Author: pastor.gerooney@gmail.com

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea. Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” Psalms 139: 7-10

I call them Judas days, moments that betray me, seconds of doubt and disappointment that flash through my mind, hook together with like thoughts and become days, weeks….. seasons.  I have confessed my sins and they are forgiven. I believe that the exclusive, defining characteristic of God is Love, but in days of Judas, when all I know and believe doesn’t seem to be enough, there is an illogical darkness, a waning of warmth and comfort, a shift from confident balance and positivity, to a fragile grasp, clinging to the promises of a God I know is Good.

If I am a Christian why am I not exempt from depression? I do not have the answer to that, but I too struggle with mental shadows. I am NOT a mental health professional but I have found things that bring me through my Judas days in victory.

1. Most importantly, find a health care professional that you trust and be honest with them.
2. Don’t get lost in the lie that this will last forever. Hopelessness is dangerous!
3. Your feelings are real and there is no logic to pain, so don’t try to reason it away.
4. Talk to others. God sends amazing people into your life. Don’t push them away in the name of independence and strength.
5. Chose to do good. Be kind. Someone needs the blessing of your presence.
6. Compassion for others is born in our personal sorrows and failures.  Give your heart some credit and take joy in what you will become.
7. Rest.  Don’t sulk, or wage emotional warfare against those that have hurt you, but rather, seek respite to restore and strengthen yourself in a healthy and appropriate way.

Cute quotes and sayings that patronize deep emotional issues are not the meat and potatoes feast your soul is seeking. Stay in God’s Word. It is His voice and He will speak.  God doesn’t chose the strongest to suffer the most because they can handle it. Facing down the gates of hell is something everyone will come to at one time or another. The outcome is your choice and is determined by who you take with you to win. Take Jesus (and a few of His friends)! He’s already won that battle!

One last thought:  Good lives don’t just happen. They are purposely built by the inhabitants. Reckless words and toxic things effect impulsive thoughts and responses.  Be careful and clean the corners of your heart often.

Love,

Gretchen

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from His own work, just as God did from His. Hebrews 4:9-10

There was a mass exodus, thousands departed slavery and headed toward the promise of rest. God led Moses, Moses led the people.  Along the way God gave this new nation boundaries for successful national and interpersonal living.  Obedience was a problem and the great cost was the forfeit of rest. 

The Promised Land was a gift, a place secured by God for His chosen nation. The audience of this letter, Hebrews, knew an entire generation of those led by Moses did not reach God’s rest. Like those sojourners of old, these Christians had seen the miraculous power of God, but seeing isn’t doing, and failure to trust and obey would cost them too.

When God put linear time into creation He planned rest.  Set apart from six twenty-four hour days, day seven is for the nurture of an intimate relationship between you and your Creator/Redeemer.  Not only does God say to take your rest, but we must grant rest to all others.  In turn, no one has the right to rob your rest on this Holy Day of Sabbath.  Take your rest, it is God’s gift, and His command.

Happy Sabbath Eve,

Gretchen

Then He called the crowd to Him along with His disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Mark 8:34

For over two years Jesus’ disciples traveled with Him and watched as He served, loved and healed the world’s broken.  They have seen Jesus’ miraculous power and know that He is the Son of God, but the time has come for Jesus to complete His mission, to die and rise again, removing every threat against man’s soul. 

It’s time to prepare those who follow Jesus for what is to come. Jesus speaks of the cross for the first time. This cross takes a living breathing mortal and exchanges it for a Savior. We have a cross too. In it we lose our lives to this world and find the spirit of hope, victory and eternal life. 

Obedience to man’s laws and traditions will not do what the cross did. Jesus surrendered Himself to the cross. To deny one’s self is to put others first! All that God created us to be is found in the example of our Savior….He loved until He died of it.

