Just One Thing I Want You To Know

I am always with you- even to the very end of the age.
~Matthew 28:20

When the rains come             
When the storms move in
When the winds blow
And your faith wears thin
There’s just one thing
 I want you to know
 I will shelter you

When it’s so dark
When it’s hard to move
When you can’t see
Feeling your way through
There’s just one thing                                     

There will be a shelter to give shade from the heat by day and
protection from the storm and the rain. ~ Isaiah 4:6

I want you to know
I will be with you

When you’re scared you feel so alone
But I am always here
Though you can’t always see me
I’ll be the comfort in your fear

When it’s so hard
When no way seems right
When you don’t know
And no answer’s in sight
There’s just one thing
I’ll always come back

And I will answer you     
                                                       
The son will shine                                         
No matter what you do
Trust me and wait
I’ll help you breakthrough
There’s just one thing
I want you to do
Believe in me, I will

©Kimberly Burnette

Beautiful

How we look is so important to us, it’s what we’re taught from the time we are little. Being the right weight, conforming, being on-trend, having the right make up and clothes, looking like the characters in the stories we were read or in the movies we watched or the tv shows we followed. It has become so important in our culture that Photoshop “corrects” what isn’t acceptable in stars on magazine covers, leaving everyone with false ideas of what normal is.

The secular definition of beauty and the heavenly definition of beauty are quite different. I’ll tell you, I think the most beautiful women I know are my Christian friends. It has nothing to do with their body shape. It’s about an inner beauty from the heart and spirit that radiate from within. It shines in the depths of their eyes and on their faces; it makes them radiant. There is nothing quite like it. It is a beauty that will not fade with time, but I suspect will become all the more lovely.

When we go through the illnesses we have and as our bodies get older, we go through a lot of changes. It makes it all the more difficult to look in the mirror. But each one of us is made in the image of God, and He created us to be who we are, as we are. When I was growing up, I was one of the different ones. You know, everyone has the girls in class who have the same look. In my case, it was the girls with blond hair and blue eyes, with long hair parted down the middle, tight, bell bottom jeans that became indecent when they sat down. They all wore basically the same things, and if you saw them from behind, they looked the same. But everyone wanted to be them. Yet, there were many people who thought I was a pretty little girl. I never saw it. I was tall and skinny, with dark hair and eyes. I wanted to have more of a shape, yet others wanted to be skinny like me. None of us see ourselves as others see us.


Do we really want to be like everyone else? What defines you? Is it how your body looks, how well dressed you are, how many wrinkles you can cover? Or is it about who you are and whose you are? What do you want people to see when they look at you? A pretty woman who has a good figure, or a woman, or man, who radiates the love of God?

Lord, I pray that I become the woman that radiates the love of God. When I get caught up in my appearance, please help me to remember what true beauty looks like. Help me to remember who I want people to see when they look at me. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

A Love Such As This

How many of you have self-esteem issues? I've had them my entire life. It's hard not to living in today's world, where standards get higher and higher and many people have unrealistic expectations. I grew up being performance based. I just really thought if I could do things well, or appear a certain way, that I would be accepted and loved. I thought I had to earn it. It's what the world teaches isn't it? Reality hits again and again, for me it started rather young. And my God was always there, before I could even understand in what ways He was there.

I remember a movie that was quite a hit in the 70's called "Love Story." The famous line from Love Story was "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Well in real life that's not true. But, when you are loved with an Agape love, that only God himself can succeed at loving you with, that can be true.

You see my friend, there is nothing, absolutely nothing you will ever find like the love of God. It is unconditional, everlasting, eternal, nothing can separate you from His love. It is so huge it extends to the ends of the earth literally, it is beyond compare. "Agape" love is a Greek term that means charitable, sacrificial love. It is generous, it never thinks of itself. What kind of love would sacrifice a part of it's own self to save an ungrateful, miserable people from themselves, so they could spend eternity with a perfect Father? He sent His own son, made of flesh and blood to suffer for us, to take all of our horrible sin, past, present, future onto himself. Have you ever really thought about that, what it must have been like for the Father, for the Son?

This is a love that is not performance based; we do not have to measure up. When we fail, He is there to comfort us and give us strength to get back up and try again, and to redirect us. He never looks down on us, He sees us as we will one day be, not as we are right now. He sees the beauty in us that we cannot.

He knows our frail, weak humanity, He made us this way. God wants us to reach out to Him for what we need. He is happy to help us, and loves for us to acknowledge all that He does. He is my hope and my joy, everyday. Some days He is more my hope and others more my joy. It gives me such peace to know that I have Him always and that what He is preparing for me and for us, is beyond our imaginations. His love in unlike any love any of us has ever experienced. I pray that you will give yourself over to Him fully, and truly know the incredible love He has for you.

