Have you ever looked up the phrase Christmas rush? I just did that. I saw pictures of people buried in lights that didn’t work, or under a pile of packages. One picture had Santa Claus pointing to a clock. Another showed a distressed lady surrounded by piles of bows and ribbons. The one I liked the best was shoppers pushing carts heaped with gifts. One lady in the foreground is trying to hold a package in place as she hurried to the register. Shopping can be a huge distraction for me this time of year. After all, we are celebrating the birth of Christ. Right after Jesus arrival here as a baby, God saw fit to send an angel chorus to earth to sing:
Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
Without a doubt, this his message of peace was pretty important. God didn’t send angel choruses often in history. He was announcing hope for our broken world, yet sometimes I get forget and still get caught up in the craziness of the holiday. How can we keep our focus and not get obliterated by the holiday?
Author Linda Gilden shares thoughts from her newest book and meditations from her newest book, Words to Live By.
Prayer. We know we need to do it. The Bible commands us to pray, because we have a God who wants to interact with us. However, praying is not easy. It’s not easy! Trying to set up a regular time to pray takes herculean effort. Whenever I prepare to pray, I feel a sudden urge to do other things. Suddenly I have to make phone calls, and I hate phone calls. During a crisis, I can squeak out one work, “Help.” My creativity gets tangled up, and I can’t slow down long enough to concentrate on a conversation with my maker. At a time like that, I recall the Apostle Paul’s command to pray rather than worry. How fast that rolls off the lips, but doing it requires effort.
Once when Spurgeon was very ill, he wrote to his congregation to pray at a blood heat. What an image. Truly he understood the importance or prayer.
Julie K Gillies is my guest today. She believes prayer ministers to a woman’s soul and can even bring healing. We are going to get her input and learn from how it’s ministered to her. She’s the author of Prayers for a Woman’s Soul.
1:45 Do you consider yourself an expert on prayer?
2:20 What practices help you to pray?
7:06 Are you talking about praying through the day or that concentrated time when all you do is pray?
7:52 How do you keep from getting distracted?
I really like the statement, “You are worth praying for.”
9:15 Did you ever feel like you were cheating God when you showered AND prayed? I’ve heard people say to only pray because God must have our full attention.
11:06 Do you see any differences in yourself because of your prayers?
11:51 How do you keep other issues from crowding in?
13:01 Tell me how the Holy Spirit brings up your needs?
It’s really easy to worry about the future, but Christians know the end of the story. Several years ago on a Saturday morning, my husband slid into the floor and had a grand mal seizure. Wow! What a catastrophic event. In an adult, a seizure is a medical emergency. We suddenly went from normal living to crisis mode. A sense of unreality came over me as I discovered my husband’s illness was very serious. For the first few days, I stood by his bed and watched as doctors tried to treat his complex problem. Ultimately his full recovery took four years, and those years unsettled us all. In the same way, we live in a rapidly changing world. Events come at us so fast. These unbelievable events seemed impossible a few years ago. If anyone disagrees or questions, that person receives a nasty label. Intolerant. Bigot. Hater. I keep reminding myself that I live in America where we are supposed to have freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Many in the church are rattled and frightened. This election season had passed in a similar fashion. Americans are angry because no one listens to them in Washington.
I cannot imagine facing any of this without God. During that time when my husband was ill, the Lord sent me to the book of Daniel while I taught a class. There the Lord revealed that Daniel’s greatest dream was for his people to return to the land with a restored relationship with the father. However, God knew that wouldn’t happen in Daniel’s lifetime, so God allowed Daniel a peek into the future. Daniels greatest longing would come true, but not while he lived.
As Christians, we don’t wield control, but we can be assured that God does. The book of Revelation reveals God’s plan for the future, and we can be confident, regardless of what we see going on. God will accomplish his purpose.
My guest is Dr. Ken J. Burge, Sr. He has written Revelation on Fire a Bible study on the last book of the Bible.
2:15 Not everyone in the church believes like you do about the future. Can you give reasons why hold your position on future things?
5:00 Describe your Bible study method
9:15 Revelation said these things will ‘shortly take place.” That was written over 2000 years ago. What does that phrase mean?
11:00 What does the text mean when it says people will be blessed seven times?
12:00 Can you give reasons why you believe in the rapture of the church?
14:00 Who were the people in chapter 3 who are praising the lamb for redemption?
Learn more about Dr. Burge here. Find his book here.
[tweetthis]Believers shouldn’t fear the future [/tweetthis]
I take a regular exercise class several times a week. On Fridays, the teacher dismisses with “Come back on Monday and we’ll start this process all over again.”
