I LOVE MARRIAGE!!!....

Yesterday, I had outpatient surgery and was under the weather.  I felt helpless going through the “before procedures” and most definitely after waking up from the anesthesia.  It was then I realized how I love marriage!

My good husband was right there with me to help get through this unexpected health issue. His assistance allowed me to get the best results of the surgery, getting me back to the best quality of life.

While all this was going on, I thought of the scripture I might have shared in a previous post about friendship, but it is for Marriage too!   

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12: “9. Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: 10. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!  11. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?  12.Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

Today, I am getting all better because I have had a “cool drink of water” from a friend, my husband Phil Mason.....

DEATH.... LET’S TALK ABOUT DYING…

Yeah! I bet you are saying, "What? No! That is not a subject I like to talk about."  Well me either, but it is a fact that will happen and we will have to face it one day.  Your love ones will too, and it want be easy to tell them “good-bye”.  In fact, we two friends, Jenny attending her grandfather's funeral today at 11:00 and tomorrow Sara attending her father's at 2:00, that really brings it home to us as we pray for them.  

Death is God’s plan, we are not going to live on this earth forever.  We can thrust that it is God’s plan, it is perfect and will happen.  So just give me a minute and read my thoughts on it….

Another reason for these thoughts, a friend emailed asking what books would be good for a friend who only has three months to live, she has past that time but knows it is soon.  She has questions about Heaven, feeling not sure there is a Heaven, and needs answers.  This is reality isn’t it?   

As we live our lives here on planet earth we seem to get so busy with life we fail to remember we are not always going to be here.  We ignore the signs of aging and live without taking thought of our bodies decaying.  There's no doubt that one day we will be leaving this place and go to Heaven to live Eternally.  We as Christians, have that assurance of a final home and that our home is waiting with our name in the Book of Life, we can count on it!  One way or the other though the dying process or His return for us, those who are believers in Jesus Christ will go to Heaven.  Lately, the way things are looking I keep looking up thinking it will be any moment…

I don’t usually put things here for you to read that’s lengthy but this is worth reading, even if you have to come back later. It is a good idea for you to "cut and paste" it for your files.  Who knows who you might need to share it with in the future as they go through the loss of a love one or facing death themselves.  Father may use you to show them the way.   

God really has used Max Lucado to give us some light on this subject.  These words below are taken from his book Fearless.  A friend gave it to me as a gift, even though we had many miles between, we read it together. We scheduled a time to discuss what we had read, it was very powerful.  It is one you need to get for your library.  

                               The Fear of Life’s Final Moments

This is the promise of Christ: “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am” ( John 14:1–3 NLT).

He promised, not just an afterlife, but a better life.

We Westerners might miss the wedding images, but you can bet your sweet chuppah that Jesus’ listeners didn’t. This was a groom-to-bride promise. Upon receiving the permission of both families, the groom returned to the home of his father and built a home for his bride. He “prepared a place.”

By promising to do the same for us, Jesus elevates funerals to the same hope level as weddings. From his perspective the trip to the cemetery and the walk down the aisle warrant identical excitement.

Weddings are great news! So, says Jesus, are burials. Both celebrate a new era, name, and home. In both the groom walks the bride away on his arm. Jesus is your coming groom. “I will come and get you . . . ” He will meet you at the altar. Your final glimpse of life will trigger your first glimpse of him.

But how can we be sure he will keep this pledge? Do we have any guarantee that his words are more than empty poetry or vain superstition?

Dare we set our hope and hearts in the hands of a small-town Jewish carpenter? The answer rests in the Jerusalem graveyard. If Jesus’ tomb is empty, then his promise is not. Leave it to the apostle Paul to reduce the logic to a single sentence: “There is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to
Christ will be raised when he comes back” (1 Cor. 15:23 NLT).

Paul was writing to Corinthian Christians, people who had been schooled in the Greek philosophy of a shadowy afterlife. Someone was convincing them that corpses couldn’t be raised, neither theirs nor Christ’s. The apostle couldn’t bear such a thought. “Let me go over the Message with you one final time” (1 Cor. 15:1 MSG). With the insistence of an attorney in closing arguments, he reviewed the facts: “[ Jesus] was raised from death on the third day . . . he presented himself alive to Peter . . . his closest followers . . . more than five hundred of his followers . . . James . . . the rest of those he commissioned . . . and . . . finally . . . to me” (1 Cor. 15:4–8 MSG).

Line up the witnesses, he offered. Call them out one by one. Let each person who saw the resurrected Christ say so. Better pack a lunch and clear your calendar, for more than five hundred testifiers are willing to speak up.

Do you see Paul’s logic? If one person claimed a post-cross encounter with Christ, disregard it. If a dozen people offered depositions, chalk it up to mob hysteria. But fifty people? A hundred? Three hundred? When one testimony expands to hundreds, disbelief becomes belief. Paul knew, not handfuls, but hundreds of eyewitnesses. Peter. James.
John. The followers, the gathering of five hundred disciples, and Paul himself. They saw Jesus. They saw him physically.

They saw him factually. They didn’t see a phantom or experience a sentiment. Grave eulogies often include such phrases, as “She’ll live on forever in my heart.” Jesus’ followers weren’t saying this. They saw Jesus “in the flesh.” When he appeared to the disciples, he assured them, “It is I myself!” (Luke 24:39 NIV).

Five hundred witnesses left a still-resounding testimony: it’s safe to die.

So let’s die with faith. Let’s allow the resurrection to sink into the fibers of our hearts and define the way we look at the grave. Let it “free those who were like slaves all their lives because of their fear of death” (Heb. 2:15 NCV).  

....Let these thoughts sink in and as God give you the opportunity share it for encouragement..........

