How Deep Is Your Love

Disclaimer: Obviously I am not an actual angel. However, I feel like God speaks to my heart and I would love to share it with you. Please enjoy.

If you enjoy my blog but are not currently receiving my email notifications, you can send your first and last name, and your email address to austinlass1948@gmail.com and I will notify you each time I post something new. I promise I will never give your information out to anyone or use it for anything other than my notifications to you. Please share my blog with your friends and family to help me spread the words from my heart with others. Also, if you have any family or friends who you believe might enjoy my blog posts and live in another country, I would especially love to have you share it with them. I am trying to reach more countries around the world. Your help would be greatly appreciated. 

Comments are greatly appreciated. If you leave a comment please include your name. Otherwise I won't know who you are.

Thank you. Janice Austin Bates 

In Luke 7:36 you will find the story of a Pharisee asking Jesus to eat with him. They went together to the Pharisee’s house and sat down to eat. A woman from the city who was a sinner, heard that Jesus was there. She came to see Him and brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil.

She sat at the feet of Jesus and began to wash His feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. She kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.

The Pharisee was upset and told himself if Jesus was a prophet He would know who this woman was and know she was a sinner.

Jesus responded to the Pharisee and said, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”

The Pharisee listened as Jesus told him, “There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii and the other owed fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?”

The Pharisee said it would be the one he forgave more.

Jesus then pointed out that he was correct, and that when Jesus had come into the Pharisee’s house, he gave Jesus no water to wash His feet, but she had washed His feet with her tears and dried them with the hair of her head. Simon gave Him no kiss, but she had not stopped kissing His feet. Neither did Simon anoint His head, but she anointed His feet with her fragrant oil.

He told him that her sins which were many were forgiven, and for that she loved Him very much. But, to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.

Too often people who grew up in church and never fell into deep sin tend to look down on those who were lost in very sinful lives. They also might not love Him as deeply as those who were brought up out of the depth of sin.

The people who were rescued from drugs or prostitution, for example, are often the people who fall so deeply in love with Jesus they can’t stop praising Him. Many times they are the ones God can use the most to preach or witness. They become pastors, counselors, and prayer warriors because they know the tremendous change in their hearts and lives.

Those who never fell into that depth of sin sometimes don’t appreciate what they have because they haven’t experience as big a change in themselves.

What category do you fall into? Do you really understand what you have, or do you tend to think you are better than the “sinners” out in the world who Jesus has rescued?

Whether we had the privilege of growing up on a church bench, or were lifted up out of a horrible life, we need to truly understand that we are all alike. Every one of us is a sinner saved by grace. We cannot ever look down on others because “we have never done what they did. God never had to do as much for us as He had to do for them.”

The reality is He had to sacrifice the same blood and suffer the same pain for each person no matter what their circumstance. After all, sin is sin, and we are all born into it. We all have to come to Jesus and be saved.

If you have ever thought you weren’t that bad, you need to think again. When you truly understand that He had to do the same for each one of us, then maybe we will start to love him more.

Maybe we will start washing His feet with our tears, drying them with our hair, and anointing them with fragrant oil. After all, we all owe him that and much more.

Think about it.

 

 

Loaves and Fishes

 Disclaimer: Obviously I am not an actual angel. However, I feel like God speaks to my heart and I would love to share it with you. Please enjoy.

If you enjoy my blog but are not currently receiving my email notifications, you can send your first and last name, and your email address to austinlass1948@gmail.com and I will notify you each time I post something new. I promise I will never give your information out to anyone or use it for anything other than my notifications to you. Please share my blog with your friends and family to help me spread the words from my heart with others. Also, if you have any family or friends who you believe might enjoy my blog posts and live in another country, I would especially love to have you share it with them. I am trying to reach more countries around the world. Your help would be greatly appreciated. 

Comments are greatly appreciated. If you leave a comment please include your name. Otherwise I won't know who you are.

Thank you. Janice Austin Bates

What do you have you can give to Jesus? Most of us don’t have a whole lot. Probably not enough to be of any real help. So why does Jesus ask us to give? After all, He created the universe and everything in it. Obviously He doesn’t need our help.

The reason isn’t because He needs us to give, but because we need to give. He has more than enough resources to do anything He wants. He involves us because that is how He teaches us and makes us better Christians.

When Jesus turned the water into wine He could have just spoken a word and the wine would have appeared. Instead He said to bring jars full of water and He used the water to create wine. We have to do our part.

In winning people to Him He says one person sows, another person waters, and another person reaps. When we are part of that process we grow from it. Not only will we be rewarded here on earth, but we will be rewarded in eternity. He wants us to be part of His miracles.

When God tells us to tithe do you think He needs our money? Of course not. God requires us to give so he can bless us. He uses what we give to Him so He can multiply it back to us. That does not necessarily mean He will take $100 we give and bless us with $200 back. Sometimes He will give the money back plus more as a blessing. Sometimes it comes back to us in the form of spiritual blessing. It all depends on what we need, but He will always bless us.

When Jesus saw the 5000 men plus women and children were hungry He could have done what the disciples suggested and sent them into town to buy their own food.  He also could have spoken the food into existence but He chose to ask what food was available.

