Category: Salvation

It’s Time To Break Free

Posted on by Dorci

 

My prayer for us this year is that we would come to realize more and more the wholeness we have in Christ.

That we would submit ourselves to His loving grace and become the people we were meant to be in and through and by the Holy Spirit.  That we would let our old selves go, let His healing take place, and live in newness of life.  That we would put away all lies and live in the freedom of truth.  That we would shine with His love and grace and mercy in all we say and do.

We stay in the cocoon much too long for fear of what’s on the outside, when what’s on the outside all along is freedom!

So instead of wishing you a happy new year, because happiness is so fleeting and dependent on our circumstances, I pray for you a joyful new year.

That kind of joy that comes from deep within when our spirit meets His Spirit, and we break free of all encumbrances–all our own sin and fears and entanglements–to shine in the freedom and beauty that is ours in Christ.

Grace and peace,

The Best Things In Life Are Free

Posted on by Dorci

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21

They say the best things in life are free.  Yet every year the day after Thanksgiving (well, now you barely have time to eat your last bite of pumpkin pie) the stores open and people rush the gates like race horses at the Kentucky Derby.  Even now there are people everywhere still scrambling to find that last perfect present or two.

I wonder if we really do believe the best things in life are free.  All the frenzied waving of credit cards is really just a distraction, a way to make Christmas mean something when we fail to make it about Christ. And it’s hard to do that when He hasn’t been Lord the other 364 days a year.

Thanksgiving Day I was in the kitchen, as I am every Thanksgiving, going about the cooking I’ve now gotten down to a science, when I stole a moment to take a peek through our kitchen window which faces the front of our house.  The streets were lined with cars that had brought family and friends to spend Thanksgiving with so many neighbors.  It made me feel just a little bit lonely.

I love my family, my husband and our two sons whom we’re still blessed to have at home, but we have no extended family we’re able to spend the holidays with.

I didn’t have much of a family life growing up, so it was always my dream to have huge family gatherings at the holidays, the house full of laughing, eating, cooking, and a dozen different conversations going on a once, catching each other up on our lives, our victories and our defeats, encouraging and loving each other, so that when the day was done we’d be as full in our hearts as we were in our bellies.

A long time ago, though, I accepted the house would be a little less full and a little more quiet. That it would be just the four of us, and I’m happy with that.  Still, I couldn’t help but peer out the window a time or two (maybe three) more and caught a glimpse of all those cars in front of so many other houses.

Instead I’ve filled the holidays with one of the few talents I did have: mad baking skills.  I started baking when my kids were tiny and we didn’t have enough money for store-bought birthday cakes.  I started collecting cookbooks and practicing the art of cake making, frosting, and decorating.  I bought all kinds of frosting tips and every food coloring in the rainbow.  I practiced my royal icing roses. My mouth full of sweet teeth had me quickly expanding to almost any kind of cookie, pastry and dessert you can think of.

And when the holidays rolled around I’d have a field day.  I’d stock up on flour and sugar and butter and chocolate and peppermint candies.  I’d pore through my hundreds of recipes of Christmas cookies and delectable desserts and wonder which to bake first.  Wedding cookies or Chocolate Peppermint Pretzels?  And there are always cream cheese frostinged cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.

But now I have health issues that make it almost impossible to enjoy eating sugar or any kind of carbohydrate. Oh I can eat it, I just have to be willing to face the consequences when I do.  My family is trying to eat healthier, too.  So every year I’ve baked less and less, and this year I haven’t done any.  Yet we are inundated with messages that for Christmas to be Christmas we should indulge in one sugar-laced treat after another.  But since I can’t it’s just one more thing that can make me feel like I’m somehow outside the party peering in.

There are other things, too, that getting older make celebrating Christmas the way I’d like very difficult or impossible.

Sometimes, when we’ve been stripped away of so much that the world says we must have and do to be happy, God is able to show us what’s most important.  To see what the best things in life really are.

