Coffee☕️And Conversation A Ray Of Hope

Staying Focused On Christ

Each of us has the ability to think and focus our thinking on given subjects or ideas. As a Christian, one of your obligations to Christ is to hold Him as the centerpiece of your life. Every minute of every day for the rest of your life should be devoted to holding Him as your reason and purpose for living. Christ should be your focus when you wage the many battles of life. He should be your focus when trying to make decisions about your family, your job or career, your friends, your church, or any other matter. Yet, we know that in reality, we are distracted from holding Christ as the center of our life. Millions of thoughts, ideas, images, cares, worries, concerns, fears, anxieties, phobias, and doubts can assail you each day. Despite this attack upon you from outside your will, you can counter the distractions by willfully and purposely spending time in prayer and meditation each day. You can, each and every hour, pause for just a second to refocus your heart on Him.

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Following Christ

Does the will of God, or your will, drive you during the day? Most likely, it is your will. Each of us has a will. Our will has the power we naturally call "will power." Jesus also had a will. His will also had power. Just before Jesus went to the cross, His will wanted to run away from the terrible suffering He was about to endure for you. In the final hours before the cross, Jesus wanted to avoid the unfathomable pain and agony of dying for you. Yet, He did not run away. Jesus followed the will of His Father in Heaven. Jesus followed God's will to the cross so you could one day be born anew. Jesus followed God's will so you could become a new person in His kingdom. Jesus died on the cross for you so in the war between your will and His will, you would follow His will rather than your own.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

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Thanksgiving with Meaning, By Billy Graham

Psalm 34:18--- The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.

It is the custom of many Christians to bow their heads in public places and give thanks for the food that has been placed before them. I have had scores of waiters and waitresses tell me that when we bowed our heads, it was the first time they had ever seen that happen in their restaurant.

Millions never pause to give a word of thanks to God for the food provided. Few homes have a moment of thanksgiving at the beginning of the meal or at any other time of the day. Even at Thanksgiving time only a minority will pause and give thanks to God.

Thanksgiving is recognition of a debt that cannot be paid. We express thanks, whether or not we are able otherwise to reimburse the giver. When thanksgiving is filled with true meaning and is not just the formality of a polite “thank you,” it is the recognition of dependence.

Not Blaming

God has never hurt you. It is likely you have mistakenly hurt yourself numerous times. It is a certainty Satan has hurt you. In Satan's clutches, so much of our pain and suffering comes upon us because we are blinded by Satan. In Satan's clutches, so much of our pain comes upon us because of our own sinful doing. However, God has never hurt you. It is a certainty you have defied the laws of God in all their forms and in your defiance you have felt the pain of the wrath of God. If the wrath of God hurts us, doesn't God then hurt us? No, although the wrath of God hurts us, the wrath of God is the absence of God caused by our defiance or by our turning away from Him. If you defy the laws of God, there will be a price to pay…the price called "wrath." If you obey the laws of God, instead of a price to pay, you receive God's free "coupons" of joy, peace, happiness, and love.

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Dedication In Life

In Christ's love, always make the choice to dedicate your life to a mission rather than hoping a mission will draft you into something you like to do.

No matter what you do in your life, always be willing to fully dedicate your life to the pursuit of what Christ wants you to do and to be.

When the Lord has a goal for you, do all you can to always be successful for Him and complete His mission.

Every day you are alive, let a fire burn in your heart to never relent in achieving His mission for you.

It is God's will, because of your prayers and dedication to Him, all things remain possible in the lives of those you pray for each day.

In Christ's love, always make the choice to dedicate your life to a mission rather than hoping a mission will draft you into something you like to do.

No matter what you do in your life, always be willing to fully dedicate your life to the pursuit of what Christ wants you to do and to be.

When the Lord has a goal for you, do all you can to always be successful for Him and complete His mission.

Every day you are alive, let a fire burn in your heart to never relent in achieving His mission for you.

It is God's will, because of your prayers and dedication to Him, all things remain possible in the lives of those you pray for each day.

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God's Way Instead Of Mine

Imagine what your world would be like if everyone decided to follow their own rules and ignore the rules of society. There would be chaos. The order of the world would be gone. In contrast, the underpinning of every human achievement is self-disciple and self-control. Self-discipline and self-control are required to follow the rules of life. God has rules. Unfortunately, we too often do not follow God's rules as we are disobedient and go our own way. However, the consequences of disobedience can be severe. To follow God's rules requires we be self-disciplined and self-controlled. When you disobey God's rules and go your own direction, the consequences of disobedience are what we call, the wrath of God. The more you follow God's rules, the more peace, love, caring, and compassion you will receive from God.

Where Are The Nine?

