Why Bother Blogging?

     Why bother blogging? Why learn a new writing skill? Why not stick with what you are familiar with? These questions and a dozen more flooded my mind. 

    When I returned from the 2013 Write! Canada Conference, I had a decision to make. Would I heed the advice of Kim Bangs, whose writing workshop I attended, or would I ignore her recommendation. You see, Kim Bangs, now of Baker Publishing, strongly urged all in her class to begin blogging.

    Did I want to begin blogging? No way! And no thank you.

    But the Holy Spirit might also be called a gentle whispering nag. In the days following the conference, the Spirit kept whispering, "When are you going to start that blog?"

    After a time of resistance, I finally relented.

    "Okay! I'll write that stupid blog."

    Actually, it wasn't the blog that was stupid, but the author had a lot to learn, and he needed an attitude adjustment as well. 

    I stumbled about for a while as I tried to discern a theme and purpose for my writing. Eventually, I began writing devotional posts on the Psalms. Once that decision was made, I settled into a routine writing rhythm, knocking off a daily post of consistent length. In due time, I had devotional posts for every day of the year, and all one-hundred-and-fifty psalms in the Bible—enough to fill three 265-page volumes.

    Why bother blogging? Well the answers have been coming thick and fast for a number of years now. Answers come in a variety of ways. Most often they come in the comments left by blog readers. At other times they come through words spoken directly to me, or through Amazon book reviews. 

    But perhaps the biggest answer to that question came on September 25, 2021 at The Word Guild Gala when I won the Grace Irwin Best Book of the Year Award for Psalms 365: Develop a Life of Worship and Prayer, Volume I.

    Yes, my blog posts on the Psalms became an award-winning book with a significant cash prize attached. You never can tell where following the advice of a writing professional might take you. That's especially true if it's accompanied by the Holy Spirit's urgent prompting.

     All three volumes of Psalms 365 are available for the Christmas season. They are a great way to begin the new year. For a closer look or to purchase click here.

    
    David Kitz is the author of numerous books and the chair of The Word Guild.

Susanna Wesley: Mother on Fire -HIRD

By Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

Never underestimate the power of a praying mom. Has your life been impacted by a sacrificial mother who would never give up?

Born in 1669, Susanna Wesley was one of the greatest mothers who ever lived, raising up two of Christianity’s most gifted leaders, John and Charles Wesley. Can you envision, like Susanna, being the twenty-fifth of twenty-five siblings?  Her father Samuel Annesley had a Doctor of Divinity from Oxford and in 1648 was chosen to preach at the British House of Commons.  His eight hundred-strong congregation of St Giles Cripplegate was one of the largest in London.  Susanna’s father did a remarkable thing, encouraging his daughter to read and study theology.  When he died, he left Susannah his most valued possessions, which were his manuscripts and family papers.

Daily, as a mother, Susannah prayed “Dear God, Guide me. Make my life count.”  She loved to read biographies about other Christians, especially missionaries.  While reading an account of Danish missionaries, she concluded, “At last it came to my mind, though I were not a man, nor a minister of the gospel,...I might do somewhat more than I do...I might pray more for the people, and speak with more warmth to those with whom I have an opportunity of conversing. However, I resolved to begin with my children.”  She believed that by discipling her own children, she could change the world.  As a young woman, she once said, “I hope the fire (of revival) I start will not only burn all of London, but all of the United Kingdom as well.  I hope it will burn all over the world.”

As the mother of the Methodist revival, she methodically instilled in her children a passion for discipleship and learning. While only ten of her nineteen children survived to adulthood, she poured her life into them, raising up three sons, Samuel, John and Charles to become pastors.  Susanna believed each child was equally valuable; and had an uncanny way of making each know they were important.

Eric Metaxas has described Susanna as the mother of the homeschooling movement. In an age when many parents only educated their sons, Susanna taught all of her children how to read, write and reason, regardless of gender, including all of her seven surviving daughters. She instructed all of her children three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. Her children began and ended each school day by singing a Psalm and reading from the Bible.  Remarkably, she spent one hour a week with each of her children in personal instruction.

Her educational goal was that on her last day, she would be able to say “Lord, here are the children which Thou hast given me, of which I have lost none by my ill example, not by neglecting to install in their minds, in their early years, the principles of Thy true religion and virtue.”  When Susanna failed to find Christ-centered textbooks, she decided to write her own. Her first book A Manual of Natural Theory looked at how the natural universe revealed God as creator. Her second book was an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, looking at the essentials of the Christian faith. Her third book opened up the practical implications of the Ten Commandments for daily living.  In her crowded house, Susannah would pull her apron over her head, taking an hour a day for her personal devotions when she was not to be disturbed. 

