Crossroads - UPDATED

Wow. What a crazy week. We have had a lovely time. My grandfather is much better. My mom's sister has been up from Casper. My parents and her and my uncle all talked about what we could do about my grandparents living situation. Nothing really presented itself. But my aunt said that she needs to move from her apartment down in Casper before the winter and that they had just raised her rent $200 a month. In order for her to make ends meet she would need to start working full time at her job, which she really doesn't want to do because she is 67 years old.

She asks us to pray for her to see if it is the Lord's will for her to move up from Casper to Greybull so that she could be near my grandparents and look out for them and drive them around etc. So we prayed that if it was the Lord's will for her to move up here from Casper that the Lord would open doors for her up here and close the ones down in Casper. She knows that no matter what - she has to move from her apartment down there because the stairs get too icy during the winter and she has to carry her laundry down and with the raised rent - it just was beginning to seem that the Lord was already starting to close the doors down there for her.

Yesterday (Sunday on Memorial Day weekend) she got a call from the local counseling center. She had called them earlier in the week to see if there were any job openings - preferrably part time in her field. The doctor thinks there may be a position available for her and he set up an interview for tomorrow at 11am. Then an apartment that is a two bedroom - ground floor apartment with a washer and dryer in it may also be available that we were actually able to go see today. It is a very cute apartment and would only be $450 a month!

So it seems like the Lord is opening doors up here. Of course everything hinges on this interview tomorrow. My parents have decided to wait until after her interview before we head back to Oregon. We are thinking that if she gets the job, then I will go down to Casper with her and spend the next couple months with her to help her go through all her stuff (my forte) and help her with the move. I would be here with her until sometime in August and we would worry about how I would get back later. If she doesn't get the job - then I will head back to Oregon with my parents. So this crossroads in my aunt's life, may very well be a crossroads in mine. Of course - we know that these things are always ordered by the Lord. Should it be the Lord's will that she move up here and gets the job, I will stay with her for the next couple months. If it is not the Lord's will - then I will return home, with mom and dad. Which isn't really my home either - because I go where the Lord wants me to go and stay where the Lord wants me to stay. I have really known this week that it was the Lord's will that I was here on this vacation with my parents.

So after my aunt's job interview I will know if I head to Oregon or stay in Wyoming. I don't know what my internet access will be for either direction so you will just have to be in suspense until I will be able to get online and let you know which way I went. Sorry guys.

Please pray for my family, my aunt and my parents and my grandparents. That the Lord will continue to look out for us in Jesus name!

Blessings in Christ
Linda

Updated - they were unable to let my aunt know if she got the job so I am heading back to Oregon and we will play things by ear.

Butterfly Kisses

This email showed up in my inbox this morning and I thought I would share it with you all. It is from Gary Amirault from Tentmaker Minsitries -

"We often learn the most from our children. Some time ago, a friend of mine punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper.

Money was tight, and he became infuriated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the tree.

Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, "This is for you, Daddy." He was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found that the box was empty.

He yelled at her, "Don't you know that when you give someone a present, there's supposed to be something inside of it?"

The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said, "Oh, Daddy, it's not empty. I blew kisses into the box. All for you, Daddy."

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged her forgiveness. My friend told me that he kept that gold box by his bed for years. Whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each of us as parents has been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children.

There is no more precious possession anyone could hold.
-- unknown author

The world is full of little boxes filled with butterfly kisses if we would but look with the eyes of Christ deep into the hearts of God's children (young and old) all over the world. But we often allow the cares of this world to cloud our vision and therefore miss the thousands of blessings our heavenly Father has scattered along the paths on which we walk. Oh, the joy that would fill our hearts every day, if we could put off those nasty obstacles lodged in our minds...fear, insecurity, anger, bitterness, jealousy, resentment, prejudice, coveteousness, greed, pride, etc.

I had an experience with the Lord in which I walked this earth in perfect love for a few days. People of God, this world is truly a paradise, even today, if one can see with the eyes of His faith. Butterfly kisses around every corner of our walk sent from above from a Father who loves His children with more love than they are able to carry in their little mortal bodies.

Let us pray for perfect vision. Let us beg the Father of lights to be healed forever of those diseases which hinder our God-given vision that we may capture more and more of those butterfly kisses. I believe that the more we are able to capture these butterfly kisses the more the world will see Christ in us and that will set the world on a course of healing.