The Communion Of Thanksgiving

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Experiencing The Love Of God

To experience the love of God we must believe God knows us and loves us even when we are very imperfect. There are no conditions attached to His love. God's love being unconditional means we do not have to do or be anything in any way to experience His love. This truth about His love being unconditional devastates the darkness. This truth about God's unconditional love heals the body, restores sight to the blind, and makes the lame walk. God's unconditional love is a transforming love. His love transforms you and transforms your world. We cannot will ourselves to experience God's, unconditional love. We cannot will His unconditional love into our lives. We cannot make it, generate it, mold it, or shape His love. We cannot earn His love. All we can do to experience His love is to turn away from the sinfulness of our humanity and then open ourselves to His presence. To experience God's unconditional love we must nurture His love within our heart without any strings attached whatsoever. If you do not choose to nurture God's unconditional love, your life will not be much of a life. To experience God's unconditional love, you have to trust Him and remember God is for you and not against you.

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Resisting The Enemy

Praising God is a wonderful part of spiritual life. However, praising God sometimes takes special effort on our part because the satanic darkness of the world tries to drag us down. When Satan attacks us, we have little heart left to praise God. When we are attacked by the darkness of the world, we must carry these burdens to Christ by kneeling at the foot of the Cross. When we carry our burdens to the Cross, we begin to see our burdens are not so heavy. At the Cross, the love of Christ flows down to us and we begin to see everything in His Light and Love. When we experience His Light and Love, then the temptations and attacks by the darkness dwindle down. At the Cross, we find the strength to resist Satan and his dark ways.

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Eight Gifts that Do Not Cost A Cent

THE GIFT OF LISTENING…

But you must REALLY listen.

No interrupting, no daydreaming,

no planning your response.

Just listening.

THE GIFT OF AFFECTION…

Be generous with appropriate hugs,

kisses, pats on the back, and handholds.

Let these small actions demonstrate the

love you have for family and friends.

THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER…

Clip cartoons.

Share articles and funny stories.

Your gift will say, “I love to laugh with you.”

THE GIFT OF A WRITTEN NOTE…

It can be a simple

“Thanks for the help” note or a full sonnet.

A brief, handwritten note may be remembered

for a lifetime, and may even change a life.

THE GIFT OF A COMPLIMENT…

A simple and sincere,

You look great in red,” “You did a super job,”

or “That was a wonderful meal”

can make someone’s day.

THE GIFT OF A FAVOR…

Every day, go out of your way

to do something kind.

THE GIFT OF SOLITUDE…

There are times when we want nothing better

than to be left alone.

Be sensitive to those times and give

the gift of solitude to others.

THE GIFT OF A CHEERFUL DISPOSITION…

The easiest way to feel good is

to extend a kind word to someone.

Really, it’s not that hard to say,

Hello or Thank You.

Unknown

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When God Says No!

We ask God to give us what we think we want and need. Sometimes, God says "No." However, in God's answer, there is love. God does not always do what we want or give us our request. The Lord knows better about what we need than we do. We may pray every day for our request to be answered as we want. However, when we go to the heart of God, He sometimes says we cannot have what we want. When God says "No," beneath the surface, His answer may seem harsh. However, His answer is not a harsh answer because in answering us He reveals Himself to us in love. The Lord may never be willing to give us what we want because of factors we must not know about until we see Him. When we receive the Lord's "No" answer, we must learn to trust Him. When we receive a "No" from God we must then invest our whole heart in Him. When we receive a "No" from God we must be patient as we do His will each day. Receiving a negative answer from God is not easy because we have so many expectations about Him. However, when we trust the Lord, His negative answer to us may hurt us when we receive the answer, but we have a degree of peace living with what the Lord wants for us.

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Faith Is

You are never by yourself in life unless you have turned away from God.

To win out over the many daily obstacles we face, we must think ahead about the strategies we will use and how we will use them.

Of course, if we do not have faith in God, we do not want to hear there is a connection between faith in God and what happens to us in our life.

If you hold the belief you can deal with circumstances so victory is assured, no matter what you face, victory is assured.

In the uncontrollable and unknowable circumstances of life, faith is the answer, faith is the hope, and faith is the future.

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Repentance and Christ Eraser

Christ always listens to your prayers, your petitions, and the pleas of your heart.

We need to rest our hearts in the Lord's love.

With the Lord's help, in His will, the broken fences of our past can be mended, new relationships built, and old relationships reborn.

God has given you truly incredible gifts.

We are all mistake-ridden sinners. However, Christ erases all our mistakes if we repent and accept Him as Lord of our life.

True Faith

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Jesus, The Way To True Happiness

We live in a hostile world. Our great defender and protector is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Have you ever been deserted? In our life, we all have moments when we are totally alone. However, we live under a deception if we ever think we are totally alone because Christ is always with us.