JESUS WILL TAKE YOU JUST LIKE YOU ARE AND LOOK WHAT YOU GET?...

John 10:28-30  “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

My memory takes me back to the Sunday morning of August 11, 1968. Phil and I was asked to attend church, we had not seen the need to get involved with this thing called church. Our lives were lived carelessly, to say the least. Church had not been anything that we wanted to go near. And further more, I had been hurt by some words someone had said about my lifestyle as a teenager, so I held that against all things that had any association with that community.  We “owned” our lives and lived it as we wanted.

But, one day our world came to a sudden halt, we hit rock bottom.  Over night we became two hurting people, hurting terribly with no one to go to or anywhere to turn, stopped right there and it was very messy. 

Our dear friends Lamar and Sandra reached out to us. I remember telling Sandra all about our collapsed lives and the pain we were feeling, we both had come to the end of ourselves.  On the other end of the phone, I heard her words.  She said, “I know what you need, you need to go to church with us Sunday and find answers”. That phone call was Saturday and the next day we were going to church, for the first time.  We had to find the “proper clothes” to go to church, kind of like when Adam and Eve realized they were naked and made their clothes, we felt just like them. Phil borrowed a suit from a neighbor and I put something together and we went to church for the first time. 

Rev. Harold Bowe preached the sermon, I don’t even know what it was about or what he even said, but at the end it was like his words were like a strong clap of thunder, a loud sound that got our attention.  It was as if we had been in a deep sleep and awakened to hear him say, “JESUS WILL TAKE YOU JUST LIKE YOU ARE”.  And to make it clearer, he walked out from behind the pulpit and to the edge of the platform, for a good picture for us to see.  Standing there, with a smile and his arms opened wide. It was like Jesus was standing there saying those words, using his mouth and arms, inviting us into The Kingdom of Eternal Life.  It was a Divine Appointment!

Moved by the invitation, we walked out from the fourth row and to the Pastor.  The first words out of my husband’s mouth was, “We don’t know who this Jesus is, but we want to know more about Him”.  Pastor asked one of the deacons, an insurance salesman named Dewey Martin, to show us this message.  He walked us around to the steps of the Baptistery; we three sat there and he showed us from the Bible how Jesus made it possible to have Eternal Life.  My husband and I made the decision to receive Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior that day.  It was the beginning of a New Life, a Never-Ending Life!  Little did we know how things would change, giving us hope.

Since that day 43 years ago, “That Jesus” my husband said we wanted to know more about has never let us down has never let us down and we did get what this verse says, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

If you stopped by while surfing the web and you are feeling like you could have written our story with your name in it, He can help you just like He did us. 

All I can say is.....

       “JESUS WILL TAKE YOU JUST LIKE YOU ARE”....

NEED ENCOURAGEMENT?.....

As a counselor in vocational ministry, it calls for giving out encouragement and helping others find answers for life situations, I use my spiritual gift of Exhortation as I am led. If I am not careful I have finely discovered that I will tend to get in the flesh and feel “Globally Responsible” for everyone from time to time. That’s when I know “Mary” is in charge and doing it her “own way”…Oh I hate it when that happens! It’s hard for me to settle down and stop. At some point I have to say, “Just Stoppit and Listen” before I have a train wreck.

I am going through a time right now that is causing me to get in a “Mulley Grub Mode”.

I have to say, “what’s going on?” and take inventory.  I know He is the ONLY ONE I NEED to ENCOURAGE me.  It usually happens when things are so still around me and I don’t have work to do, the old saying, "the idle hand is the devil's workshop".

So many times our son, Phillip will say, "mom you better use this time to rest up for what's next"  That means to me to Rest in Him during this time and rest in Spirit/Soul and Body.  I realize it is a time to refuel and “chill out” for the next task, but I still feel like I need to be “doing” something. Are you relating?...

The following scripture comes to mind about David when I feel this way.  You know he went through so much and out of those trials he wrote words that  encourage us today WOW that excited me to think how the Word of God is Powerful!

I think about the times he had to hide in “crags” in the mountains from his enemies. He had no one to talk to or encourage him but that was the times he ran to the Lord.  I’ve asked myself this question many a time,  “How did David Encourage Himself in the Lord?”

Here are some thoughts :

 “David Encouraged Himself in the Lord”

1 Samuel 30: 1-25

Key verse-6 “And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.”

There are times of stress, when our load seems heavier than we can bear. The task is more than we can handle. There can also be times of fear when our very sense of security is threatened. We all need encouragement from time to time. All of us, at sometime or other, face a crisis when everything seems to fall apart. There are times of discouragement, when things go wrong even when we are trying to do right. There are times of uncertainty, when we don’t know how things are going to turn out.

In all of those kinds of situations we need to be encouraged in the Lord. In the midst of great distress it says of David in verse six, “…But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.”

David had made many mistakes and yet we read God told Saul, David was “a man after His own heart“. This tells me if we make mistakes, walking “after the flesh” we can confess them to Father and turn from our ways, get back on track “walking in the Spirit”. 

"Walking in the Spirit" is living in the stream of the Living Water flowing getting to know God as David knew Him by letting Him lead us in our daily lives by spending time with Him in His Word and in conversation. He wants you to get to know Him.  It is one thing to have our sins forgiven and go to Heaven Eternally to be with Him, but it's another thing to put our foot to the pavement and live through the stressors of life successfully, but we can. Experience Him as you get to know Him as your Friend and Counselor....now! 

Learn from David's life he acknowledged God as Lord and walked in His guidance TRUSTING Him in times of darkness.  David lived in His presence letting Him guide each step. Let Father show you the way guiding you faithfully until your last breath.

I want to go sit still right now and hear what He has to say to me.  I know what I want to say to Him... I am in for the long haul but it will be Him not me that can do it…….