FRESH START TODAY –Rejoice! – Thursday, February 23, 2012
Philippians 4:4-7, Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. NIV
I decided to walk through memory lane this morning and realized that the Lord, through the years, has richly blessed me. Finding out a high school friend had passed away in 2011 prompted this memory walk. I met my gracious husband one year after high school, but we first became acquainted with each other in my junior year and his senior year. We got married six months after our official meeting. Both of our mothers arranged the meeting. My husband was in the Air Force when we first got married and we literally traveled the world. We had our two children in the first five years of our marriage. We have seen the Alps of Switzerland, Austria and walked through the streets of Copenhagen, Denmark. We lived in Southern Italy for 2 ½ years and visited Rome and Naples. When returning from Italy in 1973, we both experienced the gift of salvation that is found in Jesus Christ. Our marriage took a new direction and new experiences surfaced as we began to walk with the Lord. God the Father had been with our marriage and individual lives every day before the Holy Spirit revealed the truth of Jesus Christ to us. We just did not know or understand this reality. Our past sins were forgiven and God was now planning our future.
We have lived in California, Minnesota, Alaska, Wyoming, Arizona, Washington and Oklahoma. The joy of witnessing God at work through our lives has given us rich experiences. We literally hung on to the shirttail of the activity of God’s Holy Spirit! We are not done yet, because God has healed me from breast cancer. Rejoicing continually in the prayers of our family and friends in the Lord. The Lord has guarded our hearts and we have been living under His powerful GRACE! One of the blessings was my husband graduating from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in 1986.
Sharing these thoughts with you only has meant to encourage you to begin to look at all the positive experiences you have gone through and to begin to rejoice in God’s riches. Your first thought should be of your salvation, which is the greatest gift you will ever receive. He promises an abundant life, but not without tribulation. He does make us better through these tribulations and/or difficulties if we trust His heart. If you focus on all the negative experiences that YOU have had then you can make yourself bitter. Only surrendering to the power of a loving God, asking first for His forgiveness, making the decision to drop the rock of shame, then you can ride the waves of peace.
When a person becomes a believer in Jesus Christ we begin our journey to become, in character, like Him. This scripture tells us to allow our gentleness to be event to all people. We are not to be anxious about anything, but let our petitions and prayers, with thanksgiving, present our requests to God. We forget to be thankful!
“Lord, thank you for the blessings that you so graciously have already poured into my life, for friends and family and for those that have been willing to reflect your mercy and grace. I ask for you to bless me, so that I may bring glorify you. I ask for a spiritual awakening and the power of the Holy Spirit to overtake the evil that seems to be present in our world today. In the name of Jesus Christ, AMEN.”
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