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Finding Peace In Chaos

All of us have good reasons to be anxious, concerned, and worried about many things in life.

All of us have good reasons to be alarmed over many of the circumstances in our life.

However, what happens outside of us need not reach into our heart, mind, and soul.

You might know of persons who remain calm in any circumstance.

You can become such a person. In any chaotic moment what seems to be such an alarming event at the moment is not really so alarming compared to all the events of history.

What seems incredibly important and alarming today, will, in time, fade away in memory.

Inner peace is most often achieved when we begin to see things as God sees them.

When we see our life as God sees us, even the traumatic times of our life can be used for His glory.

Although we can often seem to be destroyed by events, we must remember no matter what events do to us, we have God's incredible shield of protection around our heart and soul.

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The Ache Of The Soul

Romans 8:10---And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

There is the ache of the soul felt by those who do not have Christ in their life. Look at how human beings have searched and continue to search for God!

Instinctively, in our search for God, we know God is real. In our search, God's will is for all of us to become fully alive. God does not want us dead, but alive. Our physical body only lives so long. Eventually, our body stops working and we die. Surely there is hope in the face of physical death. In the world, in the worship of things, money, power, status, and whatever else people worship in the world, there is death without hope. In truth, we have death in our bodies with no bodily hope. However, we are alive in our spirit knowing our spirit that will never die.

Sin is a great plague upon human beings. Sin is the great plague leading to our physical death. Look at the sin-filled tragedies of history. Look at the sin-filled tragedies of our current world. Does the human soul not ache for God? Indeed, there is an ache in the soul to know and walk with God. However, the ache of the soul for God has a balm, a cure, a fix, a solution, an ultimate pain-reliever in Christ Jesus. For all the activities of all the people who have ever searched for God and not found Him, they can find God hanging on a cross. What kind of God is this? What kind of being is this? Hanging from a cross? Wouldn't a REAL god have taken over the world? Wouldn't a REAL god would have conquered nations and put all people under his dictatorial control? A REAL god would not have permitted himself to be murdered, would he?!?!?! But wait…the real God of all creation, the real God who created you, was a being of love. Your real God, your personal creator, was a being of sacrificial love. Your real God, your creator, sacrificed Himself so you and all other human beings could live in paradise for eternity.

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Victim or Victor

We are a victim of the past or a victor in spite of the past. We are a victim or a victor in life because we have a connection to Christ. We always have the choice of turning defeat into victory. The problems in the world seem to mount daily. In the world, there are dysfunctional families rendered dysfunctional due to alcoholism, drug abuse, molestation, physical abuse, verbal abuse, rape, and violence from the street, medical problems, handicaps and disabilities, divorce, educational failure, unplanned pregnancy, unemployment, financial failure, and more. The list of social sicknesses in our lives could go on and on. These sicknesses did not start yesterday, or last week, or even 20 or 30 years ago. These problems started when man fell in the Garden of Eden. The tragedy of family life and the problems people have are problems handed down from one generation to the next. Our past is often a ball and chain around our neck. Our past is often like a ghost haunting us. Each of us carries burdens from the past. Our human response to these burdens, to problems, to a broken past, is to resolve not to be like someone else. However, our response ought to be to let Christ touch us. Our past never leaves us, but His touch can heal our broken lives caused by the past. Without the touch of Christ, we are victims of our past. No matter what we do, no matter where we go, no matter who we are with, our past goes with us. No human effort can work the miracles of Christ's love. Only through His touch can we be really healed. Christ's love can mend the broken heart, fix broken dreams, repair broken lives, heal broken bodies, and give us a new perspective on our past experiences. The love of Christ, through His blood, washes away our sin and with it the sicknesses and burdens from our past.

