quota without being given the materials necessary to do the job and being whipped by the taskmaster when they inevitably failed.  Some of them were so moved by their distorted vision of the past that they even talked about going back to Egypt!

            We, too, are sometimes tempted to return to the past we’ve been delivered from because we only remember the good times and fail to see the heartache through our sepia-toned glasses.  Because the apostle Paul knew the danger of this, he gave the following advice in Phillipians 3:13, “but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

            Do you long for the good ole days, beloved ones?  Take off the tinted glasses that taint your vision and you’ll realize that the good ole’ days weren’t all good.  It’s time to forget the things which are behind and reach for the things which are ahead of us.  For now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see Jesus face to face.

            Giving up my tinted glasses, your sister, Raelynn

When in Rome...

September 2, 2013

Good Morning My Beloved Ones,

            I pray that the Lord Himself guide you everywhere you go and that in each place you will be a blessing.

            Today I want to talk to you about “When in Rome”.  You’ve heard it said, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”  I was reading in Leviticus 18 where God said to the children of Israel, “According to the doings of the Land of Egypt where you dwelt you shall not do; and according to the doings of the land of Canaan where I am bringing you, you shall not do; nor shall you walk in their ordinances.  You shall observe My judgments and keep My ordinances to walk in them:  I am the Lord your God”.  God was saying, “When in Rome, do not do as the Romans do – do as I have instructed you.”

            There is a time coming, beloved ones, and it is already here, when there will be immense pressure on God’s people to conform; to compromise their beliefs and standards and to tolerate that which God has called sin and abomination in order to foster peace and unity. 

Failure to conform, compromise and be tolerant will be viewed as “hate crimes” punishable by the law.  Yes, I’m talking about right here in the good ole’ U.S. of A.  There will be a clear line drawn in the sand and each person will have to choose whether they will do according to the doings of their nation or according to the judgments and ordinances of their God.

            God instructs us in Romans 12:2 to “be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…”  That word, “renewing” means renovation – as in gutting the interior of a house and putting in all new walls, floors and fixtures.  We have to gut our minds of all the garbage that society has filled it with that is contrary to the Word of God and renovate it with His instruction, judgments, and ordinances.  With our minds transformed in this way, we will not be conformed to this world.  When in Rome, we will not be swayed to do as the Romans do, but will ask, “What would Jesus do?” and follow that course instead.

            We can only do this, my friends, when we know

whom we have believed and are persuaded that He is able to keep that which we’ve committed unto Him against that day.  Get to know Him more, my beloved ones.  Come to love Him more, to trust Him more and be not afraid.  If God is for us, who then can be against us?

Your sister in Christ, Raelynn