Praise the Lord With All I Am

Today I am not having the best day. I woke up not feeling well at all. Things just haven't been going as planned. Then as I laid in my bed I thought about all the things I had been blessed with from the moment I woke up. The first blessing I was given was the blessing of life. God gave me the blessing of waking me up. The second blessing he gave me was after he woke me up I received an email from someone who makes me feel special, but also makes me feel special in the eyes of God. It makes me think of the song "Blessed Be The Name Of The Lord". One of the lines in the song goes "every blessing you pour out I'll turn back to praise. When the darkness closes in Lord, still I will say". Even though I woke up not feeling good, it's a good day and I will praising the Lord even in the darkest of days. This is because He loves me and He cares about me and keeps blessing me beyond what I can even fathom... Today I read Psalm 31-35. Here is how the Word of God has effected me today.


Psalm 31:5  "Into your hands I commit my spirit: redeem me, O LORD, the God of truth". The first thing that caught my eye was the first part of this verse where the author writes "Into your hands I commit my spirit". I knew that these words were spoken somewhere else in the Bible so I did a little research. I knew they were also words from Jesus, I just was not sure where they were found. I found out that these words are also found in the gospel of Luke. The context of those words is Jesus on the cross dying and he says to the father "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. When he had said this, he breathed his last". Even though these words are not said in the same context, when Christ says those words it is kind of like us committing our Spirits up to the Father. That should have been us on that cross. We should have been the person committing our spirit to the father. When I read through the Psalm, David goes on to say "redeem me, O LORD, the God of truth". When we commit our spirit to the Father, we are asking God to take our old spirit (life) and redeem us and give us a new, clean spirit (life).


Psalm 32:5 "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the LORD' and you forgave the guilt of my sin". This Bible verse has really hit home the past couple of days. I have had past sins that I have not wanted to acknowledge. I have forgave the person that created those past sins, but I never really forgave myself for what has happened. This passage makes me realize that I need to be very open and honest with God. Even though He already knows all of the sins I have committed and all the sins I have yet to commit, He still wants me to come to him and lay it all down at his feet. I have done many things that have caused guilt and shame in my life and God says that my sins are forgiven through the death of His son on the cross. This gives me some hope to live in and live by.

Psalm 33:11 "But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations".  No matter how much we may want to do things our way, God's plan will always prevail. God has a purpose for all of our lives and his purpose will be forever in the hearts of all the generations......Jeremiah 29:11 enough said.


Psalm 33:13-14 "From heaven the LORD looks down and sees all mankind: from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth". I have spoke about this idea/concept a few times in my earlier blogs. God looks down from heaven and sees everything we have done, are doing, and will do in the future. You can not hide anything from God. You may be out with your friends drinking or smoking hoping your parents don't find out. I think that your parents are the least of your worries. God knows exactly what you are doing. You may be hanging out with your boyfriend/girlfriend and you start messing around or you have sex and you feel guilty. It's because God has seen what you have done and has seen your sin. You feel guilty because you know it was wrong. After reading this verse I thought to myself "Oh crap!!! I have done some bad stuff I didn't want God to know about and now he is sitting up on His throne and He knows exactly what I have been doing". If you are reading through this verse, it should be a wake up call. It was a wake up call for me. Whatever you are doing in private is not so private because God is everywhere.


Psalm 34:1-3 "I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together".  Can anybody say COMMUNITY WORSHIP!!!!!YES PLEASE. The first verse goes off what I said earlier in the intro. Even in the bad times I will praise His name .It will always be on my lips. No matter what I am going through. I will proclaim the name of the LORD. There are no questions to ask.


Psalm 34:18 "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and save those who are crushed in spirit". I have been one of those people who has been brokenhearted. I have been one of those people who has been crushed in spirit. Yes God is all around us and He is always with us, but He is even more close to us when we are brokenhearted. He is even closer when we feel like there is no other place to turn.