Power For The Powerless

Rev. 12:10-11---And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

There is power for us who have no power. There is a kingdom for us who have no property or earthly goods. There is freedom for us who have been put in chains by the darkness of the world. There is for us who have tasted defeat the absolute certainty we will overcome and win the world’s greatest victory. In the battle of life, we need not shrink from death, for there is for us who repent and turn to Christ, a beautiful and wondrous life eternal. In Christ, we have the power to overcome the power of the world. In Christ, we have God’s kingdom within us. In Christ, we have freedom in our soul even when we are bound to the earth. In Christ, we have life in the face of certain death and life after physical death. In Christ, we have a comfort greater than any human comfort. In Christ, we have the infinite of all things, the infinite of all riches, the infinite of all time, the infinite of all joy, and the infinite of all love.

Coffee☕️And Conversation A Ray Of Hope

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My Anchor Holds

You know one of the greatest things in human life is hope. Paul classified hope as one of the three "abiding" things in life. In that marvelous 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians on love, "Now abideth faith, hope, and love," what he means is that these are three things that we just can't get along without in life.

I. A SURE AND STEADFAST ANCHOR

The hope of a child of God is an "anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast." Now a sure anchor is an anchor that has been made by an experienced smith, the prongs of which were set at exactly the right angle so that, when it is let down and takes hold of the bottom, it will never let go.

II. THE ANCHOR HOLDS

Have you ever asked yourself what it was that made Job able to stand up and say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him."? How could he do it? Nobody could – hear old Job when he said, "I know that my redeemer liveth." That's the reason David could say so confidently, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."

III. HOW WE CAN KNOW

God's oath guarantees it – God has put himself on oath and has sworn, not by one thing, but two things: Two things that cannot change; two things that cannot fail: two things in which it is impossible for God to lie. If you turn back to the 17th chapter of Genesis, you will find the very wording of the oath that God made. "As I live, sayeth the Lord." What does it mean? As long as God lives – I want you to get it – as long as God lives, there never will be a penitent sinner turn to Jesus Christ and not be saved. Until God repudiates the Sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary until God repudiates His Word, until God purges His own oath until God lies and until God dies, there never will be a penitent sinner come to Jesus for salvation and not find it.

Being Saved Is Simple

Bring A Friend, Who Is Your One?

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God Cares For You And About You

God cares for you and about you.

The fact is that God cares more and is in contact with the suffering more than any of us could know or imagine.

It is the very nature of God that causes God to care.

God cannot do anything other than pour out His love for us, on us, and into our hearts.

God never turns His back on anyone. God sent His only Son into the world because God cares about each of us.

God's love and caring is infinite. It is because God's love and caring are infinite that He was willing to let His Son die upon the Cross.

It is God's very closeness to our heart that causes Him so much grief when we turn away from Him.

It is God's very presence in our lives that causes Him to grow angry with us when we profane Him and His calling upon each of our lives.

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Answers That Heal…

The pain of life comes as surely as birth and death.

We have so many hurts in life surviving them all is a wonder.

However, we can survive and prosper from our hurts because Christ is always with us if we love Him.

In life, we want answers about why there are hurt and suffering.

We want God to speak boldly and forcefully to us.

We want God to give us a reason to keep on keeping on when our times of hurt and suffering come.

If we tune our heart into God's love, He is, at this moment, giving us answers to help us heal from our wounds.

As we seek out answers from others, from books, from literature, and from all kinds of sources of wisdom, the gentle touch of Christ heals us.

More than Christ's healing wisdom of the ages, Christ heals our broken life. Christ's suffering and death assure the defeat of evil in the world.

Because Christ suffered, died, and rose again, we can conquer the evil in this life.

In Christ's eyes we see His love carrying us over the hurt.

In Christ's eyes we find an eternal healing power overcoming our faulty body, our broken heart, and our hurting mind.

In Jesus, we find His answers giving us new life now and new life in eternity.

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Hearing God Say “I Love You”

The most profound experience you can ever have in life is hearing God say, "I love you."

No other statement to you from the heart of God can rise above the magnitude of this statement.

No other experience in religious life can outshine the experience of hearing God tell you He loves you.

It is not enough to hear God use audible sounds you hear with your physical ears.

With God, hearing His voice with your physical ears is not enough because He wants you to not just hear Him speak, but to also experience His love.

God wants you to experience His love as proof positive He loves you.