She always laughs when she says it, but it makes me feel like a gerbil on those round exercise balls that spin over and over. You can get in a routine, even a good routine and a sense of boredom sets in.
Get up in the morning, head off to work, or maybe you’re a mom with little ones. You feed them, change diapers and you do it all over again the next day. When my children were little, one would come and ask when I’d fix dinner. I’d get a little silly and say. “I fed you yesterday. You want to eat again.”
But you know what I mean. Ecclesiastes a time for everything under heaven: a time to bake, and a time to discard what was baked;
Have you ever wanted to live an extraordinary life? What makes life have pizzazz? I believe having a purpose does that. You live for something bigger than yourself. The apostle Paul said he longed to know Jesus Christ and to become holy like he would be after he was raised from the dead.
An indescribable life? An un-explainable life?
My guest today is Erica Wiggenhorn, who just completed a Bible study on Acts, An Unexplainable Life.
2:10 What is one of your favorite lessons from Acts?
3:45 Give us examples of how the Holy Spirit worked differently in each life?
5:45 God’s exciting creativity.
6:30 Similarities in the OT stories and the tongues of fire spoken of in Acts
9:20 How did the disciples change after the Holy Spirit came? Especially Peter?
13:00 Explain the importance of the clouds in the ascension of Christ?
15:13 Share the role prayer played in the book of Acts. How is it important today?
16:55 How was Stephen’s life unexpected?
19:25 How can the book of Acts encourage us today?
When I was a little girl, I played with several chums in my neighborhood. If one of us did something inappropriate, the mothers talked and meted out punishment. In school, I recall hearing the Bible read. Everyone understood they should work hard in school and treat others with kindness. We shared a consensus on right and wrong.
Our country changed.
I saw billboards that said, “God is Dead.”
I recall a political campaign a number of years ago. The press kept saying character doesn’t matter.
Then there was: What is the meaning of the word ‘is’?
The new atheists today ridicule Christians. Believing in God is equivalent to believing in the Easter bunny.
I’m saddened when I see Christians portrayed with disdain and disgust on movies and the media.
Freedom of speech is not subject to Political correctness.
The Bible says, “Be ready to give an answer to anyone who asked the reason for the hope within you.”
Leslie Williams is my guest. She’s going to talk about living with wisdom and savvy in a crazy world anything goes. When Anything Goes is the name of her newest book.
1:55 What is post-Christian?
3:30 The difference between those who wear the label ‘Christian’ and those who are.
5:00 What is faith?
6:25 What is the god of the gaps?
9:05 How can we live as a Christian, and why is that still a good choice?
13:20 Are we addicted to meaning? What do you mean by that statement?
[tweetthis]Faith in Jesus isn’t a leap in the dark[/tweetthis]
Have you ever been shunned? I’ve always been a little shy and studious. When I was in ninth grade, I took a Spanish class and found it challenging. A friend who was also learning Spanish and I wrote to each other in Spanish in order to learn faster. I was also taking a Home Ec class that year, and when we finished our sewing project, we could work on other things. Since I was free, I tackled my Spanish epistles home ec class.
I happened to sit near a group of girls who were very playful and silly. When they found out what I was doing, they found it quite funny. And they began to crack jokes and tease. I brushed them off at first. But as other girls watched, the number of participants grew and things got vicious. Pretty soon half the room was ridiculing me.
One day after class, I burst into tears and the teacher asked me why. I spilled out my story, and she was horrified.
But I will never forget the feeling of being laughed at. Being weird, odd
If you have a medical problem, people are compassionate, but if you have a mental illness, it’s a different story.
Ephesians 4:32 says we should be kind to each other, tenderhearted. I love that word. It means you ache for someone who hurts. You have compassion.
I have a friend who is bipolar, but she won’t tell anyone because she hears awful stories told of bipolar people. She doesn’t want the label. But these folk are ill, and they need us to be tenderhearted.
Today I have Leeann Jefferies who was a model for Eileen Ford, and author, Eva Marie Everson. Together they wrote Leeann’s story: The Bipolar Experience.
2:15 What is bipolar
3:40 Eva Marie, this is been part of your life too. Please share your story.
3:55 Describe cycling
6:00 Leeann, tell me how you feel
6:50 What does a high feel like?
10:15 What’s the answer for the manic phases?
[tweetthis]A bipolar person needs love and understanding[/tweetthis]
[tweetthis]Be part of the team for your bipolar friend[/tweetthis]
