By His Stripes!

Remember, Jesus suffered those stripes for our healing. We have no problem believing for salvation... and that once we are saved it purchases an eternity in heaven. But we have a harder time believing HE still heals. ..I tell you it is the same blood! Jesus suffered that whipping of his back...his flesh laid open down into the very marrow of the bone so every disease would be healed. Doctors say there are 39 major disease categories and that every disease falls under one of those 39.  Jesus was lashed 39 times. I guess he has it covered. Hallelujah!   I look to the blood that is on the mercy seat ...paid in full. I may not look healed and there are days I don't feel healed. ..But HIS WORD SAYS, BY HIS STRIPES WE WERE HEALED! GLORY TO GOD!  NOW BEAUTIFUL CHILD OF GOD. ...REST IN HIS FINISHED WORK. HE LOVES YOU!

Sovereign Walk

                                   It is great to know he is with us and close to those we love. That he sees no matter where we are and he sees all the hidden things. He sees when we hide in the secret place with him and he answers our prayers. He takes a supernatural healing salve to all our wounds and binds them up in the bandages of Heaven... holding us close to his heart while we rest in his unfailing love. Shall we weep? Yes.  Shall we mourn? For a season. Shall we rejoice? There remains a rest for the people of God, I tell you! I choose to wait upon him. I choose to trust in things that are invisible. He has put his hand upon me and I have chosen to trust! To realize that in all fleshly efforts at purity and right; like Job said, " I am vile, I will put my hand upon my mouth." No more pointing questions at God,  but acknowledging that he is Sovereign and that his ways are right. He has a plan, and though I don't understand the hardships, I yield to to the path, as I follow his lead. Surrendering ALL..., KNOWING that HE is faithful!                                                                                 __ Rosie

Valley of the Shadow

Recently, my mother went to be with the Lord. My father passed away over 19 years ago and I had the honor of being Mom's caregiver.

When dad passed it was from a sudden massive heart attack with no time for goodbyes. With Mom it was different. For the past year and a half, for the most part, it has been difficult day by day process...and even on the very last day of her life here, it was very hard to watch such a lover of life, fight with all she had to live even though it was time for her to leave.

In her last moments she still was able to smile that precious smile at the nurses who attended her.  I know she really didn't want to leave us. I also know that at some point she realized that God was wanting her to come home to heaven to be with him. I told her it would be okay for her to leave...that I would be alright....

Death has many faces.

I wondered at it this time.

I have stood by those I did not know and watched death take them. I have lost my dad and was called by a nurse from the ER to join my family in what would be remembered as the longest walk I would ever take to this day. I have stood beside the bedside of both parents-in-law and marveled at the supernatural strength that came to both of them in their journey home.

But with Mom...I wondered. I felt such a tearing away. I had so many questions....as if I had never faced death before. So many things unanswered. False hope...and despair. I would go to see her one day and she would be in bed asleep and I would expect to find her the way I had last seen her and I would go in and she would be in the dining hall waiting for me. Smiling and alert.....

It was hard. One of the hardest things I had ever experienced.

The past month...especially hard. December was her birth month. December, my daughter and her son's birthdays. One of her son's anniversary. It was Christmas. Her favorite holiday of all.

Daily I traveled to see her. Times when I would go in and she would be so sedated that her head was almost on her chest from drowsiness. I would watch as she began to refuse food and then as she rapidly went from feeding herself to having to be fed...until she finally could no longer swallow. I who had cared for her every need....was not able to do anything. I felt so helpless....so hopeless....so weak...and afraid. I realized that I was powerless against this and could do absolutely nothing to prevent her discomfort.

I watched and prayed for mercy.

We kept in touch several times a day. I went to see her every other day and visited at least an hour or two. We got her a cell phone so she could contact me anytime she was lonely and finally she called every morning after breakfast and again at suppertime. This is the only way she could remember to call me. But.......the late night phone calls from her ceased. The quality visits grew shorter. The days seemed longer. Day and night for over a year I have been awakened with a thought of...."will I get that dreaded call today?'