No matter what gifts I’ve been given, the best by far will always be my salvation.  Ultimately, of course, I am forever indebted to Christ for dying for me, and to the Holy Spirit for pursuing me, opening my eyes, and revealing to me my need for a Savior. Regardless of what I am not able to have in this life, eternity will be filled with family and feasting.  Relationships will be restored and my body will be perfect.  This life is only temporary.  Eternity’s forever. And I’m looking forward to it!

I would not have that hope if it weren’t for the willingness of some to offer prayers and the honest teaching of God’s Word.  Those were gifts to me, gifts I could never afford.  Gifts that are free.

And now I, and many of you, are in the position to be able to offer those gifts to others.  No credit card needed.  Some may not open their gift of salvation right away, perhaps for years.  But even seeds are gifts.  Water is a gift.

So maybe it’s time to slow down and allow those things the world says we must have in order to have Christmas be stripped away.  Maybe it’s time to give a gift that would last for eternity.  Maybe you’re a seed-bearer, or a waterer.  Maybe you’re a harvester.

Wherever God would have you be in the process, give a gift of your gifts.  Your spiritual gifts have been given to you to not only encourage fellow believers, but to bring truth to unbelievers.  There is no better gift than the truth that leads to salvation.

One phrase that I hear over and over every Christmas season that’s become a pet peeve of mine, is when someone uses the word Christmas in place of the word gifts.  “She won’t be able to give her kids Christmas.”  “They won’t have a Christmas.”

Even the Grinch came to understand Christmas when he’d stripped the Whos of all he thought would make them happy, yet their joy on Christmas morning was undeterred and unrestrained.

“That’s a noise,” grinned the Grinch, “That I simply MUST hear!”
So he paused. And the Grinch put his hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow.
But the sound wasn’t sad! Why, this sound sounded merry!
It couldn’t be so! But it WAS merry! VERY!
He stared down at Whoville! The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise!
Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any presents at all!
He HADN’T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!
And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”
“It came with out ribbons! It came without tags!”
“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”
“Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

A little bit more indeed.  A lot more.  It means the birth of our precious Savior who came to give us the best gift of all.

So if you’re struggling this year, I hope you’ll take heart,
And know that the life we live here is only the start!
Christ was born in a stable for you and for me
And He died to give us eternity.
So wherever you are, whatever you do
Remember that Jesus, yes Jesus loves you!
He gave you salvation and that’s the key
To knowing the best thing in life is free.
So remember that Christmas doesn’t come from a mart
It comes when we let JESUS fill up our heart!
So store up for yourselves treasures in heaven
Give the gift of telling others how they can be forgiven!

Merry Christmas and God bless you!

More Than Just Thankful

Posted on by Dorci

It was November, 1982 and I was on a Greyhound bus headed for Ohio.  I’d be spending the holidays away from my family.  I was 19.  Two years before I’d been asked to leave home one night and I’d been running ever since.  I had a lot to run from, but to where, or who, I didn’t know.

My boyfriend at the time knew a couple there, who, coincidentally or not, pastored a church. How he knew them I have no idea. We drove up their driveway and stayed in their living room for the next month and a half.

If I felt lonely before, I felt even lonelier now.  I was almost 2000 miles from home, spending some very cold days in strange house while everybody was off during the day.

Thanksgiving came and went, and the days and nights got even colder.

Something settled in my chest and I couldn’t stop coughing.  Nights were the worst, and it was a small house.  I lay there night after night, thinking I just might cough up a lung, and all I wanted was for someone to take care of me.

It was Christmas day and we tagged along to the wife’s parents’ house.  I sat in the living room staring at the activity, knowing I didn’t belong.  I asked to use the phone.

I called home and my little sister answered the phone. I told her where I was and we both started crying.  She begged me to come home.  I wanted to, but did I belong there?  Did I belong anywhere?

