“Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” (Romans 12:12, NIV) We are called to zealous prayer life! Prayer is a gift from God to us. Just think about having a direct prayer line to God Almighty! Pretty awesome!! We are called to be faithful in prayer and to pray without ceasing. God wants to participate in our lives. Through prayer we are able to…
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Phil.4:6, NIV) Do not be anxious! Easier said than done, right? But I do think that we can either worry or pray. We can’t do both. Either we worry and keep focusing on our problems. Or we pray and surrender to God. We are instructed to go to God with everything. With our joys, our sorrows, our troubles, our emptiness….
How on earth is is possible to find joy in this broken world? No matter where you watch, left or right, you see terrible hard ships and things gone awry, broken hearts and crushed lives. What to do? How to handle all this pain? How can we go on with living when things are so wrong? One way to force joy into life is trying to eliminate things that hurt and then try to lighten the boredom of that numbness…
“Living well is the best revenge” is an old saying that encourages us to move on with our lives after disappointments and concentrate in living well. An online dictionary tells us that well-being is “The state of being healthy, happy, or prosperous; welfare”. Probably something we all want. The ways we think we can achieve it varies from person to person. Living well for me is living according to God’s will. This does not mean prosperous living but simple living….
Is the call for simple living a chore or a privilege? Something you have to pretend you are doing or something that you embrace whole-heartedly? Simple living is not the easiest task to accomplish in our hectic world! Our attention as consumers is constantly wanted. It takes a lot of practice to succesfully navigate between needs and wants. It takes a lot of prayer to maintain a lifestyle that is focused on God and not on stuff. A God-loyal life…
Is joyful living a sin? Is it wrong to have fun and enjoy life? Is it okay to love life? These are questions that used to haunt me as a teenager. I was on the verge of independence, eager to start out my own life. I had grown to love the Lord more than anything but I didn’t know if it was okay to have fun, enjoy life. I have a bubbly personality so this was indeed an important question…
Father, Son and who? The Holy Spirit seems so untangible that sometimes we seem afraid of approaching the subject all together. But let’s check out what living in the presence of the Holy Spirit could be! Jesus told his disciples:”And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he…
Is receiving the grace of Christ an amazing race or amazing grace? It is a relief to know it does not require to be the winner of the amazing race to receive the grace of Christ. There is nothing we can do to earn the grace of Christ. It is the amazing gift from God; it is amazing grace. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when…
This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is…
I explained why my blog is called FLOWING FAITH in my previous post Flow, flow flowing faith. What about the rest of the title “Ponderings of an Almond Tree in Bloom”? The quote from “The Fratricides” by Nikos Kazantzakis – “I said to the almond tree: ‘Speak to me of God’ and the almond tree blossomed” – was given to me on my high school graduation day. I’ve always felt that I was an almond tree and my destiny was…