With God, it is not good enough on His part to have you living your life on planet Earth believing He exists but not experiencing His love.

 It is not good enough for God to have you living among millions of other humans trusting Him without knowing for sure He loves you.

It is because God wanted you to know for sure He loves you that He sent Christ to you.

It is because God wanted you to know for sure He loves you that Christ died for you.

It is because God loves you that He walks with you and talks with you every second of your life…telling you in supernatural ways every second of your life…”I love you.”

Revival

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Ultimate Victory

The world is a discouraging place.

The world tells you that you will never get to the top, no matter how hard you try.

The world tells you that you will never get to the top, no matter how long you work at it.

No one will ever see you climb.

However, people will see you fall.

You will experience pain and suffering whether you deserve it or not.

You will lose more ground than you gain.

Some days, or weeks, or months, or even years can be times of loss.

In this life and in this reality, there is often no observable victory.

However, in this life and in this reality there is a man who brings ultimate victory over every obstacle.

His name is Jesus.

God Is To Be Praised For His Redemption, Part 1

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God Understands

Every minute of every day Jesus wants us to look to Him because we can, not because we have to.

Love is not something He can force from us. 

Loving God is something we must do on our own because we are free. In other words, if we learn to live and act in Christ's name, even when He is silent, we are able to live our lives for Him because we choose to, not because we have to. Jesus wants us to choose Him freely. 

The most mature kind of love is the love we have for Him based upon our freedom to choose. 

In our pain, as we choose Christ, we become stronger. 

Just as He freely chose to die for us, we can freely choose to experience Him in our daily lives. 

Jesus is hurting and agonizing with us. 

If He could, He would take our pain onto himself so we would not have to go through it. 

Sometimes He does do miracles. 

There are other times, for reasons we understand and for other reasons known only to God when He does not bring a miracle. 

God has a path for you. 

There is so much more He wants you to do before you are done in this life. 

When disaster strikes, 

He is not far off…He is near you. 

When you lose a loved one He is next to you, hurting with you, grieving with you, supporting and caring for you. 

When we are staring at death's door, He is on the other side with open arms to welcome us. 

When people we love are hurt for no reason, He understands our pain, our anger, and He feels what we feel. 

When we are alone and are sinking into our private pain He is hurting with us and reaches out to us to help us up to see His wonderful Light. 

When we are besieged on every side by every spiritual enemy, God is at war with us, fighting the good fight alongside us. 

Jesus said, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” 

John 14:18

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The Gift Of Hope

One of the heavenly gifts God pours into our hearts is the gift of hope.

Circumstances might look hopeless here on earth, but there is hope in heaven.

When we think about the hope of heaven, we store hope away for ourselves.

What we put on the shelf in heaven appears in our heart here on earth.

Notice that what we store up in heaven…is where our heart is here on earth.

When we think about our future, we do not always see the best and brightest aspects of what will happen?

When we are young, we can see almost forever.

When we grow older, there is, realistically, more of our earthly life behind us than there is ahead of us.

However, no matter what age we are, what condition we are in, where we are, or how we are, there is for each of us hopes in heaven.

There is for each of us hopes for an eternal blissful life in heaven.

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Hope In The Light Of God

In the darkness of our life, in our darkest moments, when there seems to be no Light at the end of our journey and no hope in our present moment, we must all remember we can be part of God's plan for us.

As alone as we sometimes feel we are not alone because God is with us.

As little and insignificant as we sometimes think we are, we are not little nor insignificant to God.

As invisible as we often think we are, as unnoticed as we consider ourselves to be, we are not invisible and unnoticed to God.

We too often measure our lives by the physical attributes of the world.

We too often measure our lives by dollars made, location and size of houses lived in, year and model of cars driven, and the stylish nature of clothes worn.

However, these measures are not the measures God uses to measure our lives.

Dollars, houses, cars, and clothes are meaningless in the higher realms where God lives.

To God, dollars, houses, cars, and clothes are folly; they are jokes and things of laughter if we could see them as God sees them.

