Hope For Today

Dear Friends, A few months ago our son, Josh, had some important decisions to make. He was coming to the end of his A Levels and was offered work as an apprenticeship in Accounting.  It was just what he wanted to do. The offer was a good one and it was with a company he liked. At the same time he was offered work in a church as an intern. It came out of the blue, but again was something he was interested in. Now what was he supposed to do?  He wanted to do what God had planned for him, he just wasn't sure what that was. God makes us a promise in Psalm 32:8   " I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;  I will counsel you [who are willing to learn] with My eye upon you."  (AMP) As his Mum there was part of me that wanted to tell him what was best for him, but this wouldn't have been right. It was not my decision to make. It was for him to decide. Jason and I told him that we would support him in whatever he decided and we would be there t...

Dear Friends, When you believe God has placed a desire in your heart or given you a dream, it can be really hard to wait patiently for his timing.  Then, when you sense that he is telling you now you can go ahead, it can be easy to get carried away with it.  At least, I can find that so and when God says "Yes" I just want to get on with it straight away so that it happens tomorrow at the earliest, not months ahead!  Jason has been with me on this journey and I was talking with him recently about what I felt God was telling me was the next stage.  Before I had got very far, he said one sentence which I interpreted as meaning that he didn't think now was the right time, and I thought he was being negative and unsupportive.  It's amazing how quickly your brain starts to process your thoughts, sift through them all and come up with a response almost before the sentence is out of the other person's mouth.  I was just about to either ...

Dear Friends, I've been thinking recently about the power of our words. How many of you remember when you were at school saying this playground chant: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me"? The truth is that whilst being physically hurt causes physical pain, it's not true that words don't hurt us. Words can and do cause us much pain, they bruise our hearts, they can leave deep scars and cause all kinds of damage. Words such as, "You're ugly...stupid...fat...no good...a failure...hopeless...etc"  cause so much harm, not only at the time, but also on in to the future if we don't do something about them.  So what can we do? Step 1. Let go of the words that have damaged us - reject them and leave them with God. Step 2. Ask God to heal us from the pain - he is our healer.  " He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds."  Psalm 147:3 (NLT) Step 3. Fill our minds with the truth from God...