In ultimate maturity, we count every burden as a joyful opportunity to serve our Lord.

The person who has fancy cars, clothes, and houses may be smothered in debt and buried in misery.

God created a way for each of us to have a new life, a new beginning, a new day, a new hope, a new dream, and a new way to serve Him. The way is Jesus.

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God's Love

Christ called your name so you would show others His love. Christ called your name so you would beam His love into their heart.

Love can be the substance of your every moment. Love makes every moment worth living.

In living your life of faith, there are many circumstances and events you cannot control. What you can control is whether you have Christ in every moment.

Commitment produces great fruit in God's kingdom.

When your new life in Christ begins, your old life goes away under His transforming power.

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Christ Is With Us

Being still and letting the Lord fight for you is best done while you fight off the darkness for Him. At the hour when Jesus needed someone, there was no one. At the hour you need someone, Jesus is with you forever.

Christ knows all about your every thought.

No one would want to experience a crushing defeat. In Christ, we have the ultimate victory.

At the end of the Christian journey, the most beautiful reward awaits us.

Love Is Kind

Love within the human heart has a way of touching persons with a power quelling their inner rage. Love within your heart does not take advantage of the fallen or broken person. Instead, love reaches down and helps the fallen and broken person recover. Love within your heart does not use others to any advantage. Love sacrifices personal advantage to advance the lives of others. Love is a gentle expression of an encompassing comfort healing every hurt. Love can grieve so much at the hurt in others the grief can become a spring of life flowing into the heart of the grieving. Love does not make fun of or ridicule others but places a shelter over those who are made fun of or who are ridiculed. Love defends the defenseless. Love shelters children and adults of every faith, whether there is a disagreement over issues or not. Love delights and rejoices in the success of others; even at the expense of one's own success. Love burning within one's spirit reaches out to help and to heal the broken.

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Your Destiny

 Your destiny in life may not be a specific street address. Your destiny in life may have nothing to do with standing beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris, standing on top of the Statue of Liberty in New York City, or walking along the top of the Great Wall in China. Your destiny in life may not have anything to do with being in a specific place at a specific time. Your destiny in life is more general than being in a specific place at a specific time and also more difficult. It is generally easy to be at a specific address at a specific time. It is a great deal more difficult to fulfill your destiny in spiritual terms. Your destiny from the time you are conceived until you leave your earthly body is to be a child of God. We do not always want to fulfill our earthly destiny because being at our home address is so much easier than being a child of God. To get to a specific street address at a specific time may be difficult, but in most cases, getting to the street address is humanly doable. To be a child of God is a great deal more difficult because to be a child of God we must renounce part of our humanity. To be a child of God we must turn away from the part of our life that makes us a sinner and turn to God.

Bless The Lord

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You Can Choose

You can choose…To put your energy to use rather than letting it evaporate.

You can choose…To rise up in controlled anger at injustice rather than looking the other way.

You can choose…To seek answers instead of avoiding them.

You can choose…To take action when you face anxiety rather than shrink back.

You can choose…To ask questions rather than keep silent.

You can choose…To give beauty rather than ugliness.

You can choose…To give blessings and be a blessing rather than give curses and be a curse.

You can choose…To share the Bread of Life rather than trying to hoard it and keep it all to yourself.

You can choose…To care about others rather than caring about only yourself.

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The Sure Victory

In Christ's power, you shall always win the victory as your humility destroys your ego.

You shall always be a conqueror in the Lord when your gentleness destroys your rough, rude, and crude behavior.

You shall achieve for the Lord when your patience outlasts your impatience.

You shall glorify the Lord when you hold your tongue as you are patient with others in Christ's love rather than finding fault.

You shall make Christ's love reality when you share the burdens of others rather than wanting others to tend to you and tend to your burdens.

Christ’s Call

Christ did not bring you into the world so you would always look down in hopelessness and dejection. Christ brought you into the world to live in His power of hope and promise for eternity. There may be no time in your life that seems to look the darkest than the time just before your death. However, you are often deceived by appearances because the time just before your death is a time full of eternal hope and eternal promise. In the times of your life when it seems, there is no hope for anything good to happen to you or for you, total goodness and joy await you as if time did not exist. In Christ and because of Christ, the times when you have no hope are really times when there is for you hope eternal. In the times when you have no joy, there is already joy waiting to be poured out upon your heart for all eternity. Christ came to give you hope for every second you are alive. Christ walked away from death in the grave to give you hope. Christ is alive today and calls you to live in hope. Christ walks and talks with you every second you are alive to get you to look beyond the way things are…to a time when all things will be made new. Christ calls you to look forward to a time when every hope will be realized in His eternal stream of love and grace. 

