A Prayer of The Heart

     A prayer from your heart is a true connection to God. It is a pure connection from deep down within your soul. When you pour out your heart to God with all sincerity he will listen to you. Psalm 145:18 " The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth." Psalm 44:21 "Would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart." God will know if our prayer was sincere for he knows what is within of our heart. 
     In this sincerity of prayer we show him our true self. God knows our hearts maybe that is why he continues to let the sunshine and the rain fall. He sees past our imperfections and sees a people who can be better. In our failings and vulnerabilities, God continues to show us his mercy and love by helping us.
     When we are at a low point in our life we will say a heartfelt prayer. When we are at a low point, we will asked for God's intervention. In this time of need even a wolf will become a sheep in need of a shepherd.
     Maybe there is a sheep inside of all of us and under certain conditions it appears. A sheep that God sees and loves. God waits patiently for people's hearts to soften and his flock to form (2 Peter3:9). In their prayer's he hears their voice and answers them according to his will. In our time of helplessness, we are meek and our minds are open for any type of help. We cry out to God and he listens. He sees our frailties and our mortal condition and shows us his mercy. His showers down upon us his undeserving forgiveness and love. 
     A simple prayer from my heart I will pray to God. In all due humility and respect I will bow my head low. A prayer of thankfulness for all that he has done. I am thankful for his mercy and kindness. He is our heavenly Father and we are his flock, like lost sheep we will always have need for his help. "Heavenly Father I pray for forgiveness of our sins and please continue to watch over us and protect us. Thank you for your love that you have shown us. Keep us safe from evil and help us resist temptation so that we do not go astray. Thank you for listening to us and answering our prayers. My we all stay as sheep in your sight so that you can shepherd over us and leads us out of our troubles. In Jesus Christ name I pray, Amen."

A Bearer of Light

      Nathan's Hale famous words "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." I would like to go further and say "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my God." 1 John 4:8 "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." God is love and I would die for him a thousand times over to keep love alive in this world. Never do I want love to disappear from our world. A world without love is a world full of hopelessness and despair. Without love within our hearts, fear will take over and fill our world full of violence and death.
     What can I do to save our world from itself is to carry the light of our Lord within my heart and never to let it go. Jesus said to us in Matthew 5:14-16 "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." I carry the light of our Lord within my heart and I want to share that love with others. I will not walk a dark path doing evil because I love the feeling of the light within me.
     Why do people attack verbally and physically the light bearers of God? It is total insanity to me. The light bearers shine the love of God upon this world. They walk a righteous path, doing good works and preaching about loving each other instead of hating. Colossians 3:12-15 "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."
     Yes I am willing to lay down my life for all the good things that God represents. I cannot see in the dark nor can I live in the dark, I must have light to live. I want to live in a world that has compassion and kindness. I want all of us to live without fear. I want love to rule over our hearts so to have peace and security within our lives. I will continue to be a light bearer for our Lord in order that one day to live in a better world. I will continue to serve the God of love until my last day.

Our God is our Savior

     When you are living your life, you can lose your way.  You can lose your sense of purpose. You can become so tired that it feels like all you are doing is watching time pass you by. You do what needs to be done but the joy is not there. You do care to what is going on around you however you lack the interest and the motivation to do anything. You are at a lost to what to do because you have veered from your course and from the source of your very existence. It is the source that brought you your happiness and joy. It uplifted you when you were down. It gave your life meaning and hope. The source that I am talking about is from God himself.
    How many times do we get lost in life, many I believe. We may know a lot about the Bible and our hearts are for God however we will still lose our way sometimes. God will still need to seek us out so to bring us home. Our human condition is weak and we need God as our strength. When we find ourself separated from him our life begins to have little joy or direction. Without God in our lives our life's meaning will become increasingly cloudy as time goes by. We will go into a slumber state of mind until we seek him out again.
     Over and over we will repeat our error. We do not have to be to hard on ourselves. We are just imperfect human beings trying to do our best. We need forgiveness and understanding more than judgement and punishment. We need God in our lives to guide our way. We need his love. We need his light so to see through the darkness. Our God is our savior, we cannot live our lives without him. Lost we are without him but with him we are saved.

Isaiah 12:2 "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation."
Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
Psalm73:26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 

