Week 8

This weeks post in told by my wonderful and amazing Mother - in - Law Carol Clouse. Enjoy!

As I was reading the assignment of week 8, the Holy Spirit continually gave me the message of Give God the Glory! When we try to do anything in our own power, in our own unworthiness we will come up short every time but when we set out to give God the Glory, we will always have the victory. We are only equipped by God when we are a child of God, we are only empowered by the Holy Spirit when we have laid down our sins at the cross and confessed our sin and asked for the forgiveness that only Christ can offer. 

On day 2 we watch the wrestling match and see how her focus switched from trying to win to try not to lose. We see this quite often in the lives of Christians that feel like the world is beating them up so they retreat and do not take an active role in the community. Stop going to church and let Satan get a foothold in their lives. We need to fit our feet with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. This word peace is an action word, the battle is mine says the Lord! 

When reading day 3 my heart felt so sad when I read the words we shoot our wounded and leave the lying in the dirt to find help on their own. We are so afraid of getting into the mess of broken lives, that we find a reason to stay out of it. As Christians we also put a price on forgiveness, I will forgive you if you do this...this is not how Christ asks us to forgive. We are to live as Christ and Christ went to the cross with no expectations our stipulations of Him dying for us. He just knew He needed to for God to forgive us for our sins. Pray earnestly that God will reveal to you those that are hurting, those that you need to carry the cross for. 

Day 4 finds us looking into the eyes of the giant Goliath. What is your giant? What do you worry so much about that you have sleepless nights? Have you made that your giant? The Lord says to cast your cares on Him, to trust Him, do you have power over your panic?  

In day 5 we see the verse Romans 8:31, "if God is for us, who can be against us?" This sums up the whole weeks reading by telling us that nothing is too difficult for God, when you and 

I face the storms in our life, and we will, let us not be led as sheep to the slaughter but stand firm in our faith knowing that we have a all powerful God that nothing is impossible for Him. Be strong my friend, have faith, pursue peace and stay in your Word!

God Bless,

Carol Clouse

Favorite Sites

I just wanted to explain some things on the blog. So to the right are things called widgets these are things that can translate the content of the blog into a different language. This Blog has been viewed by 3 different countries as of today. Your replies and comment are what brings people back to view more information and also share their own thoughts and beliefs. I encourage all of you to comment to the different posts. To comment you can go to the bottom of the post and hit either the "# comment' or 'no comment'. You will have to sign into your account that they offer. I have gmail so it was was for me to comment, but if you have something different I am not 100% sure what all the other accounts are that they offer for you to comment. You can also comment anonymous if you do please put your name at the end so we can reply to your post and refer to you by name. If you are having any issues email me at vdeshner7@gmail.com and I will share your comment.

Other widgets include people who are following the blog. This means you can follow from your google account (other accounts allow you to be a follower too) as well as receive emails when there are posts to the blog. There is a video widget that will allow you to view videos from different youtube pages that I have either used or found to be good video per the Blog content. There is also a favorite sites, which is the reason I am posting tonight. These are different web sites of authors that have been an inspiration to me or of our current read (books we are referencing), there are youtube pages on there as well as other encouraging web sites that I have come across or others have shared with me. If you have any that you would like to share I can post it to the page as well, just comment on this post. My latest web site that I recently found is God Bless You. It has lots of information, stories, videos, music and lots more on it and the first thing I noticed was a video by Francis Chan the author of Crazy Love. If you have not read this book there is a website that you can look at here Crazylovebook. What an excellent book!

Anyway... off subject a little, my point is that there are quit a bit of things to explore on this blog. I want to share specifically the different websites to use for your questions that you may have if you do not feel comfortable asking on here. But I assure you others with the same experience or same questions as you, but maybe scared to ask can help you rather then some websites.

I end of this note (back to Francis Chan hahaha). The video on this site Lukewarm and Loving It  is what I have been feeling about a lot of Gods followers lately. You cannot be lukewarm and think it is ok to live that way as a follower.

What do you know about follower-ship? Can you share your experience of this in Christ? How can you not be lukewarm?

God Bless,

~Victoria Clouse