Tag Archives: life lessons

Who Do You Depend On The Most?

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This is not as easy as it seems. How much do you depend on someone else’s help? How much do you depend on your bank account or your savings? Imagine if everyone of these things was gone overnight? Now this is where the rubber meets the road. When people die unexpectedly,or become ill and are no longer there for you, and it’s just you and God what do you do?

In the natural we start to worry. We think one negative thought and then they snowball and then the next thing we know we are in full panic mode. I know because I have been there. Even as a Christian who professes to depend on God we live in these suits of flesh and the spirit is willing to trust in God but the flesh is weak.

When you first read this who came to your mind first? Did you say, “That won’t happen to me. No matter what happens I can depend on “so and so” helping me out. I will be Okay!”

But what if the worst happens. I spoke to a younger couple in the last year who depended heavily on his father for help. They were living in a home he owned. They were driving a car he gave them and if they were late on a bill they didn’t worry much because good old dad would bail them out.

On his way home from work one day a lady in another car ran a light and his dad was killed instantly. After that they saw a side of dad’s wife, his step mother, that they never saw coming. She now gave them a thirty day notice and told them they would need to move because she wanted/needed to sell the home they were living in. That was a plot twist they never saw coming and they had to face being without a back up system for the first time ever.

The good news is that drove them to God. But in the meantime, with no money saved, they had moments of panic.

The only way to make it through panic and worry is to learn to live strictly in the moment with God. Ground yourself by telling your mind STOP. Then be present with what you can do at the moment. Get your mind off of the problem by doing something else. Read a book, clean something or organize your closet. Get so involved in the moment you are in that you have no time to panic. Then, without panic thoughts, your mind becomes clear and God inspired ideas will come into your mind.

Anyone we put our trust in, besides God, can be gone in the blink of an eye. I urge you to become self-sufficient. Sooner or later you will have to do it anyway.

Then, LEARN TO BE IN THE MOMENT. Thinking about the what-ifs drive us to anxiety attacks. You don’t need to be anywhere except in the moment you are in. Depend on God and yourself ONLY.

In His Unconditional Love

Cathie

Email or PayPal = Belovedhandmdn1@aol.com

It Takes Guts To Leave The Ruts

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Have you heard the saying, “It takes guts to leave the ruts,”.

At the start of a new work week consider that God wants to take you in a new direction to grow you so that you can reach higher spiritual heights! Surrender your desire for things to only work out in one way and one way only. If you keep doing what you have always done you will get what you have always gotten.

Psalm 32:8-9

I hear the Lord saying, “I will stay close to you, instructing and guiding you along the pathway for your life. I will advise you along the way and lead you forth with my eyes as your guide. So don’t make it difficult; don’t be stubborn when I take you where you’ve not been before. Don’t make me tug you and pull you along. Just come with me!”

In His Unconditional Love

Cathie

The Right Solution Will Give You Peace

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Discernment is a gift that everyone has access to. Many don’t experience the peace that comes from following God-given discernment because they don’t use it on a regular basis.

I believe the more we follow the discernment that God gives us the more discernment God will give us. When we get a feeling about something and then ignore it we often end up regretting it.

For me when I am doing the right thing I experience a great deal of peace.

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I began to get concerned. My iPad, which is about four years old or so, stopped charging. Now, my iPad has my whole life on it. I have notes from counseling sessions with clients, passwords, all my credit card companies so that I can check my accounts and pay online, my bank account, my book manuscripts, my blog manuscripts, my pharmacy information, my doctor’s office records, you name it.

Frankly, I have had trouble with my iPad not charging before, but usually by buying a new cable the problem is resolved. I have a iPhone but the screen is hard for me to read. With my older eyes I need something larger.

So, what to do? I would ideally like a new iPad but I cannot afford to buy one at this time. So, I went to the Apple store online and found an iPad I liked. I saw there that I might be able to buy one with payments. I checked into it and the payments were too high. I discussed it with my husband and he said, “You have to have one. Consider it a ministry tool that you MUST have and go ahead and put it on credit. God knows you need one and he will supply the money for the payments.”

So, that made sense and I started to try and buy one online. I begin to feel terribly anxious. I knew that I was not in God’s will to make payments. I had no peace about it and every time I started to put my information in to qualify I felt anxious again. Even though it made sense that I needed one, I knew that that payment was not what God wanted me to do.

What is right gives you a sense of peace. When you are going against your God given discernment you will just not feel right about your decision. If you go ahead anyway it usually ends up bad.