Love,

Gretchen

Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Hebrews 2:14-15

Christ became one with man, sharing in our temptations, sorrows, joys………..even the pain of death. His objective? To destroy the devil’s power over us.  Sin separates us from God and satan loves an isolated victim. When cut off from hope, complete control, bondage and eventually, total destruction is an easy feat. Jesus came to close the space between God and man, drawing us near and breaking sin’s grasp. When He died and rose again, death became irrelevant.  He is not dead and neither will we be.

Here on earth, we have strength and resource to overcome our demons because Jesus, not the devil had the final word……life!  As for eternity? Satan will continue to be the prince of darkness while we join Jesus in Heaven’s glory. 

We can become like Jesus because Jesus took on our nature to prepare the way to God’s glory.  The immediacy is something to get excited about because eternal life begins the moment your faith takes you to God’s throne for forgiveness and reconciliation.

Have a Great Thursday and please pray for Piper,

Gretchen

If you Facebook you may search Pray for Piper to get details. This is a member of my family and our united prayer is that God glorifies Himself in Piper’s heart and that her small body will be healed.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, Holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship. Romans 12:1

This letter to the church in Rome is for discipleship, a call to a transformed life.  Christians must understand the deity and nature of Christ, and know His resurrection is the means to eternal life.   All actions toward man are done in love. Love in return, for God and others is sacrifice.

Jewish belief held that Mosaic Law was the completion of God’s will. Therefore, all works of God came through Jewish heritage and tradition.  Paul fought this ideology to teach that God did something new in Christ. Nothing is done through the keeping of laws, but rather the choice of God’s love perpetuating the gift of Christ’s mercy. It is Christ that remained perfectly Holy and stands before God to justify man’s sins. Christ alone is worthy of our gratitude and worship.

Paul speaks of living, not dying!  A living sacrifice is active, in motion, a catharsis for change and is pleasing to God. Because we were sinners SAVED from DEATH and given LIFE, humble thank you’s without end, made evidence in our faith and life’s choices and actions, is the response most pleasing to God. 

Have a great Wednesday,

Gretchen

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. I John 3:1

The apostle John, along with all who believe, is a member of a great paternal inheritance, greater than any prince has ever known. Sadly, the world does not recognize the favor given us, and available to them also, because they do not understand the character of He who gives grace and mercy and possesses all the riches the universe.

As were all the early church leaders, John was confronted with attempts to taint the true Gospel.  Man’s desire to manipulate everything including God Himself, while practicing self exaltation is really quiet alarming. The heart of John’s response was to declare the true and pure attributes of Christ and remind those that believe in a resurrected Savior that we must adopt the family likeness.

The Son of God became fully man, like us, so that we could become fully like Him. Family at its finest! Kinship anchored in lavish love.

Love,

Gretchen 

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Galatians 2:20

Galatia was a place populated by gentiles that received the Gospel with great enthusiasm. When Paul, their minister, left to continue his missionary journey, Jewish teachers came and encouraged all new believers to take up the traditions of Judaism, namely, circumcision. Sadly, they taught that you had to be one thing, a Jew, before you could be another, a sinner saved by grace. These new believers complied, but when news reached Paul, he wrote this letter explaining that laws did not bring about salvation.

There are two great temptations at play in Paul’s world. One, to be ruled by law and two, to use law to rule others.  Both paths lead to bondage of one sort or another. This is the very thing Christ died to end.

The Christian life is lived by faith, just as it began. Christ put His life aside that we might have life eternal.  By faith and love we live for Christ. Please God with your faith and everything else will take care of itself.

Love,

Gretchen

Scary Scary, Missionary!

The most mystical place in my childhood was a far off mission field.  My heroes were and are, those that put aside comfort and security and go places most won’t even imagine. From time to time, these amazing people take breaks from their labors and returned home to visit churches, bringing news of successes and challenges. Mesmerized by their adventures, while daunted by their bravery, I lived in fear that God would try and send me. I prayed deals. “I’ll be the best Christian ever, just don’t ask me to do that!”

