Journey4Jesus
Praying Gods Word in all areas of life… The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
I don’t have a cross…Do I ?
Have you ever thought about Jesus words when He said to “take up your cross”? I used to think that taking up my cross meant I was supposed to be accepting specific burdens from God. Yet in reality to take up my cross is actually about surrendering.
I effectively take up my cross when I surrender my plans and my will to God. When I choose to put His ways before my own. When I put my focus onto living my life surrendered to Him following His Word even when it’s difficult.
Take heart my friends… Fear is a Liar. If you have Jesus, you have ALL that you need to navigate the obstacles in this world.
Do you know Jesus as your personal Saviour? We need him now more then ever in this crazy world.
Check out more in my Blog
Blessings ♥️, Janet
Love letter and the scarlet thread…
When I mention spending time in Gods Word or Reading the Bible, what emotional response does that evoke in you? For myself, it was one of duty and drudgery. I knew as a Christian I should read it, I’d heard the words; “Gods word is alive,” “sharper than a double edged sword“, we were to “hide it in our heart” and heaven forbid…even memorize it.
Obviously, for me there were some issues, and these issues hindered me in my Spiritual growth for a very long time, preventing me from becoming All that God wanted me to become. I remember years ago, I made it my goal to read the Bible cover to cover… and I did, problem was I really didn’t get it… and seriously what was with all the blood?
the gift…
Do you ever look at life as a gift? Recognizing that you and I are not guaranteed another day? How many times have you prayed when you wake up, “Thank you Lord for the breath in my lungs”?
Sometimes we are so busy doing life, that we forget to be thankful for the very GIFT of life.
My friend, my challenge for you today is to see God in the everyday things; from the very breath that we so easily take for granted, to our hearts pumping the right amount of blood through our system enabling everything in our bodies to work together effectively,
Why does He do this for us? So that our very life brings Him Glory, not just what we do and achieve but who we are IN Him. So I encourage you to marvel at this gift of life, to live well not leaving anything in life undone…after all, none of us are guaranteed tomorrow.
For more encouragement check out my website www.journey4jesus.com
Blessings, Janet ❤️. Do you know Jesus?
For such a time as this…
It’s such a unique opportunity to be able to look backwards through the lens of time, and see how God has answered those difficult questions that we wrestled so deeply with 2 1/2 years earlier. When I wrote these words in my prayer journal, they were simply raw emotions as I watched everything around me crumble.
I had no idea what God had planned for us, yet in the scariest and most uncertain times of our life, we truly sensed He was doing something.
As like so many believers, we were really good at coasting along. We Loved God, we loved our Salvation through Christ, we were very thankful for the gift of Grace, because we definitely knew how much we needed that… Yet, we were not “Living” for Christ.
Those words used to sound too Holy. Only Pastors & missionaries really lived FOR Jesus. The rest of us just tried to do our best managing life in this world without being too terrible. Don’t get me wrong, we loved our Church and we loved serving Jesus in prayer ministry, I even began to love reading His Word, and continually wanted to learn more, but Living for Christ… that was a different ball game all together.
be the light…
Just a note of encouragement to my faithful Blog followers; The world often looks dark when we focus onto the dark, yet when we recognize that we, as Children of Jesus, reflect the light of the Father, we don’t have to fear the dark, because we can BE the Light in the darkness.
Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” John 8:12 NLT
Walk through the day with your head held high, projecting the Light and the Love of the Father to those He places in your path today my friends. See you soon…
Blessings, Janet ❤️
Dancing with Jesus…
As I sit at my computer and type in these words below from my prayer journal, written and prayed almost 3 years ago, I marvel at the intricate details God places in our lives. I will never cease to be amazed at how these simple prayers have not only been heard by him, but how we see his answers unfolding before our eyes.
At the time of this writing, we felt like an onion, being peeled away one layer at a time, each time exposing the next vulnerable layer. We felt so raw and so depleted, there were days it was difficult to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and trust that He had a plan for us.
Fast forward to today; Our lives are being redeemed. We are not only serving Jesus is full time ministry, which we have been praying for, for so many years, we are serving together. God has picked us up and moved us to a remote community 10 hours North of where we began this journey.
beautifully broken…
Do you ever look in a mirror, and wonder how you became the person looking back at you? I’m sure that the image you see in the mirror comes with many happy & wonderful memories that wove beauty into your soul. But how about the not so wonderful… the hurtful… the broken ones that left you scarred on the inside.
Oh I’m sure many of you are like me, very adept at hiding those scars… hoping and praying that in time they will dissolve into the deep recesses of our minds, then we could do life solely out of the beautiful side. This had been my dream for much of my life. Push away… forget… ignore… Sadly, like a shaken pop bottle, eventually the ugly would come bursting out at such velocity that there was no stopping the mess it would leave in its wake.
The power of prayer…
What do you think of when he hear the word prayer? What images are conjured up within your mind? Do you see yourself lighting a candle reciting comforting words with a safe yet generic message? Or, maybe to you, prayer is state of mind verses an actual action.
I don’t know what you think of when you hear the word prayer, but I can tell you what I hear and more importantly what I believe to be true…
Picture yourself as a little child reaching up to tell your Father or other trusted adult an important secret. You are filled with anticipation as you know that these words are going to be heard and your heart will be encouraged to share this special moment, simply because this person loves you so much.
That is the image I see when I think of praying to my Father in heaven. We are His children, He loves us completely and wants to share the deepest secrets of our heart. He wants us to trust Him with our vulnerabilities as well be willing to share even when we can’t possibly understand.
lord, be my bridge…
It’s so fascinating to me, what God is doing and has been doing in our lives. When I wrote this journal entry it was the end of April 2018, we were living in the midst of a very difficult time. Every thing we knew was crashing down around us.
We sold our home and moved ourselves and my Mother-in-law, back into the condo we had moved her out of, a year earlier with the plan of renovating and selling it. Never had it crossed our minds that the three of us would be the ones actually living there. This was a difficult time for each of us in different ways; for Mikes Mom, it came with memories of time passed, reopening a door thought closed. For Mike, it represented failure, he was moving into what had been his Mom & Dads home during his Dad’s last years. For me, I did everything I could to try to make it feel like a new home… which sadly never really worked.
In the midst of all of this change, God was determined to help us keep perspective. It would have been so easy to fall into the trap of the pity party, yet He chose to use this time to teach us to live in “Faith not Fear”.
Journey4Jesus 