Instead of opening the way to Light and hope, our material things, and our desire for human position and recognition, keep us away from finding Light and hope in God's love.

To find Light and hope in Christ we must realize hope and the Light come from another plain of life, from another existence unlike our own.

To find hope and the Light in Christ we must let our spirit soar far above the material things of earth so we can see the hope of eternal life and the hope of eternal joy in Christ our Savior.

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

A Look At True Love

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Faith In A Crisis

A crisis is a terrible circumstance.

In a crisis, when so many parts of your life seem to have come unraveled, you may want to slip back because in a crisis we seem to lose our footing.

In a crisis, you can easily lose your faith. In a crisis, you may not want to pray because you think praying won't change anything.

In a crisis, you may want to give up because trying to deal with the circumstance of the crisis is too painful and too difficult.

Sometimes, in a crisis, it seems the energy it takes us to live is not enough to fight on.

In a crisis, there is no fun or enjoyment because you cannot escape the crisis, there is no security and there is no escape.

In a crisis, the loneliness is unbearable and there is fear, paralysis, anxiety, panic, anger, defeat, and bewilderment.

In all this darkness, surely God must be someplace.

Most certainly, in all this darkness, God IS someplace…He is within you.

For in all this darkness, God is closer to you than any lack of energy, closer to you than any fear, closer to you than any paralysis, closer to you than any anxiety, closer to you than any panic, closer to you than any anger, closer to you than any defeat, and closer to you than any bewilderment.

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Real Living

Psalm 63:1---O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee; my soul thirsteth for thee . . .

Some Christians have learned little of daily devotional life. Some time ago a policeman asked me what the secret of victorious living was. I told him that there is no magic formula that can be pronounced. If any word could describe it, I would say surrender. The second word I would say would be devotion. Nothing can take the place of a daily devotional life with Christ. Your quiet time, your prayer time, the time you spend in the Word is absolutely essential for a happy Christian life. You cannot possibly be a happy, dynamic, and powerful Christian apart from a daily walk with Christ. Christ is calling Christians today to cleansing, to the dedication, to consecration, and to full surrender. It will make the difference between success and failure in your spiritual life. It will make the difference between being helped and helping others. It will make a difference in your habits, in your prayer life, in your Bible reading, in your giving, in your testimony, and in your church membership. This is the Christian hour of decision!

A Billy Graham Devotion

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Making Suffering Work For You

Everyone will experience pain and suffering at some point during their lifetime.

Both Christians and non-Christians experience pain and suffering.

No one escapes suffering.

At one time or another you will suffer.

It can come early in life, in the middle of your life, or at the end.

Some people suffer all their lives.

Some suffer a little, some a lot.

There are all kinds of suffering: physical pain, emotional pain, spiritual pain, worry, stress, doubt, and loneliness.

Job is the oldest book in the Bible and deals with the oldest question...

"Why do good people suffer?"

A favorite passage from the Bible is not from Job but from Romans 8:28, "and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose."

Why we suffer is not as important as what we do about suffering when it happens.

How we handle suffering is the acid test of our Christian faith.

All things and all circumstances in life can be turned around if you pursue and do the job in life, God gave you to do.

We need not take suffering as if we have no power.

In Christ, because of our Christian faith, we have the power to deal with suffering.

We have the power of God working within us.

The power of God helps us deal a more powerful blow to suffering than suffering can deal with us.

The power of God we have to use against suffering is love.

It is the love of God that came from Christ that healed a leper and made a blind man see.

It is the love of God that will be your greatest weapon against the dark power we call suffering.

You make suffering work for you when you love in spite of the pain.

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Hope And Adversity

A lot of good can come out of adversity. When we are feeling the pain of adversity, it makes us think nothing good can happen for us and we lose hope. However, when we are standing in the Light, there is a way to make good things happen. Willfully making good things happen when we are going through adversity is called growth.