Let us today purpose in our hearts to give up a few more of those things which cloud our vision. Ask Him, even today to show you a box full of butterfly kisses. Ask Him to heal your eyes that you might not miss the ones He has planned for your tomorrows. It is time we, Children of the Most High, behold the Glory of our Heavenly Father. This world IS filled with His glory even this day...if we are able to see with the eyes of faith, the eyes of our Lord, Savior, and King...King Jesus." --Gary Amirault

Have a wonderful weekend my friends.
Blessings in Christ
Linda

Love Conquers All

Have you ever had the Lord be really obvious about something that He wants you to be working on in your life? Well, the Lord has really been showing me that I need to be more loving and less swordy.

Several of my favorite websites had postings on love and I had been thinking about it a lot but it took a close friend to say to me that I don’t always have to be wielding a sword, that I could concentrate on love more. She was right of course.

We have been driving a lot lately. There are a lot of miles between everything you may want to do in Wyoming so I have had a lot of time to talk to the Lord as I rode in the car. Yesterday we drove to Cody which is about an hour away. I told the Lord, I know I need to be more loving Lord. How do I do that Lord? Can you help me? Where do I start?

I realized that this is a giant in my life. And not the kind of giant you can just rebuke in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and it goes away. It was the 1st Corinthians 13 kind of love. Do I speak with tongues? Yes – but I don’t have love so I am sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Do I understand all mysteries and all knowledge? Well, maybe not ALL, but I don’t have love. Do have the rest of that stuff? Not quite but it doesn’t matter because if I don’t have love, I am nothing. I profit nothing. But most of all, without love, the Lord cannot use me.

We had Chinese food last night with my grandparents. My dad broke open a fortune cookie and put the fortune in front of me. “Love conquers all.” Yes Lord. I get it. I thought about the word study I did on the white horse rider a while ago. In Revelation verse 6:2 for “going forth conquering and to conquer.” That word conquer is actually the same Greek word that was translated overcomes all the times before. The text is actually saying “going forth overcoming and to overcome” and I never understood why they didn’t translate it that way. Love overcomes all.

Today my grandmother was making peanut butter cookies. She usually makes them twice a week because even now, they are my grandfather’s favorite. He yells from the other room, “Woman! I need to take another one of those pills.” My grandmother says, “Ok” and stops what she is doing to take a pain pill and some water to my grandfather. She pats him on the hand and smiles and comes back to putting little fork marks on the cookies. She never complains. She never gets angry. She never talks bad about my grandfather even though he is a difficult man. She is strong and steadfast.

That is love – the Lord says to me.

A man that I was close friends with at one point is in jail. He was in jail a while back and I wrote to him a couple times to send him words of encouragement and to let him know that I was praying for him. He had written me back to tell me that those letters really meant something to him. We have since had a fairly major falling out. For consciousness sake, we made up, but we never really talked to each other again.

Today, the Lord began to put on my heart that I need to write to him again in jail. I said, “Lord, we are not even friends anymore. I’m sure the last thing he wants is a letter from me.” Yet, there it was. The gentle insistence was there from the Lord for me to write him a card to let him know that I’m still praying for him. That is true, even though I felt I was praying for him as an enemy and not a friend – although I will not tell him that part. I said, “But Lord, he is a false prophet! I’ve even mentioned his false prophecies on my site!”

The Lord said, “Are false prophecies the unforgivable sin now?”

Hhmmm. No. Ok Lord, I will write him a nice card sending words of encouragement even though he probably hates me now.

That is love – the Lord says to me.

Love is laying down your life for the brethren. Love is forgiving and comforting the brethren so that they will not be swallowed up in overmuch sorrow. Love is reaching out without protecting yourself against possible rejection and betrayal. Love never fails.

Please pray for me to be more loving my friends.
Blessings in Christ
Linda

Elements of God's Word - Wind

My grandfather watches Fox News all day long, so I was watching it with him yesterday and saw all the horror and destruction that has been left in the wake of these tornados. One story in particular really made me cry. There was a boy who just graduated from high school, coming back from the graduation ceremony with his father and uncle in a truck, and the tornado sucked that kid right out of the truck through the sun roof. So far they have not found him. My mom came into the room to ask me what happened and I started to cry as I told her the story. There was another news story about a little two year old boy who was found. His head was split open and he had roof shingles embedded in his abdomen and his mother and sister were dead. My mind instantly made a picture of what it looked like for that little boy to have shingles sticking out of his little stomach. How awful. How incredibly awful.