As both the daughter and wife of clergy, Susanna understood the challenges of pastoral ministry.  There was never enough money to feed and clothe the children properly. Her husband Rev Samuel Wesley, as the underpaid Rector of Epworth and Wroot, was always in debt, and even ended up twice in debtors’ prison.  Susanna offered to pawn her own wedding ring, but her husband refused her sacrifice.

 Being very outspoken, her husband had many enemies during his thirty-nine years in Epworth, some of whom destroyed the Wesley’s crops, stabbed their cows, attacked their dog, and set their house on fire in 1702.  During a contentious 1705 election, a political mob surrounded their house at night with loud drumming, firing of pistols, and shouting that they would kill Samuel. When their house was burnt down for a second time in 1709, six-year-old John was miraculously plucked as a brand from the burning.

While her husband was away in 1711, she started Sunday evening devotions for her children, which ended up attracting many neighbours: “Last Sunday I believe we had above two hundred. And yet many went away, for want of room to stand.”  The replacement Epworth priest was deeply offended that far more people went to Susanna’s devotional prayers than his Sunday morning service.  Responding to her concerned husband, she said, “As to its looking peculiar, I grant that it does. And so does almost anything that is serious, or that may in any way advance the glory of God, or the salvation of souls.”  When her son John Wesley later preached to tens of thousands, he fondly recalled the revival that earlier happened with his mother’s Sunday evening devotions.

John, the fifteenth child and Charles, the eighteen child of nineteen were almost not born, because of Susanna’s refusal to say amen to her husband’s 1701 prayer for the new King William of Orange.  Because Susanna saw the new King as a usurper, her husband left home, refusing to return: “We must part for if we have two kings, we must have two beds.” Samuel only returned and reconciled after their house burnt down.

When John Wesley felt called to ordination, his father discouraged him but his mom encouraged him to go for it.  Susanna coached John and Charles in the spiritual disciplines while at Oxford, encouraging him to read the Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis and Rule for Holy Living by Jeremy Taylor. After reading these books, John told his mother, “I have resolved to dedicate all my life to God —all my thoughts and words and actions.”

When John and Charles felt called as missionaries to Savannah, Georgia, Susanna said, “If I had twenty sons, I would send them all.” When John returned to England and began preaching in the fields, Susanna approved, sometimes standing by his side before tens of thousands.  She encouraged John to allow nonordained people to preach.  After her debt-ridden husband died leaving her homeless, she lived for her final three years with John Wesley in the famous Foundry Methodist Chapel.  On her deathbed, she said “Children, as soon as I am released, sing a Psalm of Praise to God.”  May we like Susanna end our lives on fire giving glory to God.

 

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

Co-authors of For Better, For Worse: discovering the keysto a lasting relationship.

-an article previously published in the September 2019 Light Magazine

True love is cleaning the toilet without being asked

Yes, you read that title correctly. Yes, I just finished cleaning the toilet before sitting down to write this post. And yes, you can breathe easy. I washed my hands before beginning to peck away at the keyboard.

It's St. Valentine's Day and love is in the air.

Our Wedding Day, December 19, 1976

But what is this thing called love? Have we grasped its full significance? Have we grasped the implications of what true love means? Even for the mature, I dare say the answer is no. True love is willing to suffer some unpleasantness.

When I slipped an engagement ring onto the finger of the love-of-my-life, did I fully comprehend what I was getting into? Sometimes I think it is better that we don't know. A little blissful ignorance can carry us a long way. 😉

Real love means change—personal change. That's the toughest kind of change. We can change our physical location, our wardrobe, our demeanor, but can we change ourselves? That requires real effort. That's a work of the Holy Spirit active within us. I know I need a healthy measure of that kind of change every day. That's a bit of that toilet-cleaning change. Change on the inside.

By a grand fluke of the lunar calendar, today is not only Valentine's Day. It's also Ash Wednesday—the start of Lent. Lent is an annual reminder of the passionate life-giving love of Jesus.

The Son of God left heaven, so he could clean the toilet bowl this world finds itself in. He gives us beauty for ashes in that grand exchange that is love—true love. He suffered so we could be set free from sin. When we repent, we become participants in the great romance of heaven and earth. Heaven came to earth in the person of Jesus, so we could one day be with him forever.

With a freshly cleaned toilet bowl, I'm feeling romantic already. Love is in the air.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm about to head off for a lunch date with my wife—the love-of-my-life.

David Kitz is the award-winning author of 

The Soldier Who Killed a King 

a Passion of Christ novel 

that is an ideal read for the Lent/Easter season.    

