When one of your grand babies is away from family for the first time and struggling, what’s a Gramma to do?
Send them cookies of course.
Gramma’s cookies are good for what ails ya.
No matter what’s happening in the world, they can warm up a kids heart.
And hopefully, even with miles in between, help them to feel the love.
Until next time …
*
Hear what?
The voice of god.
This topic comes up so frequently in conversation.
I’m no expert,
but I have made some observations and asked some questions.
I’ve gotten some great answers,
and been quite bewildered by the answers of others.
Here’s what I think.
I believe God is always speaking.
Always.
I am just not always listening.
Sometimes I think I am listening,
only to find later how much I missed.
OR
I do not understand the manner in which He is speaking.
These two observations made me want to find a better way of hearing.
It’s been a long, long study,
but I’m learning more and more every day.
Questions…
How does God speak?
How do we know we are not just making it up?
What about all those coincidences?
If I connect the dots, will they lead back to Him?
What that one scripture that I simply cannot get out of my mind?
Can I HEAR His voice with my ears?
What about those “gut” feelings?
I am positive that you can add more questions to this list.
As many people as there are,
there are AT LEAST that many questions.
As stated earlier, I believe God is ALWAYS speaking.
Consider this thought –
What if –
Babies were born with the ability to hear and communicate with God,
and they lost that ability through neglect or lack of knowledge or just plain unbelief?
Perhaps the big people around them didn’t know this language,
or they chose not to believe it if they did know.
Could be?
If we spend time each day getting to know God and His Word,
then our minds will become renewed.
Slowly, over time,
our thoughts will become more like His.
We will learn through His Word about His character.
We will learn through His Word His expectations.
We will learn through His Word that He LONGS to communicate with us.
We will learn through His Word the “sound” of His voice.
My sheep hear my voice and they know me.
The voice of another they will not follow.
John 10:26 -28
(That’s another couple of posts all by itself!)
When we spend the time,
We can be fairly certain that we are not making it up.
He is Faithful to watch over his Word to do it
Jeremiah 1:12
Do your thoughts align with God’s Word?
Do your thoughts align with the promises He has already written for you in His Word?
If so,
you can be pretty sure He’s been speaking to you.
Somehow.
In the late 80’s there was a program called “Perfect Strangers”.
In it, the character Balki was always saying “What a co-in-o-dink!”
He meant coincidence of course.
Well, I do not believe in them.
I choose to believe that it is God’s way of connecting the dots for our lives.
Look back on some things in your life.
Things that in no way go together,
but in the end,
the dots connect to the next big thing that God had for you.
He’s talking to you.
Are you listening?
Is there a verse that you have read that just will not let you go?
One of my biggest ones; Psalm 139 of course.
but especially verses 13-16-
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Oh yeah!
I’m NOT a mistake!
God’s voice,
God speaking to me,
will always make me know that I have worth and value.
I HAVE heard the audible voice of God.
This is not so common,
but I believe that God uses whatever it will take to get us to listen.
In the circumstance I was in,
I am so glad He spoke,
no,
He yelled!
People tell me that God wouldn’t yell.
In my case He yelled “SHUT UP!”
(He would never say that!)
Well He did.
It WAS the only way I would listen.
It made all the difference in the outcome.
My husband has heard His voice audibly as well.
If he hadn’t listened,
we could have been burying our daughter due to a strangers foolish mistake.
I’ve had experiences where my insides just didn’t settle well in a given circumstance.
Some of those unsettled times I have not paid attention,
and later paid the price for “not listening”.
By the same token,
Some I have taken to heart,
listened,
and in the end seen exactly the pit fall Holy Spirit was trying to keep me from.
God was speaking to me.
In my gut.
I choose to believe that He uses all these ways and more
to communicate to a world that He so longs to interact with.
To SPEAK to us.
To build relationship with us.
To love and to bless us.
I have a little story I’s like to share with you on this subject
I have permission to do so.
My friend and I were talking a while back about this very topic.
We were talking about the fact that we want to teach our children and grand-children
how to hear God in whatever way He chooses to speak.
Recently she was sitting on her front porch,
She was enjoying the sights and sounds and smells of the beautiful fall here in the mid-west.
She spends her quiet time there.
Encountering God and listening for His voice.
On one day,
her not quite pre-school age daughter came to join her.
She was very quiet,
and after a bit her mom was going to speak to her,
and she put her little finger to her lips and shushed her mom.
A bit shocked,
mom asked why?
