Devotion Psalm 139- 6/9/21

Am going to help out another friend. Hopefully he won’t get kicked out from his place he’s lived so long in, he is such kind and sweet person to everyone. I hope that he will be fine after this!

Here is a number in case you ever feel what I will share about my testimony.

Anti-Suicide Hotline: 800-273-8255

Struggle and the worst days in the midst of hardship. Is it fun? No. Is it worth it? It…. might be? But it’s too easy not to think about it needing to happen because it is too hard to believe it!

Sometimes we struggle. We have worry, pain, sadness, depression, and loneliness. Then there are even “bigger” obstacles. Losing a job, alcoholism, losing loved ones, losing the house that one lived in for so long!

That’s not all the struggles but there are many things that happen every day. If you are rich enough though that is great. I hope you are able to help spread the word and share this free blog to people.

Anyway off of that tangent, I and my family have struggled ourselves with possible homelessness. My dad was working many jobs as we lived in a single house (it was a rental though) and faced some huge problems. An unforeseen problem where a person took advantage on a house he was trying to sell and led that to a lawsuit. My dad lost that case because the judge, allegedly, just wanted to be on the other’s side. To be on “their” side just to look good? That’s discouraging.

My dad lost that then the rent piled up and he could not afford it anymore. He also lost his one of two jobs as one place laid him off.

We had nowhere to “go.” No plan for a vacation house that happened to be somewhere else on coast by the beach. Nothing rich to be able to relax and not be so deep in worry.

Then a sweet “angel” a family member willingly gave up her house so we would live in, just so we wouldn’t become homeless and be out on the streets!

The house that as of now is the shelter, the dwelling… is the house this very day.

I hope one day they will be able to live for just each other one day…. because my parents deserve to have peace and be able to be happy either in retirement or just to be active in some capacity.

But anyway I honestly wasn’t trying to say all that either, haha! I just wanted to say this. Deep in our stresses, our hardships, and even in seeming trials and tribulations, the Lord still loves us! God has love that permeates and penetrates deep. It comes to all who want simply to live for Him, serve Him

…and be led by Him.

Now I will get into personal testimony. For years I “lived” within the walls of church. I was in a church around the time I was born too! But I was torn and struggled with my own life.

Bullying, verbal/some physical abuse from my mom (I forgive you though Mom, and I love you so much!), and other things from elementary school all the way to the beginning of high school came on me making life almost impossible to keep going.

My freshman year was a day in which I contemplated suicide. Yes it was wrong to think that but if you can imagine the daily toil I had of people constantly pummeling me with jokes and tearing apart any happiness and self-worth I could have had, it was a way out. Worst off before that moment came to be I saw people who tore into me show seeing “grace” to others. I was somehow still an exception.

That’s it! Was I guess my heart’s motive. I was going to die a painful, awful self-inflicted death and all I asked was that I would be dead at the end of it.

What God’s grace did for me probably not even halfway through that day was that I forgot about that. All of it. I must have had a great day because I didn’t have that cross my mind again until I took Psychology my senior year where I found out it was a repressed memory.

Speaking of my senior year I somehow saw God’s deep love, how He was against abandonment, and to live for Christ with all my heart.

After my hardship and in effect then becoming “activated” by the Holy Spirit, I wanted to gratefully acknowledge His love to every place I would go!

I say this only because God is good. Christ saved me from so much and it was like I saw a hundred blessings all at once.

I went to school with an oomph to show God’s love and proclaim the gospel! My personality, everything in my life was turned around and like puzzle pieces fit into His glory. As I felt not just the love towards others but such a deep intimate bond with Christ (I do miss that…) there were hurdles too.

Some light hardships came. My school project being redone meant I had to not graduate with my class and repeat my senior year; though my project was just a screenplay I was determined to do a full on movie project and asked our local “News station” to recruit people for the movie and was told not to do that and my suggestion got filed away; I instantly learned in my heart as if in discernment that anything I planned to do for Jesus, Satan seemed to be right behind that action to stop it;

Then those “hardships” became bigger ones! After seeing a ghostly place with a friend sometime later an elaborate thing happened. It was like Satan sent evil and it dropped down right next to me in my bed (a demon). I screamed my head off! But at the same time it seemed like it was in reaction by the Holy Spirit.

Then one night I was lying in bed and was woken up by the Lord. “No. Not yet. Please. Don’t let ‘the end’ happen… not yet!”

What happened was I was shaken back and forth in my bed twice, then it felt almost like two fingers went under my ribcage to lift me up! The fear of the Lord then was definite and a reality!

The Lord was coming. And I had to warn people!

So I continued work on the project.

Then after some more situations other things happened and eventually I ended up hospitalized. I felt like Paul in that situation because here I was feeling scared and seemingly alone and all I wanted was to see my church’s happy faces again.