For some reason I believed that she would go in her sleep and I would get a phone call that she had left this world. But God had another plan. He decided that she would go with me, one of her sons and our spouses attending her.

God was gracious. He helped us to call all of her children and she mouthed the words I love you to each one of them and also to her brother the morning she left. But God's time for her to leave would not be long after.

My brother and his wife gave me a break so I could get some rest. I left and returned 3-4 hours later after having come home and slept awhile. When I got back, Mom was still struggling but my brother and his wife were so tired they left...but within 35 minutes afterwards, she took her last breath and passed through the veil into her eternal home.

I looked up and around....wondering..."are the angels here?" I saw her, that her breathing changed and I called to my husband..."Mom is getting ready to leave us." And there it was...her last breath....so easy... she breathed... her last.

I felt numb. I had my husband go out to get the nurse and they confirmed time of departure. And from that moment...the world began to spin.


I was able to sing yesterday. All alone in my dining room... I sang a new song....about the Valley of the Shadow... how the Lord has been faithful to me and how I love him. I can't even remember the words, but I remember the comfort of the Holy Spirit that wrapped all around me.

On January 31st it will be 1 month since Mom went to heaven.

A Woman Who Fears the Lord

"Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman that fears the   Lord; she shall be praised."  -Prov. 31:30

Last Friday night's Women's Ministry Meeting, I felt led of the Lord to share my heart about the subject above. I am going to attempt to share a few key-points here.

Favor's Deceit:

Beware of the deceit of favor's flattering tongue that may drip with the sweet words as honey and yet sour as soon as you yield to their
enticement.

 Dorian Gray enticed young virgins, entrapping them by his flattering tongue and Adonis like physique in Oscar Wilde's novel... The enemy of your soul knows just exactly who to send across your pathway to entice you from your relationship with your Lord. Let your affirmation come from God! Do not entangle yourself in the allurement of false lips...whose secret agenda is for their own fleshly gain. And once their trap is successfully laid and their evil web is spun around their target, they come in and take what they desire, only to leave their prey laying in a heap; paralyzed and dying. God has everything you are looking for. Let the Lover of Your Soul satisfy you at all times!

Beauty's Vanity

Guess what? No matter how you powder, pluck, nip, tuck, plump, lipo, botox; no matter how splendidly you dress...while obsessing in the mirror for hours, it is all going south!  Trust me! I have lived long enough to have realized the delusion of a "Fountain of Youth."

The men and women I have observed at the Nursing Home where my mother lives have taught me some life lessons. I know that at one time they were all little "Hotties"....but now....they are "Notties!"
The beauty that the Lord desires is that of a meek and quiet spirit. Kindness and gentleness that mirrors the heart of Jesus.

Fear's Praise

The children of the Virtuous Woman rise up and call her blessed. To rise up here means to, "stand up" and "blessed" means to shine. The Lord himself says that to have a reverential fear of the Lord, is to live a life of love and submission to His word and His will and to walk in obedience to the promptings of His Spirit.

I can envision how her children stand to defend and honor her. How they love her and rise up to help her in her old age. And when her body lays before them and her soul is with finally with God, they stand; honoring her memory; heralding her favorably for the beautiful woman and mother of God she had faithfully lived before them.

 I see her husband also, as he sits back listening with a satisfied look on his face; as his beloved wife an is honored by their children. He stands proudly to his feet and boasts of her in the gates.

Whether you are in the city or country, at home, work, school... No matter where you are... No matter whether you have earthly children or spiritual ones....(those you have influenced someway for Christ)...and whether or not you are married....(we are betrothed to the son of God...we are His bride)...If you have lived the life I have spoken of above and not allowed Favor's Deceit to entrap, or Beauty's Vanity to obsess...but you have lived in reverence to your Lord....you have Fear's Praise...and You are called "Blessed".  

So................Shine! Woman of God, Shine!!!

Who Knew?

Who knew you would capture my heart the way you do? 
Who knew your love would take my heart and make it new?
Who knew that you would be my lover and my friend? Be faithful to the end...Who knew?