Row Your Boat - by Heidi McLaughlin

“I’m going to give you some wisdom that you might find simple and a little strange”, I said to the harried woman sitting across from me. "But please listen as I explain."  Her jaw dropped and her forehead produced a few extra wrinkles as I started to sing a simple nursery rhyme.

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

Life is but a dream.

I probably didn’t seem smarter than a third grader, but I quickly went on to explain my version of this uncomplicated, picturesque piece of advice. I felt compelled to help her because I knew what it was like to feel overwhelmed and exhausted. I went on to explain how many of us feel a delusional sense of responsibility for things that don’t belong in our boat. “And further”, I said, “we end up listening to all the things we ‘should’ do because we are comparing ourselves to T.V. commercials, Facebook bragging and unrealistic expectations.”

 

To feel fulfilled and joyful we must learn to row our boat gently down the stream. This means learning to quit paddling and working so hard work and go with the flow of life which is generated through the power of the Holy Spirit.  The bible tells us that: “In Him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3 NLT), and that we “…have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16 NLT).  God has given you and me everything we need to flow merrily down the stream. But, we must decide to dock our boat, stop and take the time to listen to the Holy Spirit who will help us make the next move.

I had to eat my own words the last two years as I found myself exhausted, frustrated and depleted.  When I clearly felt the Holy Spirit telling me it was time to retire and trust Him for my future, there were many heart pounding moments wondering what my new stream would look like. I’m in my new boat now, but in order to get settled I had to unload many oversized toxic boxes and debris that should have been chucked years ago.  These days I feel so free and merry that I can hardly contain my joy.

Am I certain as to what my future looks like? No, but as I told the woman sitting in front of me, “God is smarter than you and me.  We need to take deliberate steps to find a place of solitude where we can listen to the nudging of the Holy Spirit to tell us what unnecessary stuff we need to cast out of our boat. God is on our side. No matter how easy or difficult our situations are, God will gently and lovingly guide our boat down the stream of life on the route that He designed for us to take.”

Heidi McLaughlin lives in the beautiful vineyards of the Okanagan Valley in Kelowna, British Columbia. She is married to Pastor Jack and they have a wonderful, eclectic blended family of 5 children and 9 grandchildren. When Heidi is not working, she loves to curl up with a great book, or golf and laugh with her husband and special friends. You can reach her at: www.heartconnection.ca

Holy Spirit Whispers - Gibson

Inez the Mexican, God-lover and Jesus-follower, stands before me. Red plaid shirt, graying hair, beard. A burly man, with gentle mannerisms and eyes like dark pools. We have not met before, but those eyes tell me something: this man has a story.

I want to hear it. Even more, I feel I’ll want to tell it.

We have a common acquaintance, Inez and I. A man named Doug. Almost every time we meet, Doug brings me a story, and sometimes the people they belong to. True stories. Hard stories. Sad, sad, happy. Happy sad, sad. Like life. This one spins out long. Moisture gathers in the big man’s eyes as he tells it.

Inez and Veronica own a nursery business in Mexico. It makes a little; but not enough. To supplement  their income, Inez works as a long haul trucker.  They have four children, or did until a few years ago.

“God told us,” Inez says. “He told us our son would die two weeks before he did.” On that day Adrian, three-and-a-half years old, the youngest, attended a funeral with his family. At the cemetery, he asked an unusual question. “Mama, do they only bury adults here?”

Shocked, she responded, “No, children are buried here too.”

“Good,” he said. “Because I’m going to be here soon.”

I wait for the main character to enter the story. God. He always has a part in the stories Doug brings me. I don’t have to wait long.

In the next weeks, little Adrian often climbed onto his mother’s knee. “Hug me, Mama,” he whispered each time. “I will not be long with you. “

We’re on holy ground now. The hurt, the heart, the humanity, and yes, the hope bleeds through his words. One by one, Inez continues to list God’s gentle nudges; the things he used to prepare Adrian’s family for the ending of his short life on earth.

“I recognized the premonitions,” he told me. He begged. Prayed. Agonized. Pled with God, “Please, do not take away my son.” But when the end came, in the form of a horrific vehicle accident, Inez looked back and realized that the Holy Spirit, in love, had repeatedly assured them that God would take care of their beloved Adrian from that point on.

After the accident, Inez, who had not been nearby at the time, had the difficult task of shopping for clothes in which to bury his son. With heavy heart, he selected a checkered shirt and pants.

