Life with you will be heaven

Love Letters of Jesus & his Bride, Eccelsia-THUMBNAILAh, Lord God, you are the lover and master of my soul. My spirit touches yours and we sing and cry together, work and rest together, travel through meadows and up rugged mountains together. You are my life now and in eternity. You are my betrothed and oh, how I love you. I adore you as a bride adores her groom. I long for the day of our wedding feast when we become one. Such a life you have in store for me! I do not comprehend it. I cannot comprehend it. But life with you, my Lord, will be heaven.

Thank you, God, for providing the Bible so I do not have to guess what works and what does not work. So, I can understand your ways and Satan’s ways. You are the most mighty, the all mighty. Satan does not have a chance! He thinks he is winning, but he is not. He may win a few battles, but you will win the war. Thank you for the opportunity to stand with you despite opposition. Thank you for the opportunity to be defamed because of you, gossiped about, pushed around, and look like a loser because of you. When I am weakest, that is when I am strongest, for my strength then is your strength.

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Love Letters of Jesus & his Bride, Eccelsia-THUMBNAILLOVE LETTERS OF JESUS & HIS BRIDE, ECCLESIA is a paraphrase and modernization of the Song of Solomon.  Each chapter where they are searching for each other or admiring each other is a letter.  Over 500 footnotes of scriptures showing the symbolism of Jesus’ love for the church.  Beautiful gift book for weddings, or use as a class book or private devotional reading.  To BUY NOW, click a book cover or paste this:  https://bit.ly/2Vl3dhi

https://inspirationsbykatheryn.wordpress.com/love-letters-of-jesus-his-bride-ecclesia-2/

And can never die

Love Letters of Jesus & his Bride-mediumI magnify your very name. You are in my heart and soul. I long to be with you in your realm forever rejoicing, forever yours, forever at peace.  Even now I am with you laughing and crying and struggling and it is wonderful. To be on the side of the winner, my heart bursts. I can fight side by side next to you, for you are my betrothed. You are my spiritual darling, my spiritual sweetheart, the spiritual lover of my soul. Someday we will be wed. I do not understand it, but I can hardly wait. How amazing that the Creator of the universe calls me his own! You are my Lord, my Master, my Maker, my very Being.

God, help me let go. Help me be strong enough to not let anything others say or do convince me to not love them.  Lord, help me love them. Bless my enemies, for they are your enemies too.  Help me know the difference in what I want and what you want so that I am not persecuted justly.

Ah, my Lord. I see your holy blood that seeped out of your body. Your holy hands and feet that contorted in the shock of being assaulted by the spikes. Your holy back that was made pure meat when embraced by the scourger’s whip. Your holy brow that bore the mocking thorns. They gradually overcame your body and made it lifeless. But they could not overcome your spirit and your stubborn will.  They could not overpower the love that flowed from you that day. They could not overpower the soul that had been alive forever more and can never die. In worship you.

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Love Letters of Jesus & his Bride, Eccelsia-THUMBNAILLOVE LETTERS OF JESUS & HIS BRIDE, ECCLESIA.  The Song of Songs written by King Solomon is a love story between a man and woman but overflows with the symbolism of Jesus Christ and his love for his Bride, his Church, his Ecclesia. The book begins with “His Proposal” (Prologue) ~ how Satan held her captive and how Jesus paid the ransom for her and broke her out of the dark pit where she had been chained. Each chapter thereafter coincides with the same chapter number in the Song of Songs. Come along with me now in this expansion of the greatest love story in the history of heaven and earth.  To BUY NOW, click a book cover or paste this: https://bit.ly/2Vl3dhi

Love Letters of Jesus & His Bride, Ecclesia

I cannot see you, but you are everywhere I look


OldOldTunes-mediumI praise your very name, Lord God. Your name is holy. The angels praise you day and night. The heavens praise always. I praise you forever. But it is never enough. You, our Creator, are worthy of so much more. Accept my puny efforts as a little child standing before a giant. Accept my puny efforts as a little spider crawling through the sands of a great desert. Accept my puny efforts as a single little star surviving amidst a thousand thousand galaxies. How overwhelmed I am that you actually notice little insignificant me. You not only notice me, but you love me and take me as your child. I am the child of the Creator! I am consumed with amazement.

Thank you, God, for loving me and caring for me. I cannot see you but you are everywhere I look.  I cannot hear you but you are in every sound I hear. I cannot feel you but you are in everything I touch. Most of all you are in my heart. Thank you for being there. Thank you for staying so close and making me feel as though I am the only other person in the world.