There are a couple of chapters I did not take Bible verses from. This does not mean they were not important or anything like that. It just means that they did not hit me as much as what these verses do. I would encourage you to read through all of the chapters. There may be things in there that will hit you. I would like to hear about the verses that hit you and how they may have hit your or impacted your life. Remember that even in the bad times, you need to praise God. He has given you blessings, you may not have realized it. Even bad things in your life can be blessings. Laura Story has a song called Blessings and I would love for you to take time to listen to the song. It is a song that has impacted my life and I hope that it will impact your life. Blessings on your day :)

 

I am afraid of nothing because of You

Whew its been a long week. The best thing about this week is even though it has been long, I have carved out a good amount of time to spend with God. I have learned that it is very important to spend time with God. You will feel refreshed and renewed physically, emotionally, and mostly spiritually. Today I will be focusing on Psalm 26-31. (even though I do not have verses from all of the chapters, I still encourage you to read them)

Psalm 27:1-2 "The LORD is my light and my salvation whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall". When I started reading this, I thought about physical light and spiritual light. I am a person is scared of the dark. I have three night lights that get me down the stairs into my bedroom. I can sleep in the dark because I stop thinking about how dark it is.  I may be getting off my rocker, but when I see those night lights, I think about God being with me and keeping me safe.  Now we move onto the spiritual side of Light.  A lot of the time when someone is depressed, they are told they are in a "dark" time in their lives. I have been in this time. For me, when I am depressed, I have a fear of death, but also a fear of Satan. Now that I think about it why do I have fear? I have the brightest light in the world in my life. There is no reason to fear anything. Right now I am in a great spot. God has a great hold on my life and I praise Him everyday for the people in my life, but also for the things He is doing in my life. I am not afraid of what the world will throw at me. The reason why this is, is because God is going to help me through it and He will never leave my side.


Psalm 27:4 "One thing I ask from the LORD this only do I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to see him in his temple".  You all know where I'm going with this. The song "Better is One Day" The writer of the song ask to seek the beauty of the Lord. We do not have to ask to see his beauty, just take a look outside and you will see His beauty. Every sunset shows the power and might of the Lord.


Psalm 28:4 "Repay them for their deeds and for their evil work; repay them for what their hands have done and bring back on them what they deserve". This verse kind of bothers me. We have no right to tell God to repay evil. We cannot ask to have people get what they deserve because we all deserve death and Hell. Lets just be serious for a minute. We are all evil. We have all committed sins. God sent His son to die on the cross to save our butts. Every single one of us deserves death on a cross. We have done evil. Jesus did not do anything wrong, but he loves us so much he decided to take our death so we could have life.


One of the things we need to remember is that God is our light and our strong hold. We have nothing to be afraid of and nothing to fear if God is on our side. Also we need to remember that God's beauty is everywhere. The only thing you need to do is just open your eyes and look.

From Trusting Myself to Trusting Only You

These past few days have been full of no trust or trust in the wrong thing.  Life has been piling up on me and I do not know where to put my trust.  Events of the past few days have brought me to tears. They have brought me away from my family. They have caused me to lock myself in my bedroom and place my trust away from God. Trust is a big issue for me. I place trust in things that I know are wrong. I place trust in people who I know will break it. I keep repeating this phrase in my head "Trisha you can handle this on your own. You do not need anybody else. You can do it on your own". This is where all of my trust problems begin. I am placing my trust in myself instead of the one constant in my life. It's time for me to Let Go and Let God. Its time for me to place my Trust in God and watch Him do miracles in my life.... Psalm 21-25

Psalm 21:2 "You have granted him the desire of his heart and have not withheld the request of his lips". When I first read this verse, my mind went straight back to Psalm 20:4 where David writes "may he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed".  This is something that got me very excited about reading the Bible tonight. We see a request given up to God and the request being fulfilled. David sent up a request to God to have all the desires of his heart. In between the request and the fulfillment, there was a period of waiting, hoping, and TRUSTING. In order to become a man after God's own heart, David needed to put all of his trust into God.

