The beauty of God’s creation in the desert.
Photo by Kathy Sheehan
Our Blog is inspired by The Holy Spirit.
Ash Wednesday
Brothers and sisters:
We are ambassadors for Christ,
as if God were appealing through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God.
For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin,
so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
Working together, then,
we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
For he says:
In an acceptable time I heard you,
and on the day of salvation I helped you.
Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.
Emphasis mine 2 Corinthians 5:20—6:2
We came into today wanting to talk about a particular subject, but deciding instead to let the readings dictate what we will write about.
For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin. I have always wondered about the above statement, until a few blogs ago when we talked about the Genealogy of Joseph and, for that matter, Mary.
One would think the Genealogy of Jesus would be a genealogy of men and women who knew and worshiped God fully.
But it wasn’t as you all know.
Murderers, adulterers, prostitutes, men and women who threw God under the bus and worshipped false gods, you name it and someone in the genealogy of Jesus did it.
Back in the time of Jesus they didn’t know about DNA, and how our DNA carries the DNA of people in our past families, that helps determine who we are.
For example, we recently did a genealogy of my dad’s family (for new readers, remember we only have one Father, God the Father, all other men are dads), and a few facts jumped out at me.
- They were active in their churches.
- They were entrepreneurs.
- They furthered their education.
Not everyone was without problems, but so what, we would just as soon forget the bad and move on.
With Jesus it was different, His Geonealogy was that of men and women who had committed many sins, For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin,
BUT,
Jesus was born without sin in a Mother who was without sin.
And
Jesus was fully human, DNA, and fully Divine, the Second Person in the Triune God, filled with the Love, Joy, and Peace of The Holy Spirit.
My DNA led me to understand why I was drawn to owning my, yes my (sadly) own business, teaching CCD, and being active in the Church.
It wasn’t until I died to myself and asked the Holy Spirit to take over and lead me to where They wanted me to go, that My life started to become a Love, Joy, Peace filled life.
My choice then was Live according to my DNA, or live in the Spirit of Truth. It took seventy years to finally make the right choice, and yes, I pray I had made this choice earlier, but I thank God the Father everyday for living that choice now.
Prayer:
If you want to grow in Love, Joy and Peace, this is a result of growth in Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control.
Sidebar:
Well it’s lent once again and we would like to suggest two activities you might try.
One: learn the “Nine.”
Everyone who has learned the “Nine,” in the proper order has seen their life change.
Everyone!
Even men in jail, and as we type this I can see why the “Nine” are so important to so many of them. If they are honest, they know they’re in trouble, and once again if they are honest with themselves something has to change. When they hear fellow inmates say they have experienced a change (Evangelizing) they think maybe this would help them.
And,
The great news is learning the “Nine,” DOES!!!
Jeremy yesterday left the meeting because the judge had released him. I asked Jeremy how long a term he was looking at, he said, “seven years,” I mentioned this to the others at the meeting and they said,
“Thats the total of all his offences,”
“It was shorter than that”
And so the reasoning as to why learning the prayers we had asked all of them to learn went.
Amazing,
Jeremy is getting out after thirty days, and a man who was with him before the same judge, is still in jail. The above are satan responses, and the man who wasn’t released was too smart for us; he didn’t learn the prayers.
We reminded them Jeremy is out after thirty days, after learning our prayers, and they’re still in, “Do you think maybe YOU should change?”
I can’t complain, at their age I always had a ready satan answer.
What a wonderful story, and it happened yesterday, God working in all of our lives.
And,
This is the first time in four years we have added to a blog on Friday.
Celebrate!!!
Two: Read the Bible every day,
Get in the habit of reading the Bible.
At first the Old Testament is hard because the names and events aren’t names and events you have heard a lot about.
satan will say quit, pray “Get behind me satan,” ask The Holy Spirit back in your life and push on.
I started when the Holy Spirit, whom I didn’t know at the time asked, “What are you going to say when Jesus asks you, “Did you read Our book?”
I read a NDE (Near Death Experience) and Jesus did ask the man this exact question
My thought was I flunked lots of tests because I didn’t study, I will not flunk this test, and started reading the Bible one chapter a day and we have never stopped.
Never forget God wants you to read their book, it’s Inspired after all, and satan doesn’t.
Easy!
Picture:
The beauty of God’s creation in the desert. Photo taken in Tucson, Arizona Photo by Kathy Sheehan
Please keep Snapping!
And if you want the ten calling cards shown above, email me and I will send you my address, send me a STAMPED self-addressed envelope and I will send you ten cards.
The offer for the cards is for American readers only. The Post office won’t accept foreign stamps.
If you want a copy of the prayers we discussed.
Send an email to: fprince101@gmail.com
Remember, if you want to submit a picture, please do not include people. We have to get permission from that person to use their photograph.