My mother got on the phone and tried to convince me she wanted me to come back.  She said she’d send the money.  I told her I didn’t know.  Staying was painful, but going back would be painful, too.

The couple we were staying with had bought a home in town.  We began helping them move, and they began dropping hints that once they were in the new house, we needed to find another place to stay.

I supposed it was time to go home, and back on the bus we went.

And I was thankful.

A lot happened in the next six years.  There would be a lot more running, but to where, or who, I didn’t know.

There would come a day when I’d find out.

It was a Sunday morning and my husband and I had been invited to church.  We took our 6-month-old son, walked through the sanctuary into a tiny gathering of people who met in a few rented rooms in a strip mall, and I found the Lord.

I know people like to say God finds us, but God knew where I was all along.  He was with me on the bus and in Ohio.  He was with me all the time I was running.

And I’m thankful.

 

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”   James 1:17

In the world I had only a general feeling of thankfulness, but no one to direct my gratitude to.

Now I am more than just thankful.  I know who I have to be thankful to.

I know who was responsible for every sunrise and sunset I continued to see against all odds.  I know who walked with me and whose grace and mercy covered me as I roamed the streets of a town I didn’t know. I know who healed me when there were no doctors.

And I know He was with me as I got a job as a front-desk receptionist at a computer company who had a lawyer whose calls I would answer, who would eventually steal me away to be the front-desk receptionist at his law firm, where two women worked who went to church together in a tiny congregation that met in a few rented rooms in a strip mall.

I know it’s God, my God, my Savior and my Lord, who has blessed me with all things.  Even when I didn’t know it.

And I’m thankful.

Are You Still Wrestling?

Posted on by Dorci

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”  Ephesians 6:10-12

The closest I’ve ever come to a wrestling match is breaking up my boys when they were little.  They never wrestled angry, just for fun.  It’s a boy thing, I guess.

But the second I was saved, I faced a wrestling match of a spiritual kind.  Whether I acknowledged it or not, I was on the mat, and my opponent was out for blood.

He still is.

He knows every trick in the book and he’ll use them to his advantage.  He knows my weaknesses, he knows when I’m tired, he knows when my attention is on something else.

But I think his greatest advantage is coming at me when I’m nowhere near the ring.  When I’ve let down my guard, and he looks less like an opponent and more like a movie everybody else is seeing that somewhere deep inside I know I shouldn’t, or that shiny thing I can’t afford, or an attitude I think I’m entitled to.

Do I wrestle then?

Do I go to God in prayer and fight the temptation, or do I just give in?

Maybe I assume that if everybody else is doing it, it must be okay.  Or, I might think I don’t want to bother God, because, well, I really, really want to do it.  Or have it.

So, just like I think I’ll trick my body into ignoring the calories of a strawberry cupcake if I eat it really fast, somehow we believe God will turn a blind eye if we do this one thing really quick.  It’ll just a take a minute.  Or a couple of hours.

And before we know it, satan has us pinned.

Theoretically, we know scripture says there’s a struggle with the enemy.  The question is, are we struggling back? Are we fighting to put aside our own will and certainly the enemy’s, and seeking God’s will for us personally, or have we given up the fight? Have we assumed certain things are okay because everybody else, even other Christians, are doing it?

The enemy is ruthless in his efforts to defeat us.  He’ll fight dirty, he’ll fight hard, he’ll simply wait until we’re too tired to keep fighting back.  Until the world around us is screaming “Barrabas!” (or at least trying to blend in with the crowd) and we don’t want to be the only one screaming “Jesus!”

Don’t let the enemy defeat you by stealing your convictions and shoving you into the world’s compromise.

Calories are calories, and God’s truth is the truth.  Period.  He loves us too much to turn a blind eye.

Who knows, maybe God wants us to have that particular shiny thing. But He most definitely wants us to ask.  He wants us to stand with Him and when we do, He’ll be in the ring with us and we can’t lose.

