REFLECTIONS
Hello everyone. I hope you have been blessed by posts on this blog. Today, I’d like to reflect on how much God has blessed me. Too often, people whine and complain instead of being thankful for their mere existence and how God has deemed them his special creations of the universe.
First, and foremost I praise God and honor Him for who He is—the great I AM. Anyone who exists should thank Jesus, the second person of God, for speaking us into existence. I acknowledge God as a vital necessity in my life as it is written in Jeremiah 29:13 Amplified version and know that in Him, I live, breathe, and have my being.
I thank God for giving me such a wonderful body in which I have a brain by which He has given me the ability to know Him. And He has spoken His word through inspiration to His anointed saints. And this has resulted in our having His Operations Manual for life which we call the Bible. It is God-breathed and good for instruction, discipline, and correction for the man of God so that he will become fully developed and be able to accomplish God’s will according to His purpose. This is written in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17.
I also thank God for His grace (unmerited favor), His mercy, and of conceiving and implementing His Plan of Salvation for man by which we believers can escape perdition and praise and worship Him in His eternal kingdom. And this was made possible by his unique son Jesus. Had it not been for Jesus (God’s Son, second person, and Living Word) shedding his blood and taking on himself all of our sins, we would be lost and condemned. We would not be able to stand before God (and would appear as filthy rags) because God can not and will not associate Himself with sin. But, because of what Jesus did as the Father’s Supreme sacrifice, we now can with confident assurance approach the throne of grace with our requests. [Hebrews 4:15,16) The amazing thing is that God the Father put Jesus at the heart of His grace. So, by receiving God’s grace, we get Jesus-the co-creator of everything that is [John 1:3) and the divine power that goes along with that.
If we make Jesus Lord of our lives, we are blessed with many things including being children of God and having the ability to be overcomers in this world [, Rev. 12:11] and the ability to do anything through Christ who strengthens us [Phi. 4:13] and even being able to rebuke the devil [James 4:7] and [1 John 4:4]. We have been blessed by approximately 2000 of God’s promises and the confidence of knowing that God doesn’t lie [Num. 23;19], and He will go that extra mile to protect the integrity of His word [Isaiah. 48: 9-11 Amplified].
I could go on and on, but in a nutshell, God is my All in All and I trust Him. God has blessed me with a wonderful family for which I am forever thankful. He blessed me with two wives (now deceased) who gave me two gifts from God. They are my daughters Kamira and Dorie. They are the love of my life and the reason I keep on keeping on. I marvel at how they each have grown in grace and have paid attention to what I taught them in their tender years.
In addition to being blessed by their intelligence, they are loving, caring, compassionate, and empathetic souls and love life, people, and their dad. They both love me very much as I do them, and they show me respect and admiration by taking themselves out of the equation and focus on my health, and well-being-physically, mentally, and spiritually.
And I am the first to admit that I have learned as much from them as they have learned from me. It is a saying that a true friend is one that will tell you the truth. They both do, and I appreciate that. Some people refer to this as tough love. I receive their critiques because I know it comes from a good place. They don’t want me to be hurt or self-destruct. Knowing that I am in my twilight years, they want me to be around longer so we can enjoy more memorable moments together.
So, thank you my beloved daughters for all you have done for me, especially for loving me the way you have. You have kept your eyes on Jesus because you know that God chastens those who he loves. And so have you. God smiles on you for trying to imitate Christ who perfectly pleased the Father in thought, purpose, and action.
I encourage all of you who are pet owners who have experienced the loss of your pet to visit Kamira’s website Impurrfectlife.com. It is a wonderful and beautifully constructed website that will both inspire you and educate you. She initiated this blog after her beloved cat Dusty of 14 years passed away. Dusty was a special cat with the most loving attitude of any animal I have ever known. She was considered a member of the family rather than a cat. But Kamira can expound on that.
I would like to also thank God for all the wonderful saints He put in my life. They have added value to my life and at the same time have given me hope knowing that there are many good people on this earth, saints with values and conviction who submit to God. All one needs is to search and find them.
But one interesting thing is that birds of a feather flock together. I seem to gravitate to those saints who love the Lord. And as I grow in grace and get closer to the light, I recognize and acknowledge my faults and shortcomings and I pray to God asking His wisdom on how to work on them. But praise God, He is a God of second chances. And He is still working on me because I am a work in progress-an unfinished symphony. But as it is written in James 1:2-4, Amplified through trials and temptations it is an opportunity to prove my faith, and when I allow God to work on my steadfastness, patience, and endurance, God will make me complete, And this will enable God to send me out to do His will according to His purpose and not return to Him void as written in Isaiah 55:11.
So it will be my goal to listen more attentively to that small, inner voice in me which is His Holy Spirit, knowing it will always lead me to the truth. I will try to gain pearls of wisdom from life’s many seminars so that I might gain skillful and Godly wisdom expressed in Proverbs.
Attempt to be more Christ-like and be the aroma of Christ attracting people to God, and later in life you will have some warm and fuzzy memories upon which you can reflect.
In closing, I will leave you with one of my poems written from the heart dedicated to my daughters from my book Glory to Glory: A book of inspirational poems.
MY DAUGHTERS
With loving arms
They take me in
And not because
I’m next of kin.
They show the love
They have for me
Something no one
Need ever see.
They sense my hurt.
They feel my pain.
They give me hope
And keep me sane.
I give them
Eternal things that last,
Because they had to
Grow up fast.
Who are those ones
Of whom you talk
Whose actions seem
Just like thier walk
These are my daughters
Who indeed are rare,
God’s gift to me
And my answer to prayer.
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