A man came back from a weekend retreat experience and when a friend asked him how it was, he said, "I died!" The friend asked him what he meant. "You see," the man answered, "I went to this thing not knowing what to expect. But in the process of that long weekend, I discovered I had spent my whole life hiding behind a lot of masks. I realized I had never even let my wife see me as I really was. I'd been playing games with her, and playing games with my children, and playing games with others -- never letting anybody know who I really am. The worst of it was to discover even I didn't know myself. I was not in touch with my own honest feelings about myself. And, as all of this was being exposed over the weekend, I died over and over again." It is a painful thing for a middle-aged man to discover he is not even in touch with his own feelings about himself. "I am convinced," he said, "that I had to go through this death experience in order to become the new person I hope to be now." Out of every hopeless experience can come new hope and new life if we are determined to make it so. The key point is we must want to make good things happen when we are suffering. Our will, exercised in the direction of God, produces good results. The results produced are not always immediate, but they are life-changing and long-lasting.

A New Beginning

This happened when I was serving as a Hospice Chaplain.

I drove up into the yard of this patient and got out carrying my small New Testament with me. As I walked up on the porch I noticed the door was opened and I could look in. I knocked on the door and the patient came to the door and didn’t hesitate in asking me to leave. I tried to communicate with him and he tossed out some profanity at me and again asked me to leave his home. I could see the patient was getting upset so I got back into my truck and as I was backing out of the drive I prayed and asked God to somehow open the door for me to visit this man. About one month later I was in route to see another patient when I received a call from our office who shared with me that the patient who asked me away from his home was now requesting a visit. I had asked God to open the door but as I started to his home I was a bit reluctant to go back there because I felt so mistreated. On my way, I begin to pray and talk with God about a visit with this patient. I felt God speak to my heart and say to me, “Go but don’t take your Bible.” I thought to myself that can’t be God He would never tell me not to take a Bible. Again I prayed and got the same response from God, “You go but don’t take your Bible.” On arrival at the patient home, I got out and left my Bible in the truck. I walked up on the porch and looked into the house again and noticed a bottle of liquor sitting on the table and a Bible opened lying next to it. I thought, Man what a paradox. I knocked on the door and he opened the glass door and the first thing out of his mouth was, “You the Preacher?” I answered that I was the Chaplain. He then looked at me and asked, “Where is your Bible?” I answered, I don’t have one and he looked shocked. “You are the first Preacher that has ever been here without a Bible. They come by from time to time and just beat me over my head with the Bible and tell me I am going to hell.” I looked into his eyes and will never forget the look I received from him. It was as though he was saying to me with those eyes, “I just want somebody to love me. I assured him I was not there to hit him over the head with a Bible, I was there because I cared. I looked into his eyes again and could see a tear running down his face. The patient opened his door and invited me in and we sat at the table with his bottle of liquor and Bible and he very tearfully said to me, “I am dying and I am not ready to meet my Maker, what can I do?” He then picked up his Bible and handed it to me and said to me, “show me what I need to do.” I took his Bible and share Scripture with him and he then prayed the sweetest prayer of confession that I’ve ever heard. His countenance changed immediately and he got up from the table and took the bottle of liquor and poured it down the sink. I said to him, “I wish I could tell you that it would be that easy but I will assure you it will be a battle to get past the drinking, but with the Lord’s help you can do it. About a week later he called me crying and said, “Preacher I messed up,” I went to him and settled him down by telling him we all mess up from time to time and that is why we need a Savior. I explained our God is a God of a new beginning and this seemed to comfort him. There were several times I had to go and visit with him to remind him again “Our God Is a God of New Beginnings.” It wasn’t long before God blessed him with the greatest New Beginning a new body, no more suffering and no more fighting the battle against pain and the flesh. Now that’s a NEW BEGINNING!!

Chaplain Danny V. Ray

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What We Can Do With Our Adversity?

We can help our healing.

We can help our life.

We can help our ability to deal with pain.

We can help ourselves.

We can help others.

In adversity, our mind (or our thoughts), our heart (or our emotions), and our spirit (or our soul) can either work for us or against us.

In using our mind, heart, and spirit, we can choose to have our way with adversity or we can choose to let the adversity have its way with us.

If we choose to have our way with adversity, we must keep our hope alive.