The place felt like a prison. You couldn’t even open the window to get fresh air because it was locked shut and the handle to open it had been removed!

I felt discouraged. And also (sorry Mom and Dad, forgive me) I became not homesick, but church sick. I asked my dad to get the directory and looked at the pictures.

Then after a while of being in a psychiatric hospital, I began to notice something. People in my group and even some of the staff looked familiar. Were they familiar? Yes, they really were!

God answered my hope to be with church to when I was away from church to bringing an old church to me! The people I was chatting and would fellowship with were from my old church when my dad lost the rental house!

How could this be? Does God really exist now, reader? I believe so and He is there for you whether you will believe it or not!

Part 2 coming

Devotions Psalm 3- 6/1/21

Salvation belongs to the LORD. Your blessing is upon Your people. Selah Psalm 3:8 NKJV

Here is the end of Psalm 3. (Wow, it’s really the end of 3..?? I will check to make sure… yep, haha!) It seems to give a beautiful send off to the “Song” or ‘Psalm’ which here it is about the Lord and tough stuff and just seeing the wonderful power and love from the Lord.

Have you ever seen police, firefighters, or just emergency workers in the middle of situations? In tough stuff, even in danger, but they were still out there in the “fire” or living against what even their selves would normally be against?

In so many ways, that is Jesus! It was Christ who went and died for not just people who were physically hurting but for altogether the sum of the people who would die with no hope.

No chance of being saved? For mankind if they were tested, there was a 0% chance of heaven. That is horrifying even if you even just start to think about it!

So Jesus was kind of like a firefighter. He saw no hope in the situation, saw that if He did nothing, people would perish in the fire (hell) and went in and saved.

Did Jesus die in that fire? No. He had the world’s evil laid on him and took the wrath of God on Himself. But then He rose again, showing that even in eternal punishment Jesus had power over death!

Did he rescue people from the fire? Yes He did. In two different ways though (maybe I will get tot hat part in a future article. Right now if I did this article would get theologically heavy and I want to keep it in simple words for this time) but before I digress, yes he pulled people from the fire.

The “fire” being eternal punishment. Eternal and the “Second Death,” which is if someone is eternally separate from God’s love.

To be like a loving female bird and try to draw all people towards the parent and yet be rejected by so many was heart-breaking to Jesus. He loved everyone! Yet people still rejected the love that existed not just in Himself but as he would say the “Father” who he always wanted to glorify, especially if He was praised for something Himself!

It is good to if you are a Christian to glorify God and Jesus and not yourself. Boy have I got stories about being prideful! Gosh… awful.

I once was writing a big movie project and kept saying over and over “It’s amazing what I will do for you…” Oh, man. That’s terrible.

I should have kept in mind it was the Lord that brought all those things together. I was the messenger to deliver a story. It was Jesus working though me, and not myself!

Over the years though I am slowly learning to be humble and not the opposite (though pride grows in me yet again and again).

One time I happened to be wearing a shirt at work that looked like I was a lifeguard. I said in sharing though a brief bit about the subject when asked about it “I am a Christian and this shirt means something like this: Jesus is my lifeguard.”.

Jesus can pull people out of horrible worlds. He can rescue people from lives of thievery, deep and self-abating from pornography, “unaccountable” lives, people who think the only thing they can do in life to “live” is to be on drugs, struggling ones who think God doesn’t love them because they simply struggle in general, the “criers”, the easily emotional, the ones hopelessly and seeming ceaselessly depressed, the ones in deep regret because they changed but realize the change was now permanent, the ones who not only can’t afford a home- but to live every day and have food…. God can bring people to a loving state in their lives and “rescue” those people spiritually!

God can and He does because He is awesome!

He not only loves and is love but He impacts lives so personally You will be surprised the day He does.

God is blessed if we have things to share with others especially if it is to tell others of the faith because of the giving of Christ’s life.

If you’re hurting because of mistakes you’ve made, know that no matter what God still loves you! He loves you no matter what has happened.

He loves you every day. All He asks is simply to know Him by an intimate relationship through Jesus Christ.

And He can save you from the “fire” today!

Pray like this if you feel led:

Lord, I am so sorry about what has happened in these past few days months, maybe more. I realize that God your love is deeper than I thought. You really gave Your life through Your Son so that You could place Your wrath onto Him? I realize that God sending His son to die from the world’s sins is such a huge thought. But I realize He died even for my sin as well! I thank You for the chance to know Him. I pray that I will experience this new life to follow You. Please be in my life and live in my for the rest of mine. Thank you for learning that Jesus really died and then He rose again. I want to experience that life in and through Christ.

Amen. Thank you for the privilege of prayer.

If you prayed I hope Jesus is now your lifeguard. And one day you will live for Him in ways you never thought possible!