The Redd Family Happenings

I’m doing a Beth Moore study right now called “Believing God”.  It’s awesome!!  Today I was learning something really cool and wanted to share with you.

In the study we are talking about remembering; a different kind of memory retrieval, how God remembers, how we remember, the importance of developing a God-memory and also remembering no more (forgetting).  The cool thing I learned was from the “how we remember” section.

I have certain memories of past sins that I have already confessed to God and been forgiven for and Satan likes to bring them up from time to time to remind me and accuse me and make me feel guilty all over again.  I believe his (Satan’s) main goal is to drive a wedge between me and Christ, making me back away from Christ because I’m “unclean” when in reality, I’m already clean and wearing Christ’s righteousness.  Lamentations 3:17 - 20 describes how I feel when Satan does this:

“I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.  So I say, ‘My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord.’  I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.  I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.  Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

I’ve underlined the things that really stuck out to me.

So this is what Beth Moore says (I paraphrased it):  Like Jeremiah (who wrote the passage above) knew he had complete freedom to pour out his heart to God.  He also knew that too much focus on the bad memories, the worse he would feel.  He deliberately refocused (Yet) and reframed the difficult memories in the goodness and faithfulness of God.  He couldn’t throw the memories away (believe me, I’ve prayed many times for God to cut those memories out of my life), but he showed us that we need to deal with them before God.  Get the old pictures in a new frame!

God breaks the strongholds of our negative meditations when we reframe our old memories with God in the picture.  Can you imagine the freedom we could experience if the memories were dealt with once and for all and we stopped acting on them, consciously or subconsciously?  It’s a deliberate process, we have to take steps.

Step 1 - If you’re not already a believer, realize you’re a sinner, confess your sins outloud to God, ask God to save you through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

Step 2 - pour your heart out to God, He’s listening and He cares!

Step 3 - do your research; find in the bible attributes of God and truth about God that reframe the bad memories, that way when a a bad memory presents itself or an action based on a bad memory is about to happen, you’ll be ready with the Word of God.  Write your findings down in a spiral-bound stack of index cards (about $2 at Staples) and have it with you at all times.

An example from my life - Satan likes to tell me that God couldn’t possibly love a person whose done xy and z (replace xyz with bad memory).  But, the bible tells me that (John 3:16) God loved the world so much that he sent his only son to die to save us from our sins (the same sins that cause these bad memories).  So I would read that passage outloud and delibertely reframe the memory with the truth.

Step 4 - pray for God to break these strongholds and then really believe that He has.

I hope this was helpful.  It was a great “aha” moment for me

In Christ,

Elizabeth

So I was in Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) (www.biblestudyfellowship.org) today and the lecturer used a great analogy to explain the gospel:

There was a man who was doing yard work in his back yard and he was bitten by a poisonous snake.  He immediately went to the hospital where they told him that they had the antidote that he needed to live.  So what would the natural next step be?  Right, for him to take the medicine.

If he just hears about the medicine from the doctors and doesn’t take it, he dies.

If he sees the bottle of medicine on the table, but doesn’t take it, he dies.

If he does all kinds of research on the medicine, but doesn’t take it, he dies.

If he sees other people who were bitten take the medicine and live, but he doesn’t take it himself, he dies.

If he dies before he takes it, it does no good, it’s too late (ie - don’t procrastinate, this could be your last day, take the medicine!!)

So, we have all been bitten by the snake and are infected with sin (Romans 3:23 - “For all have sinned and fall short…”)

We are all going to die if we don’t get help (Romans 6:23 - “For the wages of sin is death…”)

But (thank God), there is medicine available (Romans 5:8 - “But God demonstrates his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”).

We just need to take it (Romans 10:9 & 13 - “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and ^(B)believe in your heart that ^(C)God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved…WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.”)

We can’t just hear the good news in church or from other people and just have head knowledge of God.  That’s not enough.  We need to take the medicine into our body so it can start working on the poison that’s eating us alive.  All you have to do to take the medicine you so desperately need is tell God, outloud, that you agree with Him that you are a sinner, that you can’t save yourself (any more than you could save yourself from deadly poison), and that you want to take Him up on his free offer of salvation through Jesus’ death on the cross.  That you want Jesus to be your Lord and Savior.

You don’t need to understand how it all works, you don’t need to get your life right before doing this, all you need is a mustard seed size (a very small) amount of faith.  As soon as you say these things outloud, the antivenim starts to work.  Now you won’t die, you’re going to be ok!!!  However, there will be a recovery period (called Sanctification), so be patient, it takes a lifetime.  God is now working on you and bringing you back from the brink of death.

Contrary to popular belief, God doesn’t hate us.  He doesn’t have it in for us.  He doesn’t want ANYONE to die from the snake bite.  He created all of us and wants us to live.

Now that you know about the medicine, take it (if you haven’t already) and go tell others about the medicine so they can live too, before it’s too late.

I’m speaking to you as one who has already taked the medicine and has begun healing and truly starting to live.  It’s wonderful!!  Come join me!

In Christ,

Elizabeth

Today in church we focused on John 7:40 - 53 and the question was posed “who is/was Jesus and what will you do with him?”

To really figure out who Jesus was and is, we need to read the Bible and let him speak for himself instead of listening to what other people say about him.  They may be wrong or biased, but the Bible is 100% truth and we need to let it define Jesus instead of defining him ourselves.

In verses 40 - 42:

⁴⁰ Some of the multitude therefore, when they heard these words, said, This is of a truth the prophet. ⁴¹ Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, What, doth the Christ come out of Galilee? ⁴² Hath not the scripture said that the Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?

People are still saying these things today.  The reason we define Jesus ourselves is that when we let the Bible define him, it creates an awful burden on us due to our sin.  When we see Jesus for who is really is, we see ourselves as we really are and that’s hard.  So it’s easier to replace the -truth of Christ with a man-made idol of Jesus.  Sometimes we make Jesus into a lifeguard, he’s up there on his chair, protecting us, but at a distance.  We know he’s there and call on him when we need help.  Sometimes he’s an ATM machine.  We type the prayer in and get a blessing out.

The problem is that when we make Jesus and even God into anything and everything we want him to be, he ends up being nothing.  He’s just a figment of our imagination.  Was he a lunatic, and liar or Lord of the universe?  We need to read the bible and make our decision based on nothing but the facts.  Note - not making a decision (apathy) is the same as rejection.  Just knowing the facts about Jesus begs a decision.

So, if you’re confused about who Jesus is, study the bible, go to a Scripture-teaching church, ask questions.  If you seek him, he will be revealed to you…it says so in the bible!

God Bless,

Elizabeth