What ever gives you a sense of struggle and strife is false. Whether it’s a relationship, a major purchase, a job, or a person, if you don’t have peace do not do it.

I then went into prayer. I said, “God buying a new iPad is not in my budget right now, and I would have to finance it. I don’t feel right about it. What do you want me to do? I could buy a cheap tablet but it would be a hassle to move all my things over with anything but iPad, which would automatically transfer to a new one.”
I prayed and then I made a decision to step away from it for a while. I started cleaning my stove. I figured that would take a lot of time and take my mind away from the problem. Believe it or not it seemed to clear my head.

I sat down to relax after my cleaning job and immediately something came into my mind. I remembered last week my husband said he thought we had suffered a power surge. Could that have fried the cord I was using? Maybe that was it. I tried several cables in that same outlet to charge it and nothing worked. I tried different outlets, near by, with the same cables and they would charge but really slowly. I remembered that I had bought a couple of new cables awhile back. I also knew, through the help of God, that I should try using the USB in a newer surge protector that I had. This whole thought process was absent when I was stressing over it. Now it seemed obvious.

So, I did that and it worked. I am now having to use the new cable in that surge protector each time I charge the iPad but it WORKS. Praise the Lord.

MY PEACE WAS RESTORED.

I urge you to develop your God given discernment by only moving forward into something when you experience peace.

One other thing I advise is giving the problem a break. Do something else that takes your mind off of the problem. Walk away from it. Stress causes confusion. Just stepping away for a while will often clear your head to where God can give you a divine solution!

In His Unconditional Love,
Cathie
Belovedhandmdn1@aol.com

Happy Anniversary To The Guy God Sent!

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Today is our fourteenth anniversary and the beginning of fifteenth years of marriage. I had been single for five years when I met Chuck. He had been single for seventeen years.

I went to lunch one day and pulled up to the drive up window to pick up my food. While waiting in the line the Lord spoke to me and said, ‘Cathie when you get to the window to pay for your food I want you to take all the money you have in your purse and bless the woman at the window with it!” Being ever the rebel I said to God, “You have to be kidding! I need that money!” And God said, “Give her that money!” Knowing better then to disobey God, I did just that. God knew what he was doing, The woman started to cry. Because of a situation in her life life she desperately needed the extra money.

I drove away telling God, “Okay Lord I claim that money as a seed for a Christian husband. One week later I met Chuck.

Though not actively looking for a husband I wrote down 6 attributes I wanted in a Christian husband. 6 things I would not compromise on. I said he needed to be tall.He needed to have a beard. He needed to have a relationship with God, not just be a pew sitter. He needed to know the Word and be a prayer warrior and He needed to be a giver.

Chuck had all those things. One day while talking on the phone he explained the lineage of Mary, the mother of Jesus. I was hooked. I knew he wasn’t superficial. He KNEW the Word. As we were both Messianic Believers that, to me, was important. Two months later we got married.

The first few years of our marriage consisted of God working out rough edges in both of us. Big Time! When we finally moved forward in love and commitment Chuck went in the hospital for open heart surgery. It didn’t go well. He got a flesh eating virus that ate his sternum and ribs. He almost died twice and, even with insurance, the expenses took all our savings for retirement. We were broke. At the same time the IRS decided to go after us for money they claimed we owed on the house in Denver we had sold. Truly it was the most stressful time of our lives. God helped us one day at a time.

Those incidences bonded our marriage even closer and drove us even deeper into the arms of God. Having nobody but each other to depend on bonded our marriage with strands of Gold!

People say opposites attract. I disagree. Chuck and I spend 24/7 together. We never run out of things to talk about. We study the Word together. We pray together twice a day, sometimes more. We believe our marriage is a covenant with God. The three stranded cord that cannot easily be broken.

God knew what he was doing when he put us together. I praise him for it daily!

Happy Anniversary to my love, the guy that God sent. My partner here and through eternity! I love you with all my heart!

In His Unconditional Love

Cathie

Belovedhandmdn1@aol.com

Don’t Lose Hope!

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“For I know the thoughts I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and hope!” Jeremiah 29:11

Recently I watched a video in which the woman was talking about a man she had ministered too. She said, “He walked away with renewed hope.”

I got to thinking about that. Beloved, I truly believe that when you lose hope it’s over. Hope is the thing that goes along with our gift of faith. We hope that things will get better or that something will happen to answer our prayer needs and then that hope stirs up our faith and we begin to feel so much better.

