Today is Day 8 of our Advent devotional, the second Sunday of Advent, and our focus is on whether Jesus is the Messiah. John the Baptist is languishing in a prison cell, needing some encouragement from Jesus. Many of us may also go through times of doubt in our lives, so we need to understand that our faith is grounded on truth.
If you’d like a bit of background about Advent, you can read Day One’s entry.
To read today’s entry, simply click on the link below.
Do not remember the rebellious sins of my youth. Remember me in the light of your unfailing love, for you are merciful, O Lord. Psalm 25:7 NLT
These words resonated with me a few mornings ago as I was reading them. I had to stop and go over verse 7 a few times to let it sink in deeply.
You see, for years I struggled with seeing myself as the same girl I was during high school, college, and my young adult years. Even though I was changing, moving on, and growing in my faith, when I thought about myself, the image of who I was in those teen and early 20s seemed to haunt me. While spiritually I was growing, my mindset was not letting me fully embrace those changes and was holding me back. It took me years to let go of this faulty thinking.
I hope this verse will convince you to not wait as long as I did, because … verse 7 is a life changer. Perhaps I can explain it this way.
Photographers will often set the F-stop of their camera to a low number for artistic effect. It brings the desired object into sharp focus but everything in the background becomes a fuzzy blur, like in the picture of the brown-eyed Susan you see here. 
And you know what, that’s exactly what God does when He looks at each one of us. He sets our F-stop to a low number! Who we are now in Jesus, as one of His beloved children is in sharp focus.Those things we did in the past? Well, to God they’re a blurry blip in the background of our lives. Yes, we may still suffer some consequences from those choices and decisions, but Jesus has removed the stigma from them. When we trust Him to forgive our sins, God now sees us in the light of His unfailing love.
It’s time to move on from old, dead thinking. If you’ve confessed your sins and placed your trust in Jesus to bear the penalty of your sins, then God isn’t the one holding you back. You are. When God looks at you, He doesn’t see the junk in the background of your past. He sees His lovely child standing in front of Him in clear detail. Bask in His love and light today as the person you are now.
Feel free to share your thoughts below, or you can also contact me.
Pray on!
Jane VanOsdol’s work has appeared in Pockets, Small Farmer’s Journal, Woman’s Day, Warner Press publications and numerous online publications. Jane and her sister Mary Kane are the authors of OnlyByPrayer.com and speak together at women’s retreats and seminars. She loves gardening, knitting, reading, biking, and gluten-free goodies. Jane is married to Mark and has a son, daughter, and a son-in-law.
Fish and Loaves Faith“Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barely loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” John 6:8
Read John 6:1-15
Of all the miracle stories in the Bible, this is one of my favorites–for many reasons. First of all, I love the fact that the lunch of five small barley loaves and two small fish belonged to a child.
Understand, the Bible leaves some of the details of this exchange to our imaginations, so I don’t know that this is exactly how the story unfolded, but I imagine it playing out in the following way:
The Bible tells us that Jesus asks Philip where they should go to buy bread for the five thousand people to eat. Philip replies that eight months of salary wouldn’t be nearly enough to feed the crowd of people.
Here is where things get interesting. I think that perhaps a young boy who is sitting close to where Jesus is teaching hears the conversation between Jesus and his friends and eagerly offers his lunch that his mom packed for him that morning. It would be just like a child not to see the futility of his meager lunch feeding such a crowd, but to instead faithfully hand over his bread and fish to Andrew to give to Jesus. And it would be just the typical adult thing to then bring it to Jesus—with the caveat of “but how far will they go among so many?”
Jesus was just waiting for that spark of faith. He takes the lunch, has everyone sit down, gives thanks for the fish and bread, and 
passes it around–and everyone took as much as they wanted (v. 11). After they had all eaten, Jesus wants nothing wasted, so the disciples gather up 12 baskets of leftovers!
Doesn’t it seem that we could learn a lot about faith from children? In most cases, their minds have not yet been clouded by the harsh realities of life. It’s not hard for them to believe in the improbable, or the impossible.Their eyes can easily see the thin space between the reality of this world and the unseen heavenlies where angels, miracles, and God all live. Jesus took the little boy’s lunch and multiplied it into a buffet for 5000.
