heart

Words By Roxanna ~ How to Refresh Your Mind, Heart and Soul

9:03 AM

The former televangelist, Jim Bakker, in his autobiography I Was Wrong, tells the story of his descent into ignominy, impoverishment and imprisonment. He lost his freedom, his sanity, his dignity, his confidence in his faith, and eventually even his wife. Inmate 07407-058, one-time confidant to presidents, had hit rock bottom.

At his very lowest point, a prison official came to him and said, ‘Billy Graham is here to see you!’ He thought, ‘Billy Graham has come here ... to this place ... to see me.’ When he walked into the room Billy Graham turned towards him and opened his arms wide.
He said at that moment he felt total acceptance and love. ‘I will never forget that the man who had just been voted one of the most influential men in the world and who has ministered to millions of people took time out of his busy schedule to come minister to one prisoner.’ He describes how in the midst of his depression, flu, filth and hopelessness, Billy Graham’s visit refreshed his heart and boosted his spirit. ‘I felt as though Jesus Himself had come to visit me.’
Refreshment means restoring strength, energy and vigor. A light snack is sometimes referred to as a ‘refreshment’. Physical refreshment can also come, for example, from sleep, rest, or exercise.
Paul tells Philemon that he has ‘refreshed the hearts of the saints’ (Philemon 7). Later on in the letter, Paul asks him to ‘refresh my heart in Christ’ (v.20). But how do we refresh our minds, hearts and souls?
Blessings Roxanna

greatest commandment

Scripture Saturday~The Greatest Commandment

12:00 AM

Saturday, September 8, 2018


Welcome to Scripture Saturday!

This coming week's memory verse is Matthew 22:37,38...

 Jesus replied, "You must love your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment..." (NLT)

 Have a blessed and precious day and week everyone!

Faith

Jesus, The Anchor of our Soul {Hebrews 6}

10:30 PM



Today in the first 8 verses, we find the author of Hebrews warning  this  group of  Christians to stand firm on their faith and to persevere in the truths they had learned:  “Therefore let us get past the elementary stage in the teachings about the Christ, advancing on to maturity and perfection and spiritual completeness, [doing this] without laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God… “(V 1)

Since Christianity did grow out of Judaism, it was easy for a Jewish Christian to slip back into some Jewish practices. These Jewish Christians did not want to abandon their new faith, but they went back to this kind of “comfort zone”, to avoid persecution.  

This is exactly what is happening to some Christians in these days, too! What do you see in the world today? Watching the news we only find chaos, suffering and persecution. How about our personal lives? We also encounter difficult and hopeless situations at times, but that is why Christ came and why he gave us His Holy Spirit… We must not waver in our faith!

-          “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” (2:1).

-          “Consider it nothing but joy, my [b]brothers and sisters, whenever you fall into various trials. 3 Be assured that the testing of your faith [through experience] produces endurance [leading to spiritual maturity, and inner peace]. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result and do a thorough work, so that you may be perfect and completely developed [in your faith], lacking in nothing….” 6 But he must ask [for wisdom] in faith, without doubting [God’s willingness to help], for the one who doubts is like a billowing surge of the sea that is blown about and tossed by the wind.” (James  1:2-4,6)
So let us not be discouraged because God’s promises are reliable. (6:13-18) 

We are not alone and in Him we find HOPE.! “ This hope [this confident assurance] we have as an anchor of the soul [it cannot slip and it cannot break down under whatever pressure bears upon it]—a safe and steadfast hope that enters within the veil [of the heavenly temple, that most Holy Place in which the very presence of God dwells], 20 where Jesus has entered [in advance] as a forerunner for us, having become a High Priest forever according to the order of [e]Melchizedek.” (6:19-20)

The anchor was a common figure for hope in the ancient world. Here the idea is that we are anchored to something firm but unseen (which enters the Presence behind the veil).
· We need the anchor to hold the ship and keep it from being wrecked.
· We need the anchor to stabilize the ship and keep it more comfortable for those on board.
· We need the anchor to allow the ship to maintain the progress it has made.

 “And just as sailors sometimes send the anchor ahead that they may have a fixed point towards which to warp themselves, so, if our anchor is that Christ who has passed into the heavens, He will draw us, in due time, whither He Himself has gone. A calm steady hope fixed upon the enthroned Christ, our fore-runner, and the pattern of what we shall he if we trust Him, will make us steadfast and victorious in all our sorrows, Burdens, changes, and temptations. Without it life is indeed as ‘futile then as frail,’ and our only ‘hope of answer’ to its torturing problems, or of ‘redress’ of its manifold pains is ‘Behind the veil, behind the veil.’ Such a hope knits us to the true stay of our souls, and is a cord not easily Broken. As for men’s hopes fixed on earth, they are fragile and filmy as the spiders’ webs, which, in early autumn mornings, twinkle dewy in every copse, and are gone by midday.

My brother! You have this great faculty; what do you do with it, and where do you fix it? You have a personal concern in that future, whether you think about it and like it or not. What is your hope for that future, and what is the ground of your hope? Let me beseech you, fasten the little vessel of your life to that great anchor, Christ, who has died, and who lives for you. And then, though the thread between you and Him be but slender and fragile, it will not be a dead cable, but a living nerve, along which His own steadfast life will pour, making you steadfast like Himself, and at last fulfilling and transcending your highest hopes in eternal fruition of His own blessedness.” (Bible Hub Heb. 6:19 Commentaries -MacLaren’s Exposition)


Thank you Father for Jesus, our only Hope!!
Blessings my sisters!

Mari