The Word says the following; “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
    but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12

Years ago I would look at some situation and in the natural I would think, “Oh, dear Lord this situation is not good! What do I do Lord, what to I say to this person? I don’t want to lie, Father. What do I tell them?” God gently spoke to my Spirit, “Daughter, you are wrong. THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE! What you see as an impossibility is an opportunity to witness to large groups of people who will be astounded when I miraculously answer this prayer! Don’t ever say that again.”

So, I learned to speak hope into people. I learned to be a possibility thinker. When I counsel people they are desperate for just a glimmer of hope, just a Word letting them know that things can and will get better if they only keep the faith.

The problem with a lot of us is that we think in the natural. We look at something and our minds start to figure out what God needs to do to change the situation. Then we start to pray like this, “Dear God please let Sue talk to my boss and tell her that I need a raise.” Instead God works in mysterious ways and he doesn’t need anybody to tell him how to fix a situation. He has ways that our little human brains have not even thought of.

Now when we need answers, He stands ready to guide us. All we need do is ask and then wait for him to direct us.

I have had God tell me to go into car dealerships without a dime for a down payment and bad credit and as I obeyed him, as crazy as it sounds, I walked out with a very nice car. God had sent angels before me to prepare the way. Everything just simply fell into place. When I walked down the hall to see the sales manager I heard Christian music playing. I begin to get excited and I thought “What should I tell him Father?” God said, “Tell him the truth.” So I did. I laid my whole ugly story out in front of him, thinking he would say, “Well, I am so sorry but I can’t help you!” Instead he said, “I know what you are going through. The same thing happened to me.”

Instead of using your time calling all your Christian friends to pray, why waste your time? You are a child of God. You have the spirit dwelling inside you. Pray and seek an answer from God and then when you feel He is directing you in a certain way do what he tells you to do and DO NOT ask anyone else by saying something like this, “Do you think I heard from God when he told me, “this or that?” Because if your friend doesn’t have your level of faith they will say, “You are nuts, why would God tell you to walk into a car dealership without any money and bad credit and try to buy a car!” But we walk by faith not sight. God honors hope and faith. Don’t second guess him just do what he tells you.

Right now it’s Christmas and a whole lot of you are worried sick about how you are going to get gifts for your children and have a family dinner. I have been in that very place, beloved. The thing to do is to get into prayer and praise and wait on the Lord. He is going to direct you. You will go to a store and just what you need will be on sale, you might win something, something might just appear on your doorstep. Be open and be obedient and then wait on God. Do not lose hope. God inhabits(dwells within) our praises. He will either send us what we need or give us supernatural peace in the midst of our situation.

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8

Negative talk, and a lack of belief in God’s supernatural miracles, kills hope and squashes faith. You get your faith up by repeating faith scriptures. When God then answers your prayers it increases your faith.

Quit feeling anxious and sorry for yourself. Start praying and praising and believing for a miracle. Tell God to touch the heart of someone who can help you in whatever way God has for you to be helped. Help someone else in the midst of your need and God will help you.

Tell God, “I do not know how you can do this, but I know you will. I rest in your presence and put my worries here at the foot of your cross.”

Do not lose hope. It may be all you have right now but if you are still able to hope you will be helped by the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills! Nothing is too much for the God who parted the Red Sea! Nothing.

In His Unconditional Love,
Cathie
Belovedhandmdn1@aol.com

Dysfunctional Due To Divorce

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One of the things about being an elder is that we have seen things, both good and bad. We have done things, both good and bad, and so hopefully we have learned better and we mentor others to do better.

I was watching the Bush family and their togetherness. It’s admirable.

I know that there are situations that were, and are, hard and sometimes people have no choice but to make a change.

I truly believe, having unfortunately been there, that divorce causes so much dysfunction and remarriages do too.

You have children who don’t like stepparents. It is painful on so many levels, women who are jealous of step mothers, fathers who are jealous of step fathers, children and even adult children, who play one set against the other.

Look around you and maybe in your own life, or some family member, you see constant chaos and dysfunction caused as a result of having to try to get along with people you never asked to have in your life to begin with.

Praying about this today I feel God directing me to encourage those I mentor to try and work things out in your marriages. If you have been through a divorce try your best to be kind to all involved. Don’t badmouth your ex or the new spouse. Try to show love and respect in order to put a stop to a lot of the dysfunction caused by divorce and remarriage.

Most importantly we can avoid all of this by having strong marriages. When we aren’t living for God there is no way we can stay happily married. First of all, if we are single, we should not even date unbelievers. Why? Because we walk into Satan’s territory.

Just my humble opinion, after learning the hard way. I pray none of you will have to suffer through the chaos of divorce!

