Are You Ashamed?

Have you ever done anything that you were ashamed of? I mean really ashamed. We all do things that sometime embarrass us, but I am talking about the kind of things that we really don't want anyone to know. The stuff that is so embarrassing or bad that we don't like to think about it ourselves. The secret stuff that only you, God and the devil know about. I have had that kind of stuff in my heart, we all have. You are not alone. God wants you to know that the sin in your secret place is the sin that short circuts the anointing of God in your life. You may be born again, yet this sin has been plagueing you. It did me for a long time because I refused to deal with the secret sin in my life. At first it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal. But when you think you have it under control, you do it again. It seems to keep pulling you back into it. Oh, you pray that God will forgive you, then you do it again. It seems to have a hold on you that you can't seem to break. You want to be free of it, but the truth is, you still kind of like doing it. You hate how it makes you feel after you have done it, but you still enjoy it while your doing it. Then guilt sets in, but you can't seem to bring yourself to the place of really letting it go.
Jesus wants you to know that if you will let him, he will remove this sin from your life and set you free from it.When you have finally come to the place of truly ready to let it go When you are set free it will no longer have a hold on you. According to the word of God, if will will confess to him our sin, acknowledging it, because he already knows about it, and we ask his forgiveness with godly sorrow, repenting because we truely feel bad for it, he will not only forgive us our sin, he will cleanse us from it. He will deliver us, cleanse us, and give us a fresh start as if we had never sinned. When this happens, our heart no longer condemns us and we are free in our spirit to let the mercy, the love, the power and the annointing of God to flow through us. We are truely changed and desire the gifts of God to operate in and through us as he designed us to do. Romans 8 says that there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. And when the spirit of God lives in us he helps us, for when we don't know what to pray he (the Holy Spirit) prays through us, uses our voice to pray the perfect will of God.
There is a secret place prepared in every one of our hearts that God wants to fill up with himself and nothing or no one else can fill that place. And God has a secret place he wants us to dwell in him. Psalms 91:1 says, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

Here is a song about that secret place in all our hearts.

SECRET PLACE
My heart is like a house
One day I let the savior in
And there are many rooms
Where we would visit now and then

But then one day he saw that door
I knew the day had come to soon
I said, "Jesus I'm not ready
For us to visit in that room."
"Cause that's a place in my heart
Where even I don't go
I have some hidden things in there
I don't want no one to know

But he handed me the keys
With tears of love on his face
He said, "I want to make you clean
Let me go in your secret place."

So I opened up the door
As the two of us walked in
I was so ashamed
His light revealed my hidden sin

But then I think about that room now
I'm not afraid anymore
Cause I know my secret sin
No longer hides behind that door

by Steve and Annie Chapman

Self Doubt

When you doubt yourself don't worry, you are in good company. When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush on the mountain side, he told Moses that he had chosen him to be the deliverer of the nation of Israel. Moses immediately started making excuses as to why he was not qualified to be a deliverer. God had to assure him that he would be with him,that he would be able to do the job, and he did. Gideon is another one that doubted himself. Gideon was hiding when the angel greeted him calling him a mighty man of valor.Gideon was surprised at this greeting. The angel explained to him that God had chosen him to be a judge and leader of the nation of Israel. Immediately Gideon started making excuse as to why he was the wrong guy. How he was weak and scared, how he was the least in his family and several other excuses.The angel had to reassure Gideon that he was the right guy, God would be with him and that he could do the job, and he did.
So when you have thoughts of doubt remember that God is with you and he will help. Just because you have thoughts of doubt whether you can perform the task you have been given, it doesn't mean you can't perform it. You can do the task if you stay focused on the one who started a good work in you and is able to complete it. God wants you to succeed in the things he has called you to do.Self doubt and other kinds of doubt is driven out by faith. By faith in God, faith in what he can do in and through you.