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OldOldTunes-ThumbnailTHE OLD OLD STORY SET TO OLD OLD TUNES.   Forty-four songs for the Old Testament and forty-four songs for the New Testament. This book may be used by teachers or given as gifts to children.  Anyone who knows these common folk tunes will be able to sing the songs immediately. If you do not know any of the tunes, you can find them on the internet.  If you use this book to teach children’s Bible classes, you will find that sometimes one song will cover your entire series, such as the life of Moses or of Paul.  To BUY NOW, click a book cover nor paste this:  https://bit.ly/2YwJVHI

https://inspirationsbykatheryn.wordpress.com/links-to-some-of-my-fun-bible-stuff/the-old-old-story-set-to-old-old-tunes/

 

He will stop at nothing to make sure you last forever

The scripture for today, March 10 (3/10), is Colossians 3:10 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

0-HS-592 VersesExamined-COVER-Thumbnail“And have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”

Did you ever make something with your hands, and it was your pride and joy?  Were you so proud of it that you would stop at nothing to take care of it and make sure it lasted forever? Yes, you had a few rules about its care. You had a few rules about who could touch it and who couldn’t. You had a few rules about whether it should be kept at high or low temperature and should or shouldn’t be exposed to water. You were its creator, and it was, in a sense, a part of you.

Do you resist knowing the Bible because you think of it as being full of rules from a God who doesn’t really like you and is just giving you a hard time so you can’t have any fun?

Think again. He made you. You are his pride and joy. He will stop at nothing to make sure you will last forever. He made a few rules for your daily maintenance.

He is your Creator. He loved you enough to make you, and you are a part of him. Now he wants to take care of you so you can last forever. Can you love him back ~ your Maker and the Lover of your soul?

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0-HS-592 VersesExamined-COVER-ThumbnailTHE HOLY SPIRIT:  592 VERSES EXAMINED.  No feeding on pet peeves. This book considers all verses in the Bible about God’s Holy Spirit.  When studied like that, everything comes together, makes sense, and is beautiful.  To BUY NOW, click a book cover or paste this……….https://bit.ly/376695S

https://inspirationsbykatheryn.wordpress.com/1107-2/my-book-the-holy-spirit-in-365-scriptures/?frame-nonce=9f9ac75c8f

The Son shall be called the Father

 0000-BK 1-StarSong-Cover-new-MediumThe scripture for today, February 23 (2/23), is 1st John 2:23 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

“No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”

This verse tells us the Son and Father are one. Isaiah 9:6 calls the child to be born both the Son and the Father and Mighty God. The Son gives birth to the Father; the Father gives birth to the Son. In other words, God is self-existent and one.

When you speak into a tape recorder and your voice then comes out of that machine for other people to hear, that doesn’t make you two.  You are still one; you have just chosen to put your voice in something where you can be heard by people away from you.  That tape recording is just another form of you. You can also put your voice and body in a movie. That doesn’t make two of you ~ one on the screen and one in your physical body. You are still one.

God is One, and yet he revealed a part of himself in a burning bush to Moses just like you revealed a part of yourself in the tape recorder or movie.  Does that mean there were two Gods ~ one in heaven and one in the bush?  No.  God can and has sometimes revealed himself in different ways. Remember how he walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?

Some say, “If Jesus was God on earth, when he died, God was dead.”  No. That temporary body was dead, but God’s Spirit, God’s Soul, God’s being continued to live. Jesus, the Word of God, did not depend on a body to be alive.

Why would Jesus be called the Son of God, since he was not a son created in the literal way we have sons?  You have thoughts, and those thoughts have existed as long as you have.  But you still created those thoughts.  When your thoughts become hearable or seeable, people call that your “brainchild.”   In that same sense, Jesus was God’s “brainchild” ~ God’s thoughts in hearable and seeable form. 

How was he the only begotten Son? God has only one Word ~ the Bible.  “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made” (John 1:1-3).  When God spoke the world into existence, that was Jesus. Every time God spoke, that was Jesus.

Isaiah 9:6 says the Son shall be called Mighty God and Everlasting Father.  And so he was.  And so he is.