To have your way with adversity you must believe and then actually make a positive response to life's circumstances.

To have your way with adversity, you can respond to how you handle emotional conflicts, you can respond to the call of God to walk in the Light...and you can make a difference in your experience with adversity.

A Knowing Faith

This story was written when I was still serving as A Hospice Chaplain.

It is always the hardest to reach into the life of someone you are already close to.

Our hospice had already served this family but I knew them long before our hospice had to serve them. This sweet lady was one of my precious church members years ago and she always was one who would speak her mind. When I was a much younger preacher she accused me of preaching too loud. I will never forget the day that she met me at the back door of the church and said to me, "preacher you need to tone it down just a bit you preach to loud." She was one who always sat to my left from a pulpit view and on the third row. I replied to her comment, "you just sit to close maybe you need to move to the back of the church." That statement was my first mistake with her because she said, "let me tell you something young preacher I have sat on that same pew of many years and will sitting on it when you are long gone from here." Now I don't want to make you think that she said that mean spirited because she was laughing the entire time she was saying it to me. Needless to say, I got really close to her and her husband.

He was the first to be admitted to our hospice and I must say he was a great man of faith who served as a deacon in the church. Cancer really took its toll on him but he always had a positive faith and assured me he was ready to go to heaven when the Lord called him home. That day came and I had to preach his funeral even though it happened just like his wife said, she was still sitting on the third pew and I had been long gone as their pastor.

The Lord blessed her with several more years but then the call was received, she was to be admitted to our hospice. This sweet lady had gotten to be like a mother to me and it was a really hard and sad day for me. I will never forget her words when I arrived to talk with her. She said, "I reckon you will have another funeral to preach soon." There are times you just don't say anything but continue to listen and that is what I did, I just listened. The next statement out of her mouth came in the form of a question, "do you still preach as loud as you use to preach?" I answered, "I have not changed a bit I am as loud as ever." She begins to laugh and said, "My Lord they will have to leave my casket at the back of the church." Even in her declining condition, she continued to have her keen sense of humor.

The day arrived that she departed this life but the thing she said to me that I will never forget, "I know where I am going, I don't think I know, I know that I am going to heaven and I expect to see you there when the time comes Danny Ray." There is nothing like having a knowing faith and her knowing faith helped her move from a life of sorrow and suffering to a life of joy and happiness, a life in the fair city of God where there is no suffering and praise God no cancer. I expect to see her soon and she will probably say to Jesus as I enter the city of God, Lord be careful with him and don't get to close because he really preaches loud.

Chaplain Danny V. Ray

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The Power Of Prayerful Meditation

Although we may not want to, we too often lead lives apart from God.

In our life, we can have enormous faith but still never make the kind of contact with God that forever changes and transforms us into new persons day by day.

God is the power of the universe.

One of the ways you can make contact with His power is through prayerful meditation.

So powerful is prayerful meditation this form of emotional open heart surgery can even reverse heart disease!

When you meditate in a prayerful way and in a prayerful mood, all of God's power can flow into you.

All the love God is can become a real experience in your heart and soul when you prayerfully meditate.

When you meditate, think about the hope offered by God.

When you meditate, surrender all you are up to Him.

When you meditate, think about how much God accepts you into His arms.

Soon you will find you have made contact real, live contact with the living God.

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Christ Is Present

Jesus is present in our lives to help us deal with the adversity, not necessarily to make the adversity go away.

On the surface, there does appear to be unfairness about adversity for people of faith.

Certainly, if we look at adversity from the standpoint of the world, people of faith should get an easier life because people of faith believe in God.

From the standpoint of the world, believers in God should receive protection from God because of their faith, at least more protection than non-believers.

However, our mission on earth is to glorify God in all ways, at all times, and in all circumstances.

Our mission on earth is to glorify God in the dark times as well as in the good times.

As twisted as the logic may appear to be, we are to use every adversity, someway, somehow, to glorify God.

It is when we glorify God as a result of the darkness in our life that the darkness is most surely defeated.

To find the power to do our glorification work, Christ is present in our heart every hour.