Later I came online to hear person after person talk about how this was God’s judgment. I had just witnessed the Lord save my grandfather from certain death falling down the stairs and people are saying that My Heavenly Father pulled that kid out the sun roof and embedded roofing tiles in a two year old, not to mention killing all those people and destroying all that property. I lay in bed crying out to the Father, not believing it for a moment saying, “Lord, are they right? Is that really Your judgment?” The Lord showed me who pulled that kid out of the sun roof. It was satan.

I used to think that HAARP was the devil’s weapon that he was using to make hurricanes and earthquakes etc. But the devil doesn’t need man-made weapons in order to cause destruction and mayhem. He can use the wind anytime he wants. He is called the Prince of the Power of the Air for a reason. In Job 1:19 it shows satan’s handiwork – “And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, (Job’s children) and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

I have been doing a lot of study lately on false prophets and false prophecies and they all have one thing in common. They love to talk about God’s judgments coming on the land. In Matthew 24 Jesus said that there would be earthquakes and famines and pestilences etc. But Jesus never said that any of those things were God’s judgments. He said they would happen like birth pains and those things are happening like birth pangs – but this is satan’s realm. He is the thief that comes to KILL, STEAL, and DESTROY. Jesus came so that we could have life and have it abundantly. He also came to destroy the works of the devil.

The problem lies in wrongly dividing the Word of God again. I know there will be those that will not be able to receive this, and I am truly sorry about that. The false traditions of God’s wrathful judgments are just too embedded in our belief system for some. Under the Old Testament covenant the children of Israel had real battles against real demon-possessed people and nations. But satan’s realm and his hordes of demons were for the most part concealed. Good and bad were all attributed to God, and God allowed that. The Old Testament is important because it was all written for our learning. But now we are under the New covenant of Jesus Christ. Jesus in his ministry revealed satan and his kingdom. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. This is a spiritual battle against satan and his evil kingdom.

Jesus came to proclaim a Heavenly Father that was a God of love. I know our churches today have watered down the gospel so much that God is made to look like a wishy washy God of love who never corrects His kids. God does correct people and He does judge people, but His judgment is always corrective. God HATED perverted judgment in the Old Testament and still hates it.

Satan has succeeded in not only causing destruction in the form of tornados and floods and earthquakes in this country – killing as many people as he can and destroying as much as he can – he has also succeeded in getting an extremely large amount of believing Christians to believe that God is the one who has done it. After reading this post, there will still be those that will believe it, and will think that I am the one who is wrong. It’s not about me.

God is only just and righteous and his judgments are always corrective. God so LOVED the WORLD that He gave His only begotten Son. It’s not that He so loved the elect. While we were YET SINNERS Jesus died for us. We are all sinners, even those of us who are believers and have been washed by the blood of Jesus. If we say we don’t sin we are liars.

If you had a child who was throwing rocks at cars, you might go out and spank your child. Let’s say the neighbor kid was throwing rocks too, do you go out and beat that kid to a bloody pulp? No. Did God suck that kid out the sun roof? I tell you NO. Did God embed roof tiles in that little kid? I tell you NO. Did God judge America yesterday? NO! Satan is out doing what he does best. DESTROYING. KILLING. BLAMING GOD AND MAKING GOD LOOK LIKE HE IS UNLOVING.

I know there are those people that believe that anytime America moves against Israel God sends a calamity. Well, there are plenty of earthquakes, floods and tornados going on every day when nothing is going on between Israel and America. What about that? Once again, they are wrongly dividing God’s Word. But people are going to believe what they want to believe about that.

God IS Love. God is about saving people not destroying them, no matter what the false prophets may be saying. God’s will is for ALL men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. There will continue to be earthquakes, floods and tornados. It is not God that is doing it, although He is the one that will be blamed for it. Understand who the real enemy is and who it is that we fight against. Satan.

Please pray for those in satan’s destructive path and for the people who have to rebuild their lives. Pray that they can understand the Truth about our Heavenly Father. Pray that they can understand God’s redemptive plan for the world through Jesus Christ our savior. Pray that Jesus will crush satan under His feet soon.