I Am More

     Sometimes life can seem overwhelming. Our anxiety increases with the added stresses to our life. We can become depressed and even begin to feel a little hopeless in our situation. It can feel like your mind is surrounded in darkness and you cannot find a direction to go in. In this time of my own mental confusion, I realize something about myself I am more than my overwhelming condition. I am more than my weaknesses. My mind may feel that I am drowning in a sea of darkness but I can feel somehow that my spirit is still strong. My spirit is telling me that I am more than what I am feeling. It tells me that I am not defined by the troubles that I am facing. It says I am more greater than the sum of all my problems.
     In my sea of trouble I can see all I have to do is to swim upward toward the light to feel free again. It seems to me that this world has a way of producing a fog of darkness that surrounds the mind making it feel depressed and hopeless. You can become lost in it and it becomes a struggle to just live your life. I know it's a mental condition but sometimes I feel like it is more than just that. It blocks out your happiness and joy it makes you feel that life is not worth living. It feels like it's something evil that is trying to block out all the light of hope from reaching you.
     When my mind is surrounded by a darkness I struggle with it for a time and then some light breaks through. When I am in this depression all my thoughts turn inward on my mental suffering but when I focus upon God my thoughts move outward and God's Holy Spirit have always move the dark clouds away. He had rescued me out of this mental condition so many times I have lost count however I have gathered much insight through my suffering but I rather be well than to suffer.
     It says in 1Corinthians 6:19 that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit whom you have from God. Romans 8:9 "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him." I feel because I have the indwelling Spirit of God within me the dark clouds that sometimes surround my mind can never totally take control. I can always break free with God's help. 
     I am more than my problems for the Holy Spirit of God dwells within me and with his help I can manage my problems. They cannot break me for his spirit is there to strengthen me. I do not lean on my own understanding but on the wisdom of God. He has shown me that I am more for I have his spirit to guide my way.
     

Troubled Times

      Troubled times are upon us. Matthew 24:6-8 "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that that you are not alarmed, for this must must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of the birth pains." All these things must occur before the second coming of Jesus Christ.
     Many men and women are becoming more disobedient to God and are not following his teachings. Matthew 24:12 "And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." The people who are not obeying God are acting without any restraint like the people in 2 Timothy 3:1-5 "But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people." Because of their disobedience to God their love will grow cold and their heart will become hardened. These people will become more violent and bring war and death into our world.
     We can still have hope in these trouble times by keeping our faith in God and believing in his words and promises. A day will come when our Lord and Savior will return and bring a lasting peace to our world. Isaiah 2:4 "He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." Matthew 16:27 "For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done." Revelation 21:3,4 "And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."
     

The Importance of Touch

      When we were babies we depended upon our parents for all of our needs. Our parents held us and touch us in order to care for us. Touch played an important part in our development. We bond through physical touch. When you engage in pleasant touch, like a hug, your brain releases a hormone called oxytocin. This makes you feel good and firms up emotional and social bonds while lowering your anxiety and fear.
     There is a medical term for a lack of touch it is called Touch Starvation. According to WebMD Touch Starvation is a condition that happens when you don't get as much physical touch as you're used to or any at all. Some people experienced it during the pandemic while social distancing but it can happen with any lack of physical touch. We need the human touch because it can help regulate sleep and digestion, build your immune system, and help fight infections. When you don't get enough physical touch, you can become stressed, anxious, or depressed.
     According to WebMD it says you can fight Touch Starvation even when you can't physically interact with other people. You can video chat which lets you visually interact with others. Online exercise will help you to interact in a social setting which may make you feel less lonely. Interacting with pets is a form of touching that could ease some touch starvation symptoms. The article said that studies show that oxytocin levels peak in dog owners when they caress their pets.
     Dacher Keltner a university professor of psychology said, "Touch is the fundamental language of connection' "When you think about a parent's child bond or two friends or romantic partners, a lot of the ways in which we connect and trust and collaborate are founded in touch." In a survey 40,000 people from 2 countries took part in describing touch. The three most common words they used were "comforting", "warm" and "love".
     Touch increases our feelings of well being in social environments. When we feel that we are anxious or in danger a kind touch can reassure us that we are not alone. When we are going through a deep sorrow a hug from a friend can make us feel better. Your child who hugs you can make you feel loved. During a team sport a touch from a team mate can make you feel that he has your back. Touch also could be a pat on the back, a handshake, a high five or a friendly hug, we feel the need to reach out to each other and touch. Human beings are a herd species and we need to feel connected and touch is a form of connection that bring us closer together. 

He Rescued Me

     As a child I lacked a father figure. My father was a alcoholic lets say he was just absent from my life even though he was around. My mother was just the opposite she was attentive, loving and kind. She had a bible study once a week at the house and I would sit and listen to them talk most of the time. It was there where I learned about a heavenly Father who look over his children in a loving way. I was immediately drawn to the conversation for a loving father is what I was lacking in my life. I began to study more about this heavenly Father and how he care for his children.
     By studying the scriptures, I found that our Father who is in heaven is a God of love (1John 4:7,8). A God who watches over us and protects us from harm (Psalms 121:5-8). A God who provides for us (Phil 4:19) and a God who listens to us (Jer. 29:12,13). He was everything that I could want from a father. So I began my journey to know more about him so to become closer to him and him to me. He became my father figure that was missing from my life. He was my role model to which to follow and to learn from. He gave me hope and meaning to my life. Where there was fear there is now peace. Where there was darkness there is now light. He rescued me with his love.
     I told you this story not to draw your sympathy or pity. I told you this story to give you hope that whatever you are lacking in your life God can fulfill. Life can be hard and we can become broken inside but God can fix us and make us whole again if we let him. He can and will rescue you if you call out to him. Your are his child and he is your loving Father who cares for you. Your suffering can end if you lay down your burdens upon him. Jesus Christ who is the image of God (Col.1:15) said these words in Matthew 11:28-30 "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."