That’s the kind of faith that Jesus is watching for, that we need to cultivate. A faith that causes us to unflinchingly step forward and offer up our bread and fish to Jesus to multiply beyond our wildest expectations.
When we feel that nudge of the Spirit to take our offering to God, we need to stamp out the adult voice that rises up with a “But, …” and just give it. Or just do it.
A vibrant faith requires that I present to God what I have. Jesus is waiting for people with a fish-and-loaves faith to take Him up on His promises so He can to equip us (2 Timothy 3:17) and set us loose in His kingdom. The results are up to Him.
What do you have to offer Him today? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Fish-and-Loaves Faith is the second post in our faith series. Please leave a comment below on your thoughts, feelings, or experiences in growing your faith.
Image courtesy of [FrameAngel] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
Read John 5: 1-9
Don’t you just love that Jesus isn’t afraid to live His life on the edge?
As chapter five opens, we see that Jesus is once again in the middle of a group of people who aren’t the up and comers of Jerusalem: they are all blind, lame, or paralyzed (v 4). Can’t you just picture Jesus walking by the Sheep Gate and being drawn to the crowd of helpless people lying by the pool? Jesus always has the poor, the orphans, the helpless, and the sick on his radar, and I can just imagine Him making a beeline for the worst one there. Verse six tells us that Jesus learns that one of the men has been sick for 38 years.
Jesus then asks him what seems to be an obvious question: “Do you want to get well?”
Why would Jesus ask this question when the man has been lame for 38 years? Surely the answer has to be yes. I wonder if Jesus did this because the man has lost hope, accepting this affliction as his permanent reality. Perhaps Jesus needs to reawaken in this man his dreams of a normal life and a healthy body.
You’ll notice that the man doesn’t directly answer Jesus’ question with a yes or no. He instead offers an explanation as to why he hasn’t received healing—he has no one to help him in the pool when the water is stirred, so someone else always gets there first. If that’s the case, it’s no wonder the man is discouraged.
Probably every day a friend or family member on his way to work carries the lame man to the pool and then picks him up on the way home. All day the lame man simply waits and watches the water—we don’t even know how often the Spirit stirs the water. Every day, week, or month? At the first ripple of water, the man desperately tries to crawl or roll to the pool, but for 38 years, someone else always gets there first.
I can just imagine that Jesus stays quiet until the lame man stops talking. Jesus locks eyes with the man and tells him “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” And just like that, he does. Thirty-eight years of atrophy gone in one second.
What can our friend from the pool of Bethesda teach us?
Where has hope died in your life? Jesus is trying to get your attention, look you in the eye, and shake you out of your spiritual paralysis.
What is he asking you to move out of and on to in your life? Like the lame man did, we need to pick up our mats and leave behind the years that crippled us. Faith flies in the face of years of bad habits, patterns, and stagnation and moves us toward health and healing and possibilities.
This is the first blog in our faith series. Please leave a comment below on your thoughts, feelings, or experiences in growing your faith.
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Faith is such an important part of our lives as Christians. The very essence of our relationship with God is based on our faith in Jesus. We just take it on faith that He died for our sins and because of that we can be reconciled to God.
Faith and prayer are also intertwined. While I don’t pretend to understand all of the intricacies of how God uses our prayers, I am fascinated by prayer and have felt God calling me to spend some time studying the subject of faith. Might I be able to increase my faith by meditating on scriptures about it? Would God be able to use me in a bigger way if my faith were bigger? I’d like to explore those possibilities, so I’m beginning an ongoing series on faith.
Periodically, I’ll be writing blog posts about faith. You can find these under the Blog tab on our navigation bar. When you hover the cursor over this tab, you’ll see the Faith series drop down from the rest of the blogs.
I’ll post the first blog in this series this week, but for now let me leave you with this scripture to reflect upon and pray about:
“Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6 NKJV
Feel free to join me on this faith journey.
Pray on!
“To believe or not to believe…” that it is the question that Christians face everyday. It’s easy to believe God for little things…things we think we can handle. But what about the big things in life? Will we believe God or not? To do the study, To Believe or Not to Believe, just click on the link!
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net