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0000-BK 1-StarSong-Cover-new-ThumbnailTHEY MET JESUS:  STAR SONGCome meet the people who met Jesus.  You are one of them  Probably you are several of them. Go ahead and struggle with him as they did.  Laugh. Cry.  Do mental battle with him.  Emotional battle too.  Fight for your faith as they fought.  Pause to listen for what you’ve never heard before.  Then touch Jesus. This is the story of faith in the impossible.   Hope in the inconceivable.  Love for the invincible.  It is the dreams of youth, the desperations of infirmity, the hopes of age, and the song of eternity.  To BUY NOW, click a book cover or paste this:  https://bit.ly/3qMEUXd

https://inspirationsbykatheryn.wordpress.com/historical-novel-about-jesus/

 

The world is your song

OldOldTunes-mediumI can’t help but praise you, my Lord, each day and all day. You alone are worthy of this. You alone are God and there is no other. You are the life of my body and spirit. You are the love of my heart and soul. Your words are absorbed in my heart and treasured in my soul now and forever.

Lord, I was in someone’s house yesterday and they had the most beautiful rug. I wanted such a rug for my house. I almost envied them. Then I caught myself. What difference does it make how I decorate things? Help me look at the beauty of their souls instead. Help me want what I have and no more. All I need is you.

Thank you, God, for the little birds I see outside my window each morning. There they are, ready to greet me. And the sun. Each morning it rises just to say, “I’m back. Didn’t I promise you I would be?”. The darkness is good because it makes me rest. But how I love the morning and the world waking up with it. And thank you for pouring your heart out to the world in your Bible. Now I can know you and have no doubts. How many in this world are willing to pour out their heart to others as you did? I think the world is your song.

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OldOldTunes-ThumbnailTHE OLD OLD STORY SET TO OLD OLD TUNES.  All songs are set to folk tunes.  Forty about the Old Testament and forty about the New Testament.  Sing with friends and family on Zoom.  Or with grandchildren when they visit. Or for music lessons of homeschoolers.  To BUY NOW, click a book cover or paste this……….https://bit.ly/2YwJVHI

https://inspirationsbykatheryn.wordpress.com/links-to-some-of-my-fun-bible-stuff/the-old-old-story-set-to-old-old-tunes/

Oh, how you have spoiled me.

Oh, how you have spoiled me. You placed diamonds in mountain-top snow, rubies in the flowers, emeralds in 365 Dat by Date-Front-Thumbnailthe meadows, and delight in the birds that daily sing to me. As I climb the mountain of my life I think back of all the enormous opportunities I had as a youth. As I grow older and climb higher, my choices are narrowing and I am glad. My focus is more and more on you. Someday I will reach the mountain top, and you will be there. You will smile and say, “Welcome home.”

Forgive me when I refuse to forget a hurt and let myself become bitter.  Help me not forget those who have mistreated me. Perhaps they did not know they did. Or, even if they did so on purpose, bless them anyway.

Ah, thank you, my Lord, for all you have done for us through the history of mankind. I, along with everyone else, travel a wilderness, often not making good choices. The frustrations you must feel when I don’t pay attention to you but they do not stop you from loving me. You have been too patient. But you also give me your Word map in my wilderness to show me just where I am. And give me work to do in order to make sense of life. Thank you for entrusting me with that work. I will do the best I know how. I know you smile and reply, “That’s all I ask: Do your very best.”

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365 Dat by Date-Front-Thumbnail365 LIFE-CHANGING SCRIPTURES DAY BY DATE is a daily devotional guide with scriptures based on the date, using month numbering.  Therefore, 3/16 is John 3:16,   1/1 is Genesis 1:1,   8/28 is Romans 8:28 and   6/4 is Romans 6:4. To BUY NOW, click a book cover or paste this……….https://bit.ly/3887z0L

https://inspirationsbykatheryn.wordpress.com/1107-2/life-changing-scriptures-day-by-date-2/?frame-nonce=9f9ac75c8f

They Rocked the Cradle that Rocked the World

The scripture for today, February 2 (2/2), is Matthew 2:2 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

book cover3a front-MED“[the Magi/Wisemen] asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”

There are people who believe the “star of Bethlehem” was in the east. But the star wasn’t in the east; the wise men (Magi) were.

The Christmas carol says the star led the wise men the whole way. But Matthew 2:9 & 10 says, “After they had heard the king [Herod], they went on their way, and the star they HAD seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.”

They rejoiced when they saw the star again, not because it had been with them the whole time, but because it had reappeared.

The Christmas carol also speaks of them as “We Three Kings.” First, there were three gifts but could have been an entourage of ten or twenty or more. Second, they were not kings.  It wasn’t until 600 AD that someone named them as the king of Arabia, king of India and King of Persia. The original language calls them Magi which is a tribe of astrologers and priests in Babylon and Parthia.