The goal in wrestling is to gain a superior position over our opponent.  God tells us how to do that:

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” Ephesians 6:13

Whatever you’re dressed in today, make darn sure you have on the full armor of God.

And be prepared to fight.

 

In the love of Christ,

To Live is Christ, To Die is Gain

Posted on by Dorci

Yesterday Pastor Chuck Smith, who founded Calvary Chapel, went home to be with the Lord.  If you aren’t familiar with him or Calvary Chapel, I’ll give you a little history. 

Chuck Smith began as a pastor for the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in the 1950’s. 

In the 60’s, Chuck’s wife, Kay, began to have a burden for the youth who were entering the generation of sex, drugs and rock and roll.  It was long hair, bare feet, tie dye and everything was groovy.  They were in the thick of the Vietnam War, God was dead, and they didn’t trust anybody over 30.

Chuck and Kay began praying for the youth, and then they began inviting them to church. 

When some of the so-called hippies did come, as the infamous story goes, they were met with a sign that said “No Bare Feet Allowed” because new carpeting had just been installed. Chuck tore down the sign and said he’d rather rip out the new carpeting than turn those kids away. 

He soon left that church and began pastoring a small, non-denominational church called Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California.  He began expository teaching of the Bible and the traditional worship music of the past became underscored with guitars and drums. 

The youth started coming in droves. 

Pastor Chuck, pointing a generation to Jesus

Suddenly, a close-to-middle-aged man was heading up what would become known as the greatest revival of our time called The Jesus Movement. 

Scores of young people were getting saved and baptized in the California ocean.  They became known as “Jesus Freaks.”  They left the hippie lifestyle and lived to worship Jesus and passionately tell others about how He died for them, too.  Calvary Chapel also started an outreach of worship called Maranatha! Music, which I think is some of the best worship music ever recorded. 

The movement of the Holy Spirit during this time was a phenomenon the likes of which most had never seen.  In the time since, over a 1000 Calvary Chapels have been established worldwide, along with many Calvary Chapel Bible Colleges.   

One of those Calvary Chapels was established in the 1980’s.  Through a long series of events, my husband and I found ourselves there one Sunday morning in 1989.  And it was that morning that I met my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  We attended that church for 22 years. 

So even though I didn’t know Pastor Chuck personally, although we did have the opportunity to see him teach once while we were on vacation, I deeply felt his passing. Without Calvary Chapel, I don’t know where I’d be right now. 

Oh, I know God could have led me to another church, but there was something about the atmosphere of Calvary.  That same powerful presence of the Holy Spirit that was there in the 60’s was there in the 80’s, and He moved my heart in a way that I became not just saved, but radically saved. 

But life happens, and sometimes years of so much “life” has a way of allowing discouragement to set in. And as I get older I feel myself slowing down.   

But as I reflected on Pastor Chuck’s life through a barrage of Facebook posts from so many who loved and admired him, and seeing all the lives he touched, my faith was energized.  We have so little time and so much to do.  Pastor Chuck was 86 at his passing, but really, his life went by so quickly. 

I could imagine Chuck Smith standing there before Jesus as they gazed into each other’s eyes, knowing all they’d been through together.  Knowing that, while Chuck wasn’t perfect (who is?), he was obedient to Christ’s call on his life.

And that’s all God asks any of us.  He doesn’t ask us to be another Chuck Smith or Billy Graham.  He just asks us to obey Him, and let Him take care of the results. 

So with that, I say with Paul:

“I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.  For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:20-21
 

 

A short but honest look at how I came to Christ at that Calvary Chapel in 1989 will be one of 40 stories featured in a book of testimonies that will be published before the end of the year.  I believe the book will be inspiring to those who already know Christ, and instrumental to bring many unsaved to faith in our precious Lord.  I’ll keep you updated on the details.  I hope you’ll get a copy for yourself and somebody you love.