Pride and Arrogance Go Hand in Hand

Do any of you know or at least know of someone who is arrogant? They are so proud of themselves that they themselves seem to be the main topic of their conversations. I will let you know right now I was guilty of this very thing. When I was a younger man, Judo was my favorite sport. After being involved in it for a few years I lived, breathed and slept Judo. I was fairly good at it. I dreamed about it in my sleep and day dreamed about it when I was awake. I let everyone know about it. I was passionate to the point where people started avoiding me because they were tired of hearing about it. Funny how everyone could see I was arrogant and proud, except for me. I didn't know I was arrogant. I thought I was fun loving and exciting. After all other people would be lucky to have me as a friend because I could protect them and show them how to protect themselves, so I thought. I couldn't understand why people quit coming around me. I found out later many people were purposely avoiding me because they knew that within 10 minutes or so the conversation would be about Judo. I won may trophies and medals, I displayed them promenantly and would not allow anyone to touch them except myself.
Now there is nothing wrong with Judo itself and it does help with self confidence to a degree, but the attitude I had about it had a hold on me. It basically took over many areas of my life without me realizing it. I was not only proud of what I was able to do, I was proud because it was me doing it. My attitude was wrong. I had allowed pride in and in that pride I became arrogant. I was not only confident that I was good at it, I crossed over the line of confidence into arrogance. A fine line between look at me and what I can do and a humble attitude being confident in what God can do in and through me.
According to the word of God, Proverbs 16:18, "Pride (goeth) before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Also, Proverbs 21:24, "The proud and haughty man, scoffer is his name, He worketh in the arrogance of pride. And again, Isaiah 16:6, "We have heard of the pride of Moab, (that) he is very proud; even of his arrogancy, and his pride, and his wrath; his boastings are nothing.
The first thing a person needs to do in order to change is like with any other problem, you first have to acknowledge you have the problem, then seek ways to overcome and get rid of it. How can we overcome pride and arrogancy in our lives? What steps can we take once we acknowledge we have a problem with pride and arrogancy? When we read, hear and speak the word of God, we feed our spirit being the seeds that will grow in us to overcome pride and arrogancy. Scripure teaches us that pride and arrogancy breeds contention and strife. How? Because a proud person will not admit they are wrong, they will blame others for any downfalls, and they refuse to humble themselves. They have a hard time acknowledging someone else is more qualified than themselves in certain areas. They put down others and get angry if you say something about them in a negative way, especially if its the truth. Scripture also teaches us that if we will humble ourselves he will lift us up and exalt us in due time. Luke 14:11 say,"For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Submit yourself totally to God, repent for being prideful and arrogant, and mean it in your heart. When you voluntarily humble yourself, you will need Gods help to do this from the inside of you he will reward you. He resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. James 4:6

PRAYER: Dear Heavenly Father, I acknowledge that I have wrongful pride and I have given place to arrogany. I ask your forgiveness for pride and arrogance. Help me Lord, to humble myself. I choose to be humble. Your word says, that if I will humble myself you will lift me up and exhalt me in due time. You resist the proud, but you give grace to those who humble themselves. I need your grace so I humble myself. Thank you for setting me free from pride and without pride arrogance will cease in my life. Thank you for loving me and doing this in me. In Jesus name. Amen