After the family re-united, his eleven-year-old daughter showed him her latest artwork, inspired by the reassuring words of Psalm 23, which she had copied beside the picture. “The Lord is my Shepherd…”

“Jesus watches over us when we rest,” she had titled it. The picture showed her beloved brother, sleeping. Flowers and loveliness surrounded him.  A blanket covered him. A checkered blanket, very like the fabric in the shirt his Papa bought.

But she had drawn the picture days before her brother died.

God knows. God cares. Adrian is safe, and Inez has peace.

 

************  

Among other places, author, newspaper columnist and broadcaster Kathleen Gibson ponders faith and life in her newspaper column, Sunny Side Up. The above Sunny Side Up column ran in various Western newspapers earlier this month.

 

UNLEASHING OUR GREATNESS - by Heidi McLaughin

Graduating from high school was a defining time in my life. I remember comments like: “You’re going to do great things with your life. There is nothing you can’t do. Go for it; the world is your oyster.”  Then I waited for life to prove it to me.
But life was just plain hard. Many failures and disappointments later I was smart enough to know there had to be another avenue.  In 1978 when I made a personal declaration to accept God into my life, I started pursing more satisfying solutions.  I found a jaw-dropping answer in the bible in Ephesians 1:18-19: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,  and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
Wow, that’s a lot of greatness and power. Then how do we get it for ourselves and then pass it on to others? First of all to get it we have to believe and receive. Secondly, to unleash it we need to pass it on.

We are a family that loves basketball so I will use a great basketball player by the name of LeBron James as my example.  James is arguably the greatest basketball player of this generation. Over the past four years he has led his team, the “Miami Heat” to four National Basketball Association finals, winning two championships. Lebron has command of all the basic skills required for basketball including power, speed, shooting and defensive ability. There are other stars that possess equivalent individual skills. But the thing that sets LeBron apart is his ability to recognize and utilize the gifting and capabilities of his mates and deliver the ball to them when they are in the best position to succeed. For example: three point shots, a midrange jump shot or a drive to the basket.

We unleash each other’s greatness when we view each other as being team mates rather than competitors. When there is a mutual willingness with our friends, family and colleagues to “pass the ball” we can all succeed in unleashing and exercising the gifts God has given us.

Setting each other up for greatness involves the following:

1.         Observation and Communication-Notice the areas of life which are the best in a friend, family or colleague, so that when the ball is in their hands, they are most likely to succeed. Discuss the roles with that person so that they can have the greatest sense of joy and satisfaction.

2.         Patience-As in athletics the talents and skills required for unleashing greatness in your own life, and the life of others is sharpened and refined through practice and experience. Such experience may involve failure before success. As “failure” is not final, disparaging remarks to yourself or your friend have no place in setting up for greatness.

3.         Encouragement-This is huge. Words followed by actions have to power to unleash the gifts and glorious inheritance God has placed inside each of us.  When we feed them into each other’s skill sets, they are extraordinarily important and powerful.

4.         Co-operation and not Competition-First of all in co-operation of the working of the Holy Spirit to “enlighten the eyes of our heart” so that we can recognize the gifts God has given us. Then to pass the ball to those around us so that we all win this life game that we are engaged in.

5.         Greatness is an inside job-The greatness I am talking about is everything God placed inside of us when we received Jesus as our savior. The world will never give us the ultimate success we crave. The more we pursue God and His incomparably great power, the more we will recognize the greatness that has been placed inside of us. Hebrews 10:24 which says: “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.”

Is the world my oyster? More than that!  Right now I can enjoy a glorious inheritance that will one day be unleashed in all its greatness when I stand face to face with my God.

In the meantime. I am all about discovering my own greatness and helping you with yours.

Heidi McLaughlin lives in the beautiful vineyards of the Okanagan Valley in Kelowna, British Columbia. She is married to Pastor Jack and they have a wonderful, eclectic blended family of 5 children and 9 grandchildren. When Heidi is not working, she loves to curl up with a great book, or golf and laugh with her husband and special friends. You can reach her at: www.heartconnection.ca

Is There a God? - Meyer

Recently, a popular Christian radio host (http://www.thedrewmarshallshow.com/) posed the question: “How do you know there is a God?”
It was suggested that if God is real, then he would personally contact us in such a way that we would know unmistakably that it was God speaking to us. It was further suggested that He would converse with us in a voice that our ears could hear or in written words that our eyes could see – but again, with a personal message just for us.