The River Of Spiritual Life

Jesus Walking In The Midst Of The Church

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How Jesus Relates To Our Adversity

Adversity Disappears in His Light.

In spite of your problems, issues, disability, illness, sickness, disease, or the influence the darkness has upon you, there is no power greater than the light of God.

Because God is the light, you can defeat the darkness by bringing in the Light of Christ.

The darkness is a part of your earthly life.

However, the darkness is only temporary for those of us who have accepted Christ.

Since Christ is eternal, you can stand in the presence of God's Light and Love in Christ now and forevermore.

Your temporary darkness will be made into nothing in the light and love of God as you stand with Him for eternity in Heaven.

Christ touches is in Old Testament times people who were disabled, ill, sick, or diseased were banned from the temple where God lived.

In striking contrast, when Jesus came into the world He did not reject us or banish us.

Instead of rejecting us or banishing us, Jesus put His hands upon us and healed us.

Coffee ☕️ And Conversation A Ray Of Hope

New Hope When Hope Is Gone

Praise the Lord, Praise your Lord Jesus, for pouring His love and grace into your heart.

Praise the Lord for showing you how you have resources you do not always know you have.

Praise the Lord for showing you Christ's way home when you are lost.

At the moment, you are getting lost and lost again.

You see no way out of where you are right now.

Things look dark and bleak.

You see no way to change anything.

You see no way to remove the mountains in front of you.

You see no way to come back and renew the promise so prevalent in your heart just a short time ago.

You need Christ's touch to renew your hope.

You need Christ's touch to renew your vision.

According to Christ's will, let these moments in your life be a time of teaching and gaining wisdom.

According to Christ's will, let these moments of your trials be a reminder your permanent hope in life comes only from the Lord and not from any other source.

Love the Lord.

Try to do what is right.

Whatever the Lord wants you to do, wherever the Lord wants you to go, that is what you must try to do.

The Riches Of God’s Grace 1

Coffee ☕️ And Conversation A Ray Of Hope

The Pain Christ Bore For You

To find the Light of Christ, you must fully understand He personally bore actual pain for you when He suffered and died on the cross for you.

We can explain what He did. We can explain how He took all of your life to the cross.

However, you must go beyond words of explanation.

You must pray daily to see at least a glimpse of Christ's pain suffered for you on the cross.

Until you see and in a vicarious way experience what Christ suffered for you on the cross, you will never fully know, never be fully enlightened, and never fully see Him.

Christ sacrificed all of His love for you.

He took all of your mistakes, burdens, hopes, dreams, sufferings, pains, worries, grief, beliefs, whims, sins, thoughts, words, and deeds to the cross.

Christ sacrificed Himself so you could have a chance at immortality in Heaven with Him. In prayer, let Him show you His suffering.

In prayer, let Him show you how He was tortured, maimed, beaten, flogged, and humiliated in ways beyond human understanding.

All this was done for you.

On the cross, Christ took you and your life into His heart.

On the cross, Christ took your life into His life.

On the cross, Christ took you into Himself and suffered and died for you.

On the cross, your life became His life.

Christ did all this for one reason…because He loves you.

Let yourself imagine.

Let yourself be willing to believe. Let yourself be touched by the world's most beautiful truth…He loves you.

Coffee ☕️ And Conversation A Ray Of Hope

Hope And Finding Strength

Psalms 31:24---Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.

An incredibly important question we can ask about finding strength is, "How can I be strong when I am weak?"

The answer is that you find strength when you are weak, not from yourself, but from God.

You find strength when you are weak because you truly believe God is working within you, and because you trust Him to give you the necessary power to get the job done…even when you are at your weakest.

Our strength when we are weak comes from what we call to hope in God.

When you trust or hope in God, you get something extra, like an extra amount of spiritual fuel, out of every circumstance.

Too often people look for strength, hope, and help from outside themselves.

Too often people consider strength, hope, and help from outside themselves to be the hope and help that will save them from trouble.

However, we find God and find His strength, hope, and help within us rather than from outside of us.