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An Attitude Of Gratitude

Thanksgiving And Praise To God

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Excuses

A certain church made the following announcement "Next Sunday, we are having a special "No Excuses" Sunday: "Beds will be placed in the aisles for all those who say, "Sunday is the only day I'm able to sleep in late. " "Eye drops will be provided for all those who watch TV too late on Saturday night. "Steel helmets will be handed out to all those who say, "The roof will fall in if I ever come to church!" "Blankets will be provided for all those who say, "The church is too cold," and fans for those who say "It's too hot. " "We will have hearing aids for all those who say, "The minister speaks too softly," and earplugs for those who say, "The organist plays too loudly. " "Scorecards will be available for all those who wish to keep a record of the hypocrites present. "There will be TV dinners for all those who find it difficult to attend church and prepare the Sunday lunch at the same time. "One section of the church will be devoted to trees and grass for those who like to see God in nature. "Finally, the church will be decorated with Christmas decorations and Easter flowers for those who have never seen the church without them!"

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Judging

The following story appeared in the newsletter "Our America":

Dodie Gadient, a schoolteacher for thirteen years, decided to travel across America and see the sights she had taught about. Traveling alone in a truck with camper in tow, she launched out. One afternoon rounding a curve on I-5 near Sacramento in rush-hour traffic, a water pump blew on her truck. She was tired, exasperated, scared, and alone. In spite of the traffic jam she caused, no one seemed interested in helping.

Leaning up against the trailer, she prayed, "Please God, send me an angel... preferably one with mechanical experience." Within four minutes, a huge Harley drove up, ridden by an enormous man sporting long black hair, a beard, and tattooed arms. With an incredible air of confidence, he jumped off and, without even glancing at Dodie, went to work on the truck. Within another few minutes, he flagged down a larger truck, attached a tow chain to the frame of the disabled Chevy, and whisked the whole 56-foot rig off the freeway onto a side street, where he calmly continued to work on the water pump.

The intimidated schoolteacher was too dumbfounded to talk. Especially when she read the paralyzing words on the back of his leather jacket: "Hell's Angels - California." As he finished the task, she finally got up the courage to say, "Thanks so much," and carry on a brief conversation. Noticing her surprise at the whole ordeal, he looked her straight in the eye and mumbled, "Don't judge a book by its cover. You may not know who you're talking to." With that, he smiled, closed the hood of the truck, and straddled his Harley. With a wave, he was gone as fast as he had appeared.

Given half a chance, people often crawl out of the boxes into which we've relegated them.

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The Road To Heaven Or Hell

Matthew 16:24---Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

Every second we make choices. Every second we make a choice between God or Satan. Too often we do not realize we make choices. Too often we live in ignorance about our choices. However, we do make a choice every second between God or Satan.

If we want to find the road to heaven we must look at emptying out ourselves. We must always walk the road where we are never to be selfish. We must remember we are always under attack by Satan because Satan tries to make us selfish. For this reason, whatever pain or misery we might be in at any moment must be taken to God. Whatever worries we have must be taken to God. Whatever hopelessness we have must be taken to God. When we take our darkness to God, God is light and His light will surely blip away our darkness. The road to heaven begins when we reject ourselves and connect to God and others. The road to hell begins when we are puffed up in our ego and selfishness as we try to handle the darkness alone. We become the tool of the darkness when we believe we are all-powerful and do not need God or we do not believe God loves us.

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God’s Wisdom

Praise Jesus for trusting you enough to give you His wisdom.

Praise Jesus for giving you His wisdom to a fuller and better life.

In His love and in His grace, Christ enables you to use all He has given you for His glory.

He enables you to live a life blessing to others.

He enables you to live a life blessing Him and His work upon the earth.

When you have doubts about what Jesus wants you to do, He will remind you of what He has already told you.

When you have difficult days and want to quit, He will push you onward and upward by showing you His wisdom and truth.

In His love, Christ will show you the present trouble and pain of your life overflows with His meaning and His purpose.

In His will, Christ will show you how His meaning and purpose in all things can lead to a glorification of His love on earth.

Praise Jesus for trusting you enough to give you His wisdom.

Praise Jesus for giving you His wisdom to a fuller and better life.

In His love and in His grace, Christ enables you to use all He has given you for His glory.

He enables you to live a life blessing to others.

He enables you to live a life blessing Him and His work upon the earth.

When you have doubts about what Jesus wants you to do, He will remind you of what He has already told you.

When you have difficult days and want to quit, He will push you onward and upward by showing you His wisdom and truth.

In His love, Christ will show you the present trouble and pain of your life overflows with His meaning and His purpose.

In His will, Christ will show you how His meaning and purpose in all things can lead to a glorification of His love on earth.