Who knew that seasons would come and they would go?
Who knew that love would die and then be born?
Who knew that in the dark, I'd take your hand; you'd help me stand....Who knew?

Life has many twists and turns; there's good and bad, happy and sad...and then there's times when you lay wondering...how did my life come to this?
And as the world keeps spinning round; time passes swiftly and can't be found...the days of youth are passing too...Who knew?.....Who knew?

Who knew that I'd grow old with you and feel brand new?
Who knew that we'd find joy when there seemed none?
Who knew that together we would build our home?...Who knew?

Who knew today I'd cry; then laugh again?
Who knew there's some things we can't comprehend?
Who knew that simple trust is invisible power; that keeps us going this very hour...
Who knew? Who knew?

Life is full of unanswered questions, and things for which there's no comprehension...but I know...you'll be by my side. So I will walk and sometimes soar; and bow my knees before the Lord and thank him for another day or month or year...another smile...another tear....and sometimes I will just stand in awe....and ask once more....

Who knew?

Harlot & Pharisee Meet Jesus

 I read a book once... called the Bible. I saw where there was a woman who was caught in the very act of being a sinner...I read where there were Pharisees of the day just doing what they were used to doing....what they were commanded to do...before they had truly met JESUS personally....but that day....HE opened all of their eyes....sinner woman...and white washed saint.....Jesus got eye level with the sinner and wrote something.... and so powerful was the moment.....then He said to all of them....sinner woman...and Pharisee...."Let him who is without sin...Cast the first stone"....Their reaction? ....They dropped their stones to the ground at the realization that for all their keeping of the LAW....for all their trying...sin remained in their lives ....The woman? She received the message of forgiveness along with a mandate from the only one who was without sin...Who DID cast the first stone...so that all mankind could be free from all condemnation of sin...and yet with the mandate....which was the same as when he first spoke it to the woman....."Go, and sin no more!" For all the years I, like this woman, have lived as a forgiven sinner, there have been many who have fallen short of the glory of God and have worn the cloak of the Pharisee well...but truly inside was the scarlet robe of the harlot written in their fleshly hearts. I am a Christian not because there is any good thing in my flesh, but only because my sins have been washed away supernaturally by the blood of the Perfect Son of God....who said ..."Follow Me.... The trouble with us forgiven sinners? We often follow the desire in our fleshly hearts rather than the example to love as Jesus does. I am realizing the more I literally take an honest look in my own heart...I still see a stone...JESUS...THE ROCK of AGES...cleft for me....He still daily covers a multitude of sins by HIS LOVE. Bob Carlisle wrote a song a few years ago that said, "We fall down, we get up...and the saints become the sinners; who fall down...and get up." License to sin? NO!....but truth....that on our best day as forgiven sinners, saints, Christ-followers...or Christians...who try everything humanly to "do right"....we fall short. BUT Jesus never fails! I look to him who is the Author and Finisher of my faith. Change my focus to HIM...he shines His truth on my sin....I choose to repent; get up out of the dirt and Follow Him...doing the best I can not to sin that sin anymore..and try to make reconciliation and restitution to others when I realize I have sinned against them...Trusting NOT in my own ability to save myself....but in HIS FINISHED work on Calvary for me. I read a book once.....I met a man once...Jesus!

Gone to us...but not to God!

How can it be that she is gone? Gone to us...but not to God. She is holding his nail scarred hand just beyond the veil as she whispers, "I have run the race and I have obtained the prize and even though you cannot see me...I am here..with the Great Cloud of Witnesses who have gone on before...and we being dead to this world are ALIVE EVERMORE...through the great work of Jesus and the shedding of his blood. WE shall be reunited again! Where we will never more be separated...and OH, what a glad reunion day that shall be! "Fight the Good Fight...for with my eyes I have beheld the Great Hope...JESUS!..."Run, Children!...Run to Jesus! Run with this HOPE...Share it with others...and HOLD ON! Press ON!.....and don't ever you quit!