My Online Faith Journal

      The last two weeks I have been starting a new job.  I am going from working in mental health to work with foster home families.   It is the same company I have been with for almost five years, but different office.  There is a lot of paperwork and rules and regulations that have to be learned and followed.  I've mentioned on this blog that I am not really great with change.  Never have been.  So, working in a field where my job has changed 5 times in 5 years has been a challenge.  "Every summer we hear rumors and ever fall we change chairs" is one of my sayings.        I think I have done fairly well, but my anxiety has been high.  This has had an effect on my blood sugar also.  I noticed the day I was to drive to Fayetteville for training my blood sugar that morning was sky high at 6 am.  Most of that is due to stress.  I have been challenged as I have been reading John Ortberg's book "The Me I Want To Be" to think about how I think.  In other word

    When I was a pastor in West Virginia, I spent about 8 or 9 weeks preaching about the attributes of God.  Different sermons mentioned things such as that God is infinite, all powerful, all knowing and ever present.  I don't remember now if I fully explained why I spent so much time focused on that subject.  The truth of the matter is, that it is because we all need to be reminded of who God truly is.  We have a tendency as people to think that God is like us.  And in the process of being reminded that He is not like us, our faith is strengthened.  We realize that His ways are much much greater than ours.     In her book on "God's Guidance", Elisabeth Elliott right this, "Jesus identified himself here  in one of his great I am statements (I am the way, the truth, and the life), and we are reminded of the primary condition of asking for help; the recognition of who God is.  He is everything we are asking for.  He is the Alpha, for nothing would have begun wit

   In Isaiah chapters 6-9 it tells the story of when Isaiah was confronting Ahaz.  Ahaz had made a alliance with Assyria against enemies around him.  Ahaz isn't a very well known bible character and you may wonder what his experience has to do with you.  Ahaz though wasn't that different from many people today.  We tend to put our faith in what we can see and to respond to our fear instead of faith.  In that case, Ahaz's experience is very much like ours.  Ahaz was scared of a power that he could see on his front door step.  Isaiah came to warn him about putting his faith in people instead of the Lord.  I thought it was interesting that W.Wiersbe noted that the Lord uses four names in these chapters to send a message about what he is going to do.     To Ahaz, he told him the name Immanuel which means "God with us".  Ahaz was trusting in man.  In fact, the evidence from the bible was that the people were consulting mediums and spiritists instead of the Lord verse

   In Matthew 5:13-20, Jesus is talking about, among other things, the importance of letting your light shine before a world that needs to know him.  He ends this part of what is known as the "Sermon on the Mount" by declaring "For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." (verse 20).  This was an odd statement to those listening because to them they thought the Pharisees and scribes were the most religious people present.      Jesus told another story to contrast God's view of righteousness with man.  In Luke 18:9-14 he tells the story of a Pharisees who went up to the temple to pray and also a tax gatherer went at the same time.  The Pharisees prayed "God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people; swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer, I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get."  Jesus though said of this man that the t