Saturday, April 27, 2013

Week 1

The Girlfriends In God (GiG) Team has put together a weekly video that corresponds with the reading that I will also post. They are all very short little clips that each lady take a moment to talk to us. 




God knows what is going on in our lives as well as our hearts. I plan to be completely honest the whole time I am on this Blog. Not being honest does not help our trusting in God. What an eye opener for the first weeks reading! The stories were relatable on different levels and so  to think about in our very own lives. At the end of this weeks reading were a series of questions called "Now It's Your Turn", these questions are quit profound. I found a couple that hit me personally in my faith in God along with the reading. So lets get started on some of those questions....

  • What letter did everyone pick about the "trust-bail"?
    • I picked letter C, which is "I Know He's strong and can handle the weight of my fall, but I bail cautiously just in case He's not interested in catching me this time". I feel like this because at times i feel my problems are minor and not as important as others who have "real" problems. God should answer their prayers over my own mediocre stresses in life. 
  • What part does human understanding play in the process of strengthening our faith in God?
    • This question seems like there is so much more beyond our understanding in God. Our faith comes from faith and believing that you cannot see with our own human eyes. Understanding is believing in something bigger then yourself and acting upon it.
  • What does the word all mean to you when it comes to trusting God "with all your heart"?
    • We hear this or we say this when we absolutely love someone or something such as an unborn child or a spouse. When we love someone so much we give them our all, we give them everything even our lives. Could you give yours in the name of God? The God who people claim to never see, never hear, never believe, and to never trust. 
    • When you say "with all your heart" you must put God above all!!! Trust that He will be the one there in all times and darkness, all times of stress and pain, even when you seem like you can no longer go on, He is there. When you think you made the wrong choice, and life seems unfair, He is there with you guiding you to your next adventure on Earth!
    • What does it mean to you???
  • This question God to me the MOST..... this is the question of questioning Gods decisions..... If God has given angels charge over us, then why are some people protected in a car crash, but others aren't? If God really loves me, then why did He let this or that happen? Why didn't He deliever my loved one from cancer.... from the accident... from temptation?
    • How do you answer this? However, my feeling about this is that God has a plan for everyone and everything and those unfortunate things are apart of it. We tend to look at something like losing a family member in an accident or to cancer as we lost our loved one, instead we should look at it as the other family/friends loved one got to live. Or when you ask God why he allowed the other person to live and not your loved one, you are basically asking God to put them in as much pain as you are currently going in. It almost seems unfair at times.
    • Can anyone elaborate on this?
  • The last question is very hard to answer.... most of you have someone to catch you when you fall. Who would you trust to catch you? Are you more often the friend on the tall stump needing to trust or the friend on the ground encouraging another to trust? 
    • Above all my HUSBAND! Besides him though I have a couple friends I can say that i trust to catch me, but I feel more often then not that they are to business for me, almost like the how I feel God feels for me at times. Pretty crazy to think that about another person who I am supposed to trust and care for as they would for me. My problems are not as important or again are mediocre compared to what other peoples are. I would rather be the one there to catch someone else then for someone to have to worry about taking time and effort to catch me.
I end this weeks reading with the things that stood out to me in this weeks reading. First is on page 14 "God wants you to trust Him... right where you are. It might be scary. Tears might be shed, But God is faithful and can be trusted". The next one on page 17 "when we ignore our Father's warnings, we forfeit the safety of His shore and plunge into the ocean of harm's way". Also a prayer from that same page from Psalm 144:7 "Reach down your hand from on high; deliver me and reuse me from the mighty waters". 

Prayer:
Thank you lord for this day, thank you for your blessings in our lives seen and unseen. We thank you for the love and pateince you give us to wait for your calling. Guide us through those storms that come with darkness to find the calm in the storm and trust that you will be there to catch us if and when we fall. We pray for those who have not found or are search for your trust that you weigh on their heart and send them understanding to love will all their hearts. In your sweet in holy name, Amen.

God Bless!!!

~Victoria Clouse

3 comments:

  1. Anyone can comment, you can add what you liked, what you think, what you didn't like, what you felt was the most personal or even questions you may have that others can answer.

    Lets discuss week ones reading, specifically what you do with the prayers that go unanswered or what kind of trust do you put in Him and he doesn't answer right away?

    Have a blessed week and I will post week two very soon!

    ReplyDelete
  2. In response to the comment about God's decisions we have to be careful to realize that not everything is from God. Sometimes it is the enemy attacking us, and sometimes it is in direct relation to sin and is a consequence. In the Garden of Eden there was no sin and no sickness, until the fall of man. At which point sin entered the world and pain too. If the fall of man who have not happened then there would still be no sickness and pain but because of disobedience God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden. As a result we now have pain. So what I am trying to say is that someone getting cancer, or dying in a car accident is not always a choice from God. I don't think He wants anyone to have pain or to suffer, but that as a person or family deals with those things they can turn to God for strength and healing. God will use all things for His glory, but not all things come from God. Does that make sense? I feel like I am not explaining it well. :/

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think that all things happen for a reason and that before anything touches my life especially from the enemy he has to first get permission from God about it just like he did with Job God gave him permission to do all he did to Job accept to take his life and to me since God isn't a respecter of persons and doesn't have any favorite children He does the same things for the rest of us, allot of people say that before it touches my life it has to go through Gods hands first and I agree with that.
    Wow for me I can really relate to what the lady said in the lesson about how her daughter would jump into her Dads arms every time. And then to relate it to where I am with God right now in my life pretty much every day is like this for me. Because when you have a parent with Dementia you do just jump in his arms everyday because we never know what's in store an extreme blow up from her with blaming everybody else for her problems especially when nothing has happened to start with. Or if she might just start fussing about things that never happened to start with or happened a few days ago. You definitely have to trust the Lord. It's super hard not to fuss back or retaliate back at her but you have to remind yourself she can't help it and isn't doing it just to be mean to you but for about a week now she has been able to ponder her actions after she sits and thinks it all over as to what just happened and has apologized for her behavior so He is doing some work in her that I can't see until after the blow up. Trusting God is one thing I was taught as a child to do but over my life time things seem to get harder and harder for me and to trust Him seems to just grow and grow and I have become more spiritually mature because of all the rough times and trials through out my life and I can say I am thankful for them because of it.

    ReplyDelete

Good Father

Last week (26 April 2017) while at Engage Night at our church, The Worship Center, we heard a song about our father. The idea of Engage Nigh...