Years went by and maturity happened. One day as I went about living and serving, it occurred that all my worries had been in vain.  Here I was in the center of God’s will in middle class America.  Then I was sad. Maybe God saw what I kept hidden. The sum of me was a heart full of fear, a will incapable of changing the world, and a life just barely qualifying as Christian. No wonder He hadn’t asked me, I was useless…… But, long before, I determined to make satan sorry my feet hit the floor. So I continued in the little things of everyday life.

I have always kept a Bible on my desk at school.  For many years it was between bookends with textbooks, manuals and other resources I needed at my fingertips. The age of technology brought less need for hardcover, so the time came when my Bible was the last book standing, and so, I laid it on my desk.  Students put things on top of it or used it as a paper weight.  One morning I took a moment, held my Bible and explained, “This is my Bible. It goes where I go. It is God’s Word and it is Holy. Please don’t put your things on it, or under it.”  I didn’t tell anyone they must agree, just comply.  The Bible was a children’s version with pictures. I allowed any child that wished to handle my Bible and I answered questions when asked. One day, a little fellow asked if I would take him to church. He wanted to know about this Holy God I spoke of.  There is only one answer to such a question. “YES!” 

Appropriate measures were taken and a mission field was born. Miles of tire tread, gallons of fuel, smiling faces serving food, camp fees paid, and acres of dirty church carpet later, a noisy ministry is alive and well way beyond the walls of a church in central Arkansas.  God’s call came in the voices of children and many answered “YES!”

This past Wednesday night I grabbed a children’s Bible off a shelf in the classroom where 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders meet.  I usually read from the app on my phone, but this night I didn’t.  Quietly, one child said, “I don’t have a Bible, but I read the one in my classroom.”  A student was so determined to hear from God, that he sought an obscure Bible in a schoolroom full of literature designed to appeal to him. 

Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, “Who shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” Isaiah 6:8

The mission field, a place in great need of Christ’s example and message, is so close you can feel its heartbeat. Pray for it, wait for it and then scream, “YES!!!!!!”

Love,

Gretchen

P.S.  I am thankful for a young and faithful teacher that kept a Bible in her classroom and the Gideons that provided it, and on Thursday morning, a young man received a Bible of his very own, along with an age appropriate devotional to feed his hungry soul.  God is good.

It is good to praise the Lord and make music to Your name, O Most High. Psalm 92:1

This Psalm was anonymously written but is titled, A Song for the Sabbath. 

Believers in the One True God are called to set aside labors and cares one day a week and intentionally focus on the wonder of the Creator and Lover of our soul. It brings our storm tossed lives back into a harbor of calm water.

A Holy day is important to the emotional and spiritual well being of the community of Christ.  It is a gift, but it is also mandatory maintenance for survival.  This Sabbath is our little bit of Heaven on earth. For when this life is over, we will enter into an eternal day of worship.  We will rest, sing praises and relish in the fellowship of those we love.

Love,

Gretchen   

Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed His name, the LORD. And He passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. Exodus 34:5-6

Moses returned from 40 days and nights in the presence of God, bringing the engraved laws of the covenant nation.  While Moses was with God, the Hebrew children, under the leadership of Aaron, lust for a tangible god and orgy type worship.  When Moses finds the chaos and desecration of God’s kindness and provision he throws the precious stones, written by God. Now, Moses has returned to the peak of Mount Sinai and God’s mercy.

The people have sinned and God says He will destroy them, but Moses pled their case. God heard and extended forgiveness and restoration. The announcement from God to Moses, that He is the LORD, is a perspective builder.  Moses was carrying the burden of the people’s sin, but God exclaims it is His character that will determine the destiny of these people, not Moses’. Everything is going to be okay, but there is some work to do.  Moses and God spend another 40 days and nights rewriting instructions for Holy and set apart living so the world may be blessed.

These people, just set free from slavery, were terribly quick to worship god’s of their own making.  What an insult to God’s love!!! Still, God CHOSES…….HE CHOSES to be slow to anger, ABOUNDING IN LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS to mankind.  

You are loved so very much! 

Happy Friday,

Gretchen