Free As The Birds

For those who may be feeling their lives don’t matter to anyone, not even themselves, I can say with complete assurance, YOU DO MATTER. 

Whatever troubles have caused you to think like this, be they physical, mental, relational or otherwise, please know that there is always someone who cares.

There is someone who knows the circumstances that brought you to this point in your life. There is someone who knows your thoughts and feelings about it and wants to turn it around for you now.

Didn’t God say, “ I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly…..”?

Didn’t God promise to set free those who are held captive by their circumstances, sick, fearful, anxious, depressed and have abandoned all hope?

God is crying over you. He sees you and wants to help you. He makes it so easy for us, in whatever circumstance we find ourselves in, to give it all to Him.

Just simply ask Him to come into your life and change it for ever. You will be surprised how simple, how soon and how transforming it will be.

God loves you.

 John 10:10

Luke 4:18

Imagine someone coming to you and saying, “Come quickly, the Supermarket in town is giving everything away free for ONE day. “ “I don’t believe it”,  you say, “It’s impossible, they wouldn’t do that.” 

Later, your friends call and say, “Look at all these free goods we've received from the Supermarket today, you should have come!” You start to say, “But I didn’t know that it was true…..I thought it wasn’t possible”, but by now you know you should have listened.

Has anyone ever told you about God? Has anyone ever said that God is real, that His gifts of love, peace, health, freedom, happiness, pardon, eternal life and much, much more are free to those who believe what they have heard?

God’s gifts are not free for just one day, they are free FOREVER. From the very moment of your decision to believe in God He will shower you with limitless goodness and those gifts are yours forever.

Is it not worth laying aside your own thoughts and opinions just for a moment?  Just long enough to consider the reality of God. It's an important moment and your decision to accept God and his unending goodness will be one you will never regret. Your only regret will be that it took you so long to do it.

ROMANS 11: 29

Turning The Tide

Life isn’t always lived on an even keel. Many of us have experiences that would have us leaning over so far that we feel we will never recover enough to stand upright again.

When this happens where do we put our hope or trust? Maybe we have supportive family members, or doctors, or just really good friends who help to take the strain. But sometimes even those wonderful people cannot fully understand what we need. 

In Jesus we have the most perfect of friends. The greatest lifter of our spirits, companion in our loneliness and healer of our bodies. He holds the keys waiting to unlock our prisons of guilt, fear, anxiety and depression and, once the door is open, we will never be alone again.

The above photo shows boats that have fallen over when the tide went out. Some need the pier for support. Some just lie helplessly in the mud. 

Just as we know for certain that the tide will come in again and re-float the boats, we can also know that Jesus can flood our lives with His love, compassion, healing and whatever else we need to live buoyant lives again.

Ask Jesus into your life today and be assured that, whenever you feel that you are left high and dry by your circumstances, He will turn the tide for you and lift you from the mud.

Psalm 34: 4 (Click link)

Just As He Was

I recently wandered around the local flower park with my camera and was so pleased to see a blackbird scuttling in and around small bushes and budding bulbs. It was beautifully black. So very black in contrast to its yellow beak and the yellow around its eye. It seemed quite tame and posed on a low wall while I tentatively clicked hoping to get a well focused shot in the cold wind.

At home I transferred my photos to the computer. I thought the photo had come out well and gave it a little extra enhancement. I was so thrilled with the loveliness of this plain black bird that I failed to notice at first that it's beak was dirty where it had been poking in the wet soil for worms. I thought about cloning out the dirt with Photoshop so that it's beak would be perfectly yellow and the photo would look better, but I couldn't do it. This lovely bird had allowed me to see that picking at the ground for food was all part of its own special life and I had captured that.

Then, I thought, why do we feel that we can't go to God or ask Him into our lives unless we are faultless and clean? We hesitate to call on Him for anything thinking we won't be heard or answered as we haven't been the person we erringly believe he wants us to be. We are so acceptable to God even with dirty hands and unscrubbed minds. He wants us to communicate with Him regardless of all our flaws and shortcomings. He takes us as we are and with one little wipe of His redeeming love he makes us clean.

The blackbird was just being a blackbird with his little dirty beak. He didn't ask me to wait until he washed his face before I took the photo. God knows what our lives are like. He knows we get dirty sometimes. Don't wash for Him, don't cover up or Photoshop the mess off. He's already seen it and, guess what, He still loves and wants us. His acceptance of us is without question. He waits eagerly to show us what real love and acceptance is. 

Below is a link to a wonderful version of 'Just As I Am'.

Click for Video 'Just As I Am'.