There may be people and circumstances in this world that challenge your perception of yourself, but know that you have God and He loves you more than you could imagine loving anyone. He would do anything for you. If you don't believe me, read it in the Bible, it says so!

Ultimate Forgiveness

It's so amazing to me when I hear the stories, the incredible stories of impossible forgiveness. Have you heard them?

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:31-32

There is the story of the little boy who's parents were missionaries. His father was among a group who were slaughtered by a tribe in Equador, yet he grew up to become one of their family. You can see a version of his story in the movie," The End of The Spear." and read more about it here: http://www1.cbn.com/end-spear-true-story

Then there's the story of the mom who's teenage son was murdered by another teenager. After 6 months, she regularly visited the boy in prison and brought him gifts. When he was released, she took him into her home, and later took him as her own son. To read more about this story you can go here: http://mariashriver.com/jack-kornfield-ive-been-thinking-the-heart-of-forgiveness/ 

How can people forgive in such extravagant ways when so many of us have trouble even accepting the relatively minor things that others have done to us? How can you step into someone's life who has hurt you so badly? Perhaps the answer lies at the cross where the ultimate story of forgiveness took place; the story that many gloss over or minimize with the commercial aspects of the Easter holiday. God sent His only son to live to teach, heal and deliver, only to be abandoned and tortured. And he took the most horrible punishment for all of our sins, and still asked God to forgive us for what was done to him.

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Colossians 3:13

Jesus isn't just the ultimate sacrifice, but also our example. And when we ask, and are ready to surrender, we are given the grace to be able to forgive things we could not imagine forgiving. I am one who has had to do that. By the grace of God only, for it was Him through me that did the forgiving. That day I was set free from things I didn't know held me captive. My whole life changed.

Forgiveness is an act that in most cases is never known by the person being forgiven. By forgiving, we break the chains of anger, sadness and bitterness that keep us held to the past, and unable to move forward. A counselor once described unforgiveness as going through life feeling like you are juggling balls or carrying a heavy ball and chain all the time! How very exhausting and distracting that is! When we refuse to forgive, we put a roadblock in our own way to true repentance as God tells us more than once in scripture that we must forgive in order to be forgiven.

 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:14-15

I pray that you can meditate upon and reach out to God to help you forgive and be free and then experience the peace that knows no understanding.

In Hindsight

Thirteen months is a long time right? I think it is. Thirteen months is how long it is since my husband's store closed and he was out of a job. Thank God he is part of a union! He was guaranteed a job, so he was reassigned to a part time job 90 miles away. He made enough that it didn't pay to get a temporary job waiting for a job where we lived and that is how we lived for quite a while. Meanwhile, the roof fell in. Not just figuratively as in everything seemed to go wrong, but literally as in part of our roof just fell in! Not only did it fall in, but because it was due to a faulty repair of the people who owned the house before us, our homeowner's insurance did not cover it. My health got worse, we had family illness to deal with, pipes burst, you name it and it happened.

We prayed and we prayed. People would say "I'll pray for you" and "You're in a hard season," and being the Christians that we are, we just kept going, sucked it up and had occasional meltdowns. Thank God we have our faith! What this "hard season" did for us was to bring us closer to God in a way we haven't been before. It made us focus on Him in new ways. And more than anything, it made us realize what is truly important.

When jobs didn't work out, and the savings was just about gone, we felt times of weakness and despair. Where was God? Why hadn't He answered? What did He want from us? Questions swirled around in my head. As my faith was worn down, and my strength became weakness, the most incredible thing happened. I was lifted in a way I hadn't been in a long time. I surrendered completely and was functioning fully in God's strength, feeling a renewal of hope and joy. I would wake and He would replenish my cup. He would fill my emptiness. I did not realize the striving I had done until I had no energy to strive with. Sometimes we need to get to that place of desperation to give it all to Him!

Are you in that place of need and desperation? I invite you to get on your knees and lay it down to the One who will take it and make You new. Even if you have done this before, you can do it again. You are so loved, and the Lord wants to give you the best of Him. Look at the ultimate sacrifice He made of His own son for each of us! You can trust Him with it all, and in return receive the peace than knows no understanding. I know I did.

And regarding the job and my health: my husband's company created a new full time position for him that wasn't there. I had surgery and am doing better than I have been in a long time, and the roof is no longer falling in! God is so good, and He uses everything for the good!