Well, actually, it has happened before in human history but not very often.
And what has been our reaction as human beings?
1. Disbelief – in the Bible in the book of John, chapter 12 and verses 28 and 29, there is an account of some people who heard a voice from heaven speaking. Their reaction – they said it was thunder.
2. Worshipping the messenger instead of the God who sent the message – when Paul the Apostle healed a man at Lystra who had been crippled all his life, the people began to worship Paul saying: “The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.”
3. Making the place the message was received into a place of worship – When Peter was up on the mountain and Elijah and Moses appeared and began talking with Jesus, Peter right away wanted to build three tabernacles (places of worship) on that site.
When we look down through history and around the world at special things (miracles) God has done, going against the laws of nature that he has put in place, our human reaction has invariably been one of these three.

So, what would happen if God, wanting to convince a person named Sarah that He loved her, wrote a big message in the clouds: “Dear Sarah, I love you very much. From God.”
What would be the human reaction?
1. Disbelief – most people (including Sarah perhaps) would believe it was some kind of hoax.
2. Worshipping the messenger or person to whom the message was given. Can you imagine the books that would be written about Sarah and her wonderful experience? And the talk shows? Can you imagine Sarah’s inbox or her Facebook account?
3. Making the place the message was received into a place of worship. The area over which the clouds had appeared would be considered a sacred and most blessed land – a destination for pilgrimages for many years to come.

Well, maybe something quieter then. How about a hand coming out of nowhere and carving a message on a tabletop in Sarah’s house, right before her very eyes?
What would be the result of this?
1. Disbelief – Sarah would quite likely question her sanity. Others would question her sanity if she told them what had happened.
2. Worshipping the message, messenger or person who received the message. If people did become convinced that God had actually written a message on the table, that table would be put under glass and put in a church somewhere. People would come from around the world to touch the table (or the glass surrounding it), hoping to have their prayers answered, hoping for miracles, etc.
3. Making the place the message was received into a place of worship. Sarah’s home and her family and perhaps even her city and her country would be deemed sacred. Again, the pilgrimages would begin.

So, maybe if God wrote to all of us everyday on rocks or tables or clouds, then it wouldn’t be so special and we would just get used to getting our daily messages from Him. Yeah, I think we can all see the problem with that. The skies would be so full of cloud messages, we’d never see the sun and all of our tabletops would be ruined. And if God wrote to us in more traditional ways (like email), what would happen if we accidently deleted a message from Him – would that be like the unforgiveable sin? What if our computers crashed? Would he call us on the phone instead?

So, before this blog post gets too crazy, let’s just back up a bit. God is God. If He wants to communicate with us, He can devise a way that is not dependant on cloud cover, Bell Telephone, your local Internet provider (which is very unreliable where I live) or… tabletops. God could, and has, devised a way to speak to us that works even if we are in the dark or in the middle of an ocean and even if we are deaf or blind or incapacitated in some other way. God can use this to speak to us in any language, dialect and accent (yep, it’s true!). God speaks in such a personal way that often we are at a loss to explain the “conversation” to others.

What is this “device”? Well, actually, there isn’t a device. It is a direct communication with God himself, one that bypasses our ears, eyes and other senses, and goes directly to our spirits. As it says in the Bible in the eighth chapter of Romans and the sixteenth verse: “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”
There are many other verses about the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38, Romans 8:16, Luke 12:12, John 14:17, 26, 1 John 2:27, John 16:13, etc.) but don’t expect to understand everything all at once. For starters, it will be difficult to wrap your mind around the fact that God exists in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit. That’s why the Holy Spirit could descend on top of Jesus in the form of a dove while a voice from Heaven said, “This is my beloved Son.”
The reason we can’t wrap our minds around God and who He is and how He speaks to us is, quite simply, weren’t not God. We’re just itty bitty humans. I don’t know how God, the Holy Spirit, can be speaking into my heart while at the very same time, He is watching over the universe, keeping track of sparrows (Matthew 10:29) and the number of hairs on my head! (Matthew 10:30) AND speaking into the hearts of thousands or perhaps millions of others all over the world. But there’s a whole bunch of other things I can’t understand either. Did you ever try to think what is beyond infinity or what comes after eternity?
At least, I have the assurance that someday, I will understand everything. The Bible says (in 1 Corinthians 13:12) that “now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Beautiful words and reassuring words. Someday we will understand everything… All the pieces will fall into place. All our questions will be answered.
But for now, today, in this very moment, we have the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who speaks to our hearts, reassuring us that there is a God and that He loves us so much that we are privileged to call Him, Abba (Daddy), Father. (Galatians 4:6)

Dorene Meyer
http://www.dorenemeyer.com/

Author of The Little Ones and Jasmine
Now in book stores across Canada
Distributed by Word Alive Press http://www.wordalivepress.ca/.
Available online and as ebook on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/ (key in title of book and publisher: Word Alive Press).