By the way, the manger scenes show the wise men there with the shepherds on the night Jesus was born.  Jesus was around two years old by the time the wise men figured out the meaning of the star and traveled over 1000 miles to get there, following by boy babies killed ages two and under.

Then there are the carols that say the angels sang are wrong. Angels do not sing. Christians do, but angels do not. Check it out.  There are so many things about the Bible that we have heard all our lives and just assume are true. Here’s an idea: Investigate things for yourself! Why take a teaching about the Bible for granted? You’re smart. You can do it. Will you?

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book cover3a front-THUMBTHEY ROCKED THE CRADLE THAT ROCKED THE WORLD is the stories of everyone in the Bible involved in the birth of Jesus.  To BUY NOW, click a book cover or paste this:  https://bit.ly/ChristmasNovelsStories

https://inspirationsbykatheryn.wordpress.com/they-rocked-the-cradle-that-rocked-the-world/

Let loose, then cling

COVER-Music-medThe scripture for today, January 25 (1/25), is James 1:25 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

“But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it ~ he will be blessed in what he does.”

A lot of people do not understand that there was the Law of Moses with over 600 commands in the Old Testament, and the Law of Jesus with very few commands in the New Testament. Religious leaders use the Law of Moses to justify adding fancy or fun things to worship or a separate priesthood or tithing, or whatever they like. 

But they leave out stoning for adultery or disobeying your parents, killing someone who killed your relative, knocking the eye out of someone who knocked your eye out, giving a third of your income (not just a tenth), killing animals to sacrifice, etc.  It’s all part of the same Law!

Romans 7:4-7 says Christians have been released from the Law. Hebrews 8:13 & all of chapter 9 say the first covenant (testament/law) of Moses had regulations for worship but is obsolete in favor of the new covenant (testament/law). James 2:10 says if you try to live by the old Law but fail in just one point, you are guilty of all of it.

But how are you to know what was in the Old Law of Moses besides the fancy or fun things today’s religious leaders like?  There is only one possible answer:  Read it.  Plow through Leviticus and all those minute codes. Then you will understand.

Let us truly let loose of the old Law of Moses and cling to the “perfect Law that gives freedom” in Christ.

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COVER-Music-thumbINSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IN THE PUBLIC WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH is volume II in the RESTORATION REPRINT LIBRARY OF NORTHERN LIGHTS PUBLISHING HOUSE.  It was written by Presbyterian theologian in the 1800s, a masterpiece.  The most thorough work on this topic out there.  A must for every church library.  To BUY NOW, click a book cover or past this……….https://bit.ly/3lYBDB7

https://inspirationsbykatheryn.wordpress.com/instrumental-music-in-the-public-worship-of-the-church/

 

 

Keeping the cosmos synchronized

0-HS-592 VersesExamined-COVER-ThumbnailAh, Lord God. I praise you for your greatness and minuteness.  You dwell in the cosmos and you dwell in each tiny atom. You are directed energy, determined love, the head, heart and soul of the universe. Nature praises your reliability and predictability. My spirit praises you for bringing life and brightness and wonder into the world. When the sun shines on me, I know it is you. When rain drops happily onto the ground, I know it is you. When the rainbow emerges among dark clouds, it, of course, is you.

Help me not look down on people with weaknesses. When I do, it makes me weaker than them.

Your patience with mankind through the centuries is beyond comprehension. You answer sometimes silly (to you) daily prayers while having to keep everything in the cosmos synchronized. And, Jesus, you came at just the right time after mankind had tried everything to be perfect and realized it is impossible. Oh glorious thought ~ all you have done and continue to do to rescue me from Satan and keep the way clear for me to live on the heights with you someday forever. Thank you, too, for seekers around the world.  Send more to me so I can reach out to them. Thank you for their souls that I may offer up to you.

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0-HS-592 VersesExamined-COVER-ThumbnailTHE HOLY SPIRIT:  592 VERSES EXAMINED shows the reader everything God wants us to know about His Spirit ~ no more, no less.  This book was NOT written to prove or disprove a pet theory, whether or not it is popular and whether or not preachers around the world declare it as truth.  Simply written, it shows examples of the Holy Spirit with prophets, with apostles, with Old Testament people, New Testament people, etc.  To BUY NOW, click a book cover or paste this……….https://bit.ly/376695S

https://inspirationsbykatheryn.wordpress.com/1107-2/my-book-the-holy-spirit-in-365-scriptures/?frame-nonce=9f9ac75c8f