Selfishness Turns Into Self Pity

When I was 17 years old I remember one one morning my mother told our whole family that she was going to make our favorite meal for lunch. This was exciting news to me that morning and I was looking forward to it immediately. I began right away imagining how the food was going to taste like so many other times we had this particular meal. In my mind I could see myself sitting at the table eating and enjoying the food with every savoring bite.
That same morning my father told me he wanted me to go with him to visit some relatives that lived some 50 miles away. I said I would go as long as we could be back in time to eat lunch. He said we probably could if we got going right away. So I went with him. After an hour driving there, and a couple of hours visiting I thought we were ready to go because I wanted to go eat that special meal. Just about the time my father was ready to leave someone else he hadn't seen in along time arrived. Of course, my father wanted to stay and visit, but I wanted to leave. The longer my father visited, the angrier I became because I wanted to hurry home to start eating lunch. After another hour my father was finally ready to leave. So now we were on our way back my anger starting subsiding. When we arrived home it was about 2:30 pm and I was ready to eat this special meal. I told my mother I was ready to eat and she told me that I had to wait until supper time now, which was usually around 7:00 pm. I couldn't believe it, now I had to wait another four and half hours to get to eat this meal. I was disappointed and even angrier than before. I stomped off to my bedroom laid on my bed and cried while feeling so sorry for myself I couldn't hardly stand it. At the time I didn't realize how selfish I was being, I was to busy feeling sorry for myself. Poor me, I didn't get to eat the special meal when my brothers and sisters got to eat it already. And on top of that I didn't get to eat any lunch. Why did I have to go visit relatives with my father anyway. This whole day just sucks. Poor me. Here I was 17 years old acting like I was three, angry about something so silly as one meal, and wallowing in self pity that would make anyone sick to their stomach.
But how many of times have all of us been selfish and wanting our own way over smaller or larger stuff than the story above. The more selfish we are and the longer we try to force our way on others the more self pity we seem to wallow in. When I look back and remember that incident, I am so thankful that I have grown up or matured since then. I am now more equipped with the word of God and can recognize selfishness and self pity more quickly than back in those days. Paul said it best in 1st Corintians 13:11, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
One of the best ways to get over selfishness, is to get busy doing things for others. When you life is involved with other people's well being, you have less time to be self-centered. Another way is to love others as Jesus loved us. When you love others you will do things for them even if it means doing without yourself. John 15:12 - 13 says, "This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." We lay down our lives in many ways for our family, friends, co-workers and total strangers. We put aside activities we want to do and do something for someone else, we sacrifice time, money, food, and most anything else when we love. When you truely love you are less selfish and less likely to fall into self pity. Truely loving yourself is the best way to get over self pity.

When Someone Has Wronged You

Are you still upset with someone who wronged you? What do you feel in your heart for them? Do thoughts of revenge flood your mind? What can you do to make it go away? When someone has done something that has hurt or embarrassed another person it is very difficult to deal with it in the heat of the moment. But what about when it's not in the heat of the moment? Days later, weeks later, months later, years later does it still have a hold on the person who was wronged? Speaking of the negative side of anger, I have known of sisters who had not spoken to each other in over 30 years because of something that happened when they were teenagers. Disagreements, an intentional humiliation, or something worse can drive anger or rage into continious streams of negative life altering attitudes if you let it. The prisons and jails are full of the results of unresolved anger or rage. People who are angry who allow it to become uncontrolled will commit heinous acts. But what about the people who seem to have their anger controlled? People who seem to go along being nice or some version of nice and then all of a sudden when you don't go along with their plan, they explode with a loud burst of anger and yell and say things that are hateful and rude, the when they are done they act like nothing ever happened. They say they are over it you should get over it too.
The next catagory of angry people is the ones who act like they never get angry. No matter what someone does to them or anything that goes wrong they don't seem to be upset. They tend to stuff it down where it silently seethes and on the outside they seem fine to everyone else. The next catagory is the people who are not angry at other people, but they are angry at themselves. For whatever reason they cannot seem to forgive themselves. They feel like they should be punished and in their minds they beat themselves up all the time. Do any of these anger catagories describe you or someone you know? There is a way to get not only through or over this anger, you can get rid of it.
Forgiveness is the key to resolving anger. A person who is angry cannot really move forward in this area of his or her life and it will cause underlying riffs in other areas of his or her life. Until forgiveness has found its place in the heart anger will continue to control areas of that person's life. But how does someone forgive when the pain is so deep and everytime he or she thinks about the person or incident that caused the pain it feels like a bad fire burning in his or her chest.
I asked that very question myself once. How can I forgive when these people hurt me like this? For nearly a year I had this aweful burning sensation in my chest when I dwelt on the issue, or someone else would mention the persons names I would feel the hurt and the awful fire rise up in my chest. This particular night, I had just read the scriptures Mark 11:25-26, "And when you stand praying, forgive if you have aught against any, so that your Father will forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive you your trespasses. When I asked this question I directed it toward God because I wanted to be forgiven for my own trespasses. Then I clenched my knucles white and yelled at the top of my voice, "I cannot forgive them! I don't know how." The answer I got I had never heard before that night. I was raised a preacher's kid and had heard about forgiveness but never like I heard it that night. The still small voice I heard on the inside of me said, "On your own you cannot forgive, however, my son Jesus lives inside of you and he has forgiven them already, he died on the cross for them just like he died on the cross for you. Allow his forgiveness to flow through you toward them." So, once I heard this voice I had a choice to make. I was very angry, hurt, sad and I didn't like myself. But I made the choice and what I did changed my life forever. I said, "By my own will I choose to forgive them." I said this out loud everytime the thoughts come to my mind or when someone would mention something about the issue. I kept saying it and about 2-1/2 months later someone mentioned something about the issue and it didn't hurt, the anger didn't rise up, I didn't feel that awful burning sensation. I realized I really had forgiven them. I was free. I rejoiced in that God helped me to forgive when I was not able to do it on my own. From then on when I get angry, I know what to do. Identify the problem, confess my part in it if I had any, and say, "By my own will I choose to forgive them. I allow Jesus' forgiveness to flow through me toward that person or persons and then I let it go." Let go and let God. If a person who is angry will do this, they too, can be set free and get rid of negative anger from his or her life.