In His Unconditional Love

Cathie

Belovedhandmdn1@aol.com

Being Faithful With What You Have

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Your level of blessing is all equal to your stewardship. What you do with what you have determines what more God will give you.

When I was a young mom with four kids I was praying for a bigger house as we had outgrown the little house we were living in.

One day as I was seeking the Lord, while my kids were napping, I cried out to the Lord as to why nothing was moving forward in regards to us being able to get a new house.

As clear as a bell, in my head, the Lord spoke to me, “ My dear daughter look around you. Your home is a mess. If you cannot take care of this house, you are not ready for a bigger one.” I looked around and it was true. I was a stay at home mom at that time. I had no excuse at the time. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon and dirty dishes were still in my sink.

I got my act together and started taking better care of my house. A year later my husband got a huge raise and we moved to a beautiful, larger home.

Take care of what you have been given by God before you ask for more.

Jesus – “Unless you are faithful in small matters, you won’t be faithful in large ones. If you cheat even a little, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven. And if you are not faithful with other people’s money, why should you be trusted with money of your own? No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Luke 16:10-13 )

In His Unconditional Love

Cathie Miller

Belovedhandmdn1@aol.com

The Truth About Counseling

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This may offend some so I apologize in advance. If your therapy is working for you by all means continue.

Ten years ago I began to question the Lord about why so many people would tell me they wanted Christian counseling who were already seeking counsel with a secular counselor and we’re not getting better.

God used the woman at the well to show me the counseling method he wanted me to use. He spoke to me about the woman at the well. He said, “In secular counsel you delve in a person’s childhood. Bringing up all the hurt does more harm then good. When I saw the woman at the well I didn’t do an intake. I didn’t tell her she was a relationship addict due to her childhood. Even if true it didn’t matter because she was in desperate need of something to satisfy the hole in her soul that was being filled with anything to make the loneliness go away for a time. No. I told her exactly what I discerned. I told her she had been with 5 men and wasn’t married to the man she was currently living with. I told her what was wrong and then I told her what she really needed was to drink from everlasting water.” Jesus continued, “I cut to the chase, told her what she needed and she got it. She then went and told people, “Come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did!” I want you to discern the problem through prayer, tell the person what the problem is and then what to do about it.”

So that’s what I do. Granted I could make more money by dragging things out and making clients dependent upon me. As a matter of fact very few people pay me at all. Jesus wants us healed and whole so that we can help others.

Dwelling on events from our past is depressing and at the end of the day we have to accept the past, because it cannot change, and come to peace with it. Blaming our parents, even if they deserve it, is a way of putting our pain on someone else that was probably messed up by their parents too.

Accept,forgive, move on in peace.

Do all Christian Counselor counsel the same? No. I used the model Christ gave me and I have had so many people set free that are now living depression free. Not because of who I am but because of who HE is.

The past cannot be changed but the future can be whatever we want it to be.

In His Unconditional Love

Cathie

Please use this email address to contact me or for PayPal donations Belovedhandmdn1@aol.com

Even Jesus Was Rejected

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So often we suffer rejection of our message about Jesus from our own families.

Even Jesus was not listened to by his own people, yet we cannot understand, often, the rejection of our message by some of those in our own families.

To quote from the Bible, ‘Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honour in his own country’ (John 4:44). Christ also said ‘no prophet is accepted in his home town’ (Luke 4:16-30), and ‘Only in his home town and in his own house is a prophet without honor”

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Torah and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Mark 6:11

And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.

Cheer up believers. Even Jesus suffered rejection by those closest to Him.

In God’s Unconditional Love,

Cathie

For contact or PayPal donations Hsbelovedhandmdn1@aol.com

Living Through Unimaginable Sorrow

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Turning against God, when something hurtful happens, is for some understandable. We have all had times when we suffered pain and felt as if God let us down. It was during one of those times in my life where I reached a crossroad with God. I knew I could go down a road without Him or I could decide to trust Him and go on down the road with Him. I fell to my knees and told Him, “I don’t know why you have allowed this but nevertheless you are the only one who truly loves me, unconditionally, and whether you never answer another prayer I pray again, I am going on with you!”

I remember this quote from the movie, “The Shack,” when I need to, I take it out of my bible and read it. It puts everything in perspective for me. God spoke the following…

“Just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn’t mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don’t ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead you to false notions about me. Grace doesn’t depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.”

― William P. Young, The Shack

In His Unconditional Love,

Cathie

Belovedhandmdn1@aol.com for email or PayPal donations