A young boy was willing to give his 5 loaves and 2 fishes. He had no idea what Jesus was going to do with it but he knew he needed to give. The disciples were very hungry, having not eaten all day, but He gave the loaves and fishes to them and told them to feed the people. They walked through the crowd giving each person fish and bread. How could they possibly feed them all with such a meager amount of food? That was because Jesus blessed the food and told the disciples to feed them with it. When all the people had been fed Jesus told the disciples to gather up all the loaves and fishes that were left. Nothing was to be wasted. Guess how much food was left. Twelve baskets full. Enough for a basket of food for each disciple.

Do you think that was a coincidence? Of course not. There are no coincidences, but rather miracles planned by God. He was taking care of his disciples for their willingness to obey Jesus and putting the other people’s needs ahead of their own.

What would you have done? Would you have decided this small amount of food was not enough to do anything with, and kept it for yourself, or would you have obeyed Jesus and let Him work a miracle? When we allow Jesus to use what we have and do what He does, He is lifted up for the world to see. We are blessed and learn more and more about giving what we have to Jesus. It strengthens our faith and teaches us to trust Him.

So what are you doing? Are you giving your loaves and fishes to be used by Him and allowing Him to take care of you? Or, are you afraid and keeping you food for yourself because there is not enough to share? If so, you are missing out on your miracles.

Think about it.

The God Who Fights For Me

 Disclaimer: Obviously I am not an actual angel. However, I feel like God speaks to my heart and I would love to share it with you. Please enjoy.

If you enjoy my blog but are not currently receiving my email notifications, you can send your first and last name, and your email address to austinlass1948@gmail.com and I will notify you each time I post something new. I promise I will never give your information out to anyone or use it for anything other than my notifications to you. Please share my blog with your friends and family to help me spread the words from my heart with others. Also, if you have any family or friends who you believe might enjoy my blog posts and live in another country, I would especially love to have you share it with them. I am trying to reach more countries around the world. Your help would be greatly appreciated. 

Comments are greatly appreciated. If you leave a comment please include your name. Otherwise I won't know who you are.

Thank you. Janice Austin Bates

Do you ever feel like you are all alone in this world? When you are really down does anyone have your back?

If you are like me, when your life seems to be falling apart, it feels like no one cares. In fact, sometimes you would swear that no one even realizes you are in trouble.

That is such a lonesome feeling.

My father was a pastor. When I was eighteen years old the people in our church decided we had been there long enough. They thought they needed a new pastor so they asked us to leave. I had grown up in that church. The adults were like aunts and uncles to me, and the youth were like siblings. I was devastated.

To make things worse, the new church we went to had a youth group who weren’t very nice. When they found out we were coming there some of the youth decided they did not want another teenage girl in the church, so they pressured all of the youth group to shun me the minute I walked in the door. It took two years before I found out why they did this.

One day I said the people in my home church didn’t want me and the people in the new church didn’t want me. However the people in the world were nice to me so I said I would go where I was wanted. Sadly, I walked away from God for ten years.

When God finally brought me back it still took another thirty five years to get over the pain and feeling of abandonment. Every time I thought about having to leave my home church I would cry so hard I couldn’t even talk.

One day I was alone and thinking about relationships in my life that had parted ways and I was talking about them (to myself). I was talking out loud and said, “When Danny and I went our separate ways, my life went on without him. When John and I went out separate ways, my life went on without him. When Santi and I went our separate ways, my life went on without him.” Then I heard myself say, “When the church and I went our separate ways, my life went on without me.” It finally hit me why I had never gotten over the pain. My life had gone on as I had always known it, but I was no longer allowed to be in it.

Even though I understood the pain better than I ever had before, the terrible pain and feeling of abandonment continued for about another ten years.

One Sunday we were singing a song in my church when the words hit me right between the eyes. The words were, “You  never forsook me.” God spoke to me and told me He had never forsaken me. I had forsaken Him. He said He had always been there, but I had run off and left Him. As those words sank in the pain lifted. I no longer felt abandoned.

I suddenly realized I had allowed the actions of people to cause me to run from the one who loved me most. Essentially I had cut off my nose to spite my face.

This morning the preacher told us that when we have a problem, Satan wants us to take quick action to fix it se we will just mess it up. God, on the other hand, wants us to leave the problem to Him so He can really fix it.

If I had left the problem in His hands He would have worked it all out. I panicked and tried to fix the problem myself. In doing so, I made it worse and my life was messed up for years.

The Bible teaches that David did not brood over his problems. Neither did he pity himself. He simply gave his problems, many of his own making, to God and let Him fix them.

God is the one who is always fighting for us, and God never loses a fight. Why do so many of us try to fight our own battles when our fighting skills are so limited?

The Bible says His eye is on the sparrow, so why don’t we trust Him? The sparrows do.

In boxing, men battle to see who can be the heavy weight champion of the world, and people are in awe of them.

We need to understand the heavy weight champion of the universe is our Heavenly Father, and He is always fighting for us.

So relax, give everything to Him and rest assured that we are in good hands with Almighty God.

Think about it.