Blessings in Christ
Linda

Old School - UPDATED

My grandparents are both 93 years old, but they are fiercely independent and have all their mental faculties. My grandfather would be a curmudgeon if he wasn’t so dang funny. My grandma never misses a beat when she says, “It’s a good life if you don’t weaken!” My grandfather calls her, “woman” and towers over her 4 foot two frame. But they have been married for 70 years now. Grandma says, “I never thought I would be married for 70 years,” and Grandpa says, “yeah, well it was touch and go there for a while.” It’s so funny because we all know there wasn’t any touch and go for them.

Around the dinner table my grandfather is telling us a story that he remembers from when he was six or seven years old and attending a Catholic elementary school. He says the nun there told them to save their nickels and dimes for the pagan babies. My grandfather said he didn’t know what a pagan baby was, but he knew that he wanted one! He saved up till he had fifty cents. He wasn’t sure how he would care for a pagan baby, so he outfitted a cardboard box that he kept under the bed. He was disappointed that those pagan babies never did show up at his school.

Yesterday as my mother and grandmother were sitting outside enjoying the smell of the lilac trees, my grandmother confided that it is very hard for them to keep living in this house that they have lived in for 30 years. My grandmother has to go down two flights of stairs to do the laundry and the only shower they have is downstairs, so my grandfather has to go down the stairs to have his daily shower. When we got to my uncles house in the next town over, they were telling us that some of the walls in grandma’s house are literally crumbling down. There is also an actual oil well underneath their house that bows the floor in one of the bedrooms. No one thinks they can sell the house; they will just have to bulldoze it when they are done with it. I said, can’t they bulldoze the house, set up the oil well and live off the proceeds? No, the laws in this state are that you can own the land but not the mineral rights. I thought, yeah, of course. Jerks.

Later this morning we were supposed to go pick up my grandparents and drive to Cody for lunch and shopping. But when my grandma came home from church and found my grandfather sitting in his chair, he told her he had fallen down the stairs. He was able to get back up the stairs to sit in his chair, but he was hurting pretty bad and she was going to take him to the hospital. We haven’t heard yet what the doctor said. My grandfather may just be convinced now that they need to move. There are some senior apartments in town that are based on your income. My grandma would like to move there, but they have so much stuff in their house that would need to be gone through. I’m wondering if this will be my next assignment. I guess we shall see.

Please pray for my grandparents.

I’ll check in again soon.
Blessings in Christ
Linda

UPDATED - Who ever heard of a 93 year old man falling BACKWARDS down a flight of stairs and walking away without a scratch or a broken bone. That is my Wonderful Heavenly Father at work. I told my mom that the Lord must have a cushion of air around my grandfather. He is ok. He is pretty bruised, but he is definately ok.

Thank you very much for your prayers.

Big Sky Country

Wha..? The world is still here? Hee Hee! Yeah, I kind of thought it would be. Don't get me wrong - I knew it wasn't going to happen but secretly wished it would. I knew I could empatically state that Jesus wasn't coming back yesterday because if I was wrong and Jesus did come back, I would be with Him so I wouldn't be here any longer for anyone to say to me that I was wrong. Safe bet! : )

Anyone who believes that the world is overpopulated has not driven through Montana and Wyoming lately. Believe me, we have lots of room left on this planet.

We are safely tucked away in Greybull Wyoming tonight. We got in too late to see our family, so we are at a motel - one that has excellent internet access unlike the one we stayed in last night. So I just thought I would check in on everyone. Hope you are all doing well.

Take care for now!
Blessings in Christ
Linda

False Prophets 101 - Repost

I'm getting ready to drive to Wyoming with my parents for a couple weeks. I will post when I can but most likely not tomorrow. I thought I would repost links to all the False Prophets 101 posts in honor of tomorrow's non-event.

False Prophets 101 - Wolves in Sheeps Clothing

False Prophets 101 - Eyes to See

False Prophets 101 - Cult Mentality

False Prophets 101 - Spiritual Abuse

False Prophets 101 - Another Gospel

False Prophets 101 - Old Testament vs New Testament

False Prophets 101 - Signs in the Heavens

False Prophets 101 - Fables

False Prophets 101 - Preparation

False Prophets 101 – Date Setting

I will most likely be online here and there the next two weeks if you need to email me at wendyworn@yahoo.com.

Blessings in Christ!
Linda