To which the little replied,
“I think I hear God talking.”
So of course mom asked,
“So what do you think He’s saying?”
To which the little answered.
“Chirp, chirp.”
A heartwarming story to be sure.
A surprising answer from a babe.
Purity.
Sweetness.
A complete lack of guile.
A heart ready to HEAR what God has to say.
—————-
Fearfully and wonderfully made
*
After my mom and dad were divorced, and after my grandmother died, my grandfather came to live with us.
He needed to be needed and we needed the financial help. Two problems were solved at the same time.
I didn’t have much to say to him, but I always liked having him around. He didn’t say much, but he didn’t yell or hit me either. Ours was a quiet relationship.
There was one question however, that he would always ask me.
I truly never understood why he kept asking the same question over and over.
I never asked him why he kept asking.
I always felt shamed by my dad whenever I asked questions.
Just one simple, confusing question.
“Are you a good girl?”
So here’s the story.
Mom had to work to feed all of us, and she worked hard. She worked long hours to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, even with grandpas’ help.
I was just about eleven or twelve then with lots of free time on my hands.
I made up for my dad’s absence with acting out in school. I never stood still and never ever stopped talking.
In my earlier years, I acted the same, that’s a different issue, but at least I got my school work finished.
Now I only did enough school work to get a passing grade.
My classmates never gave me any time without tormenting me about something.
This only agitated me more and brought on more activity and loud talking. Kinetically speaking, I was all over the place!
It seemed the principal’s office would be my second home.
My mom was at her wit’s end. She didn’t know what to do with me.
She called my bio-dad. He said he would be glad to help her out.
So I got all packed up and shipped off to his house.
The dynamic at this house was very different.
Although the number of people was the same, I noted closeness between the kids that I had not known with my own siblings.
Bio-dad had a girlfriend too. She seemed only about twenty or so to me.
Even at my age, I knew her to be very young as well.
It seemed odd to me, but I didn’t know why.
By the third day of my arrival, I knew that my time here was to be like nothing I had experienced before.
Stories of odd occurrences were told to me by the other kids that lived there, and a harrowing incident with a puppy took place.
These other kids, my half siblings, appeared nonplussed by the whole stream of events.
This all seemed quite normal to them, a part of everyday life.
I had to wonder what kind of a normal this was.
Little did I know that abnormal for me was about to get worse.
Early morning visits from my bio-dad were my new norm.
I would tremble and shake with the fear of his appearing, and his making me do things I did not understand and that caused me great pain.
I was a hopeless child in a circumstance I had no power to control.
In all the stories my half siblings told me, this one was not included.
I’ll never forget the words he said to me.
At sometime during my visit, an older half-sister of mine found out somehow that I was there, and she contacted my mom and told her to get me out of there.
I do not know what she told her exactly, but I didn’t stay there more than a month, but alas, it was already too late. The damage had already been done.
I had no understanding about what was going on, but at the same time felt guilt for leaving, or for being taken back out of that place.
The guilt was for the fact that even in my naïve little heart, I knew that the others would be back in line after I was gone.
I had no opportunity for a while to see my Grampa, but sometime later, when I did, there in the kitchen, by the frig, he asked me that fateful question,
“Are you a good girl?”
Instantly my eyes hit the floor between us.
I finally knew what that question meant, and I really wished I didn’t.
Has something taken place in your life that you were powerless to control?
Do you feel guilty?
Do you feel shame?
Do you wonder where God was?
Or why He allowed it to happen?
Of course you do. You would not be normal if you didn’t have these questions.
I have some things to say to you;
You are not guilty.
The enemy of your soul saw to it that you would be overpowered by evil.
The shame does not belong to you.
It belongs to the one that was party to such evil.
Know that God was there.
It’s a bit inconceivable and a bit maddening at first to realize that He
could have allowed it, that He knew about it. That it was not a surprise.
You can be mad at Him if you want.
He is big enough to take it.
Then you will have a choice to make.
When you’re done being mad, you can crawl up in His lap, and He will show you just how important you and all of your history are to Him, and to someone else in the future who will need your help.
OR
You can walk away mad, and perhaps someone else will not be helped because your voice, your special voice, was the only one their ears could hear.
God was in the same place when His Precious Son Jesus was crucified on the cross. God knew, and Jesus did too, that the future of countless many was at stake, at the moment of Christ’s torture and death.
Evil tried to overpower Him, but it could not win.
Significant Encounters 
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