Coffee ☕️ And Conversation A Ray Of Hope

Praying When You Are In Pain

Revelation 21:4---And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

We have a wonderful God.

We have a loving God who loves each of us in a personal and special way.

When we pray we must try to remember how Christ is within us and does not want us to feel pain or sorrow.

Our God has a wonderful world waiting for us.

His words give us a vision of a new world where our current burdens will be no more.

When we pray, we can pour out our pain to Christ who knows all about our pain and suffering.

Christ Jesus, our blessed Savior, comes to us in our darkest hour and shows us a new order of life in the future.

Pain has a way of making everything seem meaningless.

However, when we pray to Jesus and ask Him for hope, then He comes to us and gives us the assurance our pain is only temporary.

He instills in us, knowledge and wisdom showing us the night will soon fade away because of the dawn that is almost here.

Coffee ☕️ And Conversation A Ray Of Hope

Seeing Blessings

Psalm 107:1-3---O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy; And gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south.

We can count our blessings in a grand and glorious mental exercise. However, counting our blessings in our hearts and minds is often not enough. We become a blessing to God as we actually see His blessings poured out in our life. Just thinking about how God blesses us with the freedom to worship is not enough. We become a blessing to God when we actually do worship. Just thinking about praying and how we can come close to God in prayer is not enough. We become a blessing to God when we actually do pray and come close to Him in prayer. Blessings are poured out in our life not just to be counted. God pours blessings out in our life so we can see His blessings, absorb them, and take them in. When we see His blessings, when we absorb His blessings, and when we take His blessings in, we can fully become His work and witness. Living in His blessings gives us His power to be humble, contrite, and forgiving.

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God Knows About Your Suffering

Your pain, isolation and loneliness are a burden God carries with you.

You are not alone in this life.

A person is walking with you and beside you every moment you breathe the breath of life.

That person is our most wonderful Savior and Friend, Jesus Christ.

You will never walk this path of life by yourself.

You will never be by yourself.

You are not ignored as you gasp for air in life's darkness and pain.

Your muscles and joints may cry out in pain yet your God is always pushing you to live up life as much as possible.

Your heart may break at the suffering you endure, but God holds your heart in His hands.

God treasures your heart.

No life on earth is ever lived without God knowing about it.

No microbe lives without the knowledge of God.

We cannot understand all of this mystery.

We cannot fathom all that God is and does in our lives and in the lives of others.

What we can fathom and what we can understand is the presence of God in our hearts.

We can understand most clearly that each of us has the power to accept or reject the love that is God.

Each of us, every second we are alive does make the decision to accept or reject the love that is God.

A Message From The Veil Of The Temple

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Using Your Mind To Feel Better

Quite often, your thoughts determine your emotions or how you feel.

More importantly, you determine how you feel by how you think or what you think about.

You often feel the way you think as you process the events of your life.

Your thoughts and emotions are the results of this processing of events.

Conversely, how you think and how you feel can determine how you process the events of your life.

How you think about something that can easily determine how you feel.

"It's raining" can make you feel good or bad depending upon whether you see the rain as a positive or negative event.

Thought is the ancestor of every life experience.

The positive or negative aspect of any experience is grounded in what we think about the experience.

A wonderful experience for one person could easily be a terrible experience for someone else based upon what each person thinks about the event.

The thought we have toward an event that will determine our experience.

What is most important in this matter is we can control what and how we think.

We can choose our thinking processes.

We can mold and shape our viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs.

In many ways, the healthiness of our mental life is dependent upon the healthiness of our viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs.

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Find The Power For Healing

A cure is physical, while healing is spiritual.

The closer you get to the spiritual cause of your illness, your adversity, your pain, or your suffering, the more powerful your healing and the more likely your cure.

In every illness, adversity, pain, and suffering there is a spiritual component.

The spiritual component of your illness, adversity, pain, or suffering may appear because of your great adversary who seeks to destroy you.

When you come to grips with the fact you have a great adversary and you can oppose this adversary with love, healing followed by a cure becomes more and more possible.

With enough love, first healing then a cure becomes more and more a probability.