My weakness revealed.

Have you ever had a day where you thought everything was good, you got along with everyone that day, no real problems that come to mind. At the end of the day you go home and have dinner with your spouse, you talk about things and everything seems fine there as well. You sit on the couch, get comfortable and your pet dog or cat comes to say hello and all of a sudden you get angry with that pet and say things in a hateful manner and breathe out threats. Then you wonder, after a day like today that went so well, where did this come from? What could your pet have done that would make you so angry all of a sudden? And why was the degree of anger so far over anything your pet could have done? The reason is it had nothing to do with your pet. Maybe it wasn't your pet, but maybe it was you child, or your spouse, or someone or something else that didn't have anything to do with why you were so angry. It is interesting who or what can be the instrument use to reveal to you an issue you may not know exits. My poor dog probably wondered why his master would be so mad at him because he had just came to say hello.
My story is with the pet, but had very little or nothing to do with the pet. When this happened to me a couple of years ago, I ask myself the questions mentioned above. It took about six hours of searching my heart and mind as to why I was so angry. Finally it came to me what had caused the anger. I will add that I also prayed during this six hours and ask the Lord to help me find the cause and the solution to resolve this anger issue.
What the Lord revealed to me in my time of reflection, was that over a period of two weeks, the lady I worked for had made comments, questioned my integrity and I had been thinking about the wage I was paid and the distance I was having to travel. All of these things was a factor in why anger was building up inside of me. So once I realized what the problem was, in the next few days, I had a talk with the lady that I was working for. I mentioned that something has been bothering me and I needed to discuss it with her. I told her that the type of questions she had been asking me was bothering me. I also said that I realize that she probably had someone who had previously taken advantage of her and that was why she was questioning my integrity. I let her know which questions she asked that questioned my integrity and let her explain to me why. She told me, yes, she had someone preiosly take advantage and when something seemed similar about what I was doing it made her paranoid that I might be doing the same. I let her know that I was a man of integrity and that I had no need to steal time, money or anything else. I let her know that I do my best to do a good job for the money she paid me and that I would never do anything to take from her anything I did not earn. Once we had that discussion the anger left me. Sometimes we allow things to bother us that has nothing to do with the person or pet or whatever that we take it out on. In my case talking with the person who was the source of anger in me helped to resolve it. Choosing to forgive her released me from it. If that is the case with you, and you would like to share in generalities or specifics please share. Maybe your story will help someone to resolve their anger.

Introduction to Love of Different Kind

Hello everyone. I hope that this new blog will be a source of hope, strength, and encouragement to you. Just like the title this is a love of a different kind. Unconditional love is a rare thing in the human race. It is not totally non-existant but very rare. In the natural the human factor says, "I will love you, if you love me in return. I will do this for you, if you will do this for me." When it comes to the love of God, God says, "I love you, period." No matter how good or bad you are. No matter what you have done or didn't do, I love you. No matter what race you were born, what religion you were raised in, what country you live in, or anything else, I love you, period.
So no matter what, if you are having problems, lost a loved one and are in emotional pain, or confused write a comment and I will share with you and all readers a message of love and encouragement and hope. No matter where you are from, or what your background is, share with me what is on your mind and I will share with you what I have in my heart. I know trust is a big issue so you may share only what you feel comfortable with. It is my hope that the words I write will help you to overcome and bring you to a new level of trust, a new level of hope, and a new level of spiritual growth. I will be awaiting your comments.