Psalm 22:1-2 "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent".  First off, these two verses sum up the fast few days I have had. I felt abandoned by God. I felt like He did not care about me. Then my mind flipped to the New Testament. The words "My God, my God why have you forsaken me" are words that came out of the mouth of Jesus while he hung on the cross, bleeding, hurting, abandoned, and alone. While I read through this, I felt tears well up in my eyes, "Jesus felt the same way that I did". In Matthew 26:36-45, we see the humanity of Jesus. We also see Jesus placing His trust into the hands of His Father. Matthew 26:39 states " Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will , but as you will' ". From that moment in the garden of Gethsemane to the moment on the cross where he feels abandoned by his father, he placed his trust in his Father that He was going to take care of him. I feel like I am in a place in my life where I feel abandoned by God. Reading these two verses in Psalms made me realize that I need to place my trust in God and remain in Him through it all. Even if I feel forsaken, it is me who is walking away from Him, not him walking away from me.

Psalm 23:4 "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me". I cannot read through this whole chapter of Psalm 23 without remembering back to the first time I learned this Bible verse. I was in the 5th grade. I cannot even tell you how many years ago that was. I was in Sunday School and my teacher would give stars and candy for every Sunday we could say the whole Bible verse.  This verse is the verse that has always stuck out to me. It shows me that even though I go through valleys and that death could be creeping up onto my door step, I will not fear evil or Satan because God is on my side and He will comfort me through all things.

Psalm 24:4,6 "The one who has clean hands and a pure heart , who does not trust in an idol or swears by a false go. 6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, who see your face, God of Jacob" For any of you who know me, you know that I am going to tie this scripture into a song. The song is "Give us Clean Hands" The part of the song that hits me the most is "oh God let us be a generation that seeks, that seeks your face oh God of Jacob". This is my prayer for my generation. We need to seek God and put our trust in God. Even though He is unseen to the human eye, His works are not unseen. I know for myself I want to seek the face of God and I hope my generation follows.



Psalm 25:1-2 "In you, LORD my God, I put my trust. I trust in your; do not let me be put to shame nor let my enemies triumph over me" This whole blog today has been about trust. While I was reading I was trying to figure out a theme and when I came to this passage ,I knew Trust was the theme. This is me declaring that MY TRUST IS IN THE LORD MY GOD.....


Psalm 25:4-5 "Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me for you are God my Savior and my hope is in you all day long."  Lately I have been having theme verses for the week or for the month, and I think that  I have found my theme verse for the week. Right now I am dealing with some things for school that I just cannot seem to get clearance for and this verse gives me all the answers. I need to pray to God to have Him show me where He wants me to go. I see myself the past couple of days just wanting to be in God's truth. I want him to guide me .I do not even know how to explain it or why I feel this way, I just do....


This week has been full of ups and downs. I have realized and learned that my trust needs to move from myself to Him. I need to stop trusting myself and thinking that I can do everything on my own. The trust needs to be put into God and allow Him to do amazing things in my life. All of the confusing situations I am dealing with for school and life, I trust that God will have His way and that His truth and love will prevail.

From Sickness Into Health

Sorry about the delay in blogs. I have not been feeling very well and am trying to get back to full health physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. God has been very faithful to me and has restored my health and strength somewhat. Before coming into this blog today I have been working on the blog from yesterday. I am having a blast writing these blogs and learning about God, but Satan is seeing that and he is really trying to get me down about not finishing them the day of the reading etc. I have been thinking these past few days (and for some people they are thinking "oh no Trisha is thinking")... Lol My hope and prayer for this blog is that someone will come across it and they will give their life to Christ. Everything that I write is based on what I'm being told by God. I am interpreting these Bible verses how God is revealing them to me. I am excited to see what God has in store for this blog. I do have to ask those who are reading my blog to pray for me. I have been dealing with some health issues that need prayer. If you want to know more, you can message me somehow and I will tell you, but for right now lets take a look at Psalm 17-20....


Psalm 17:1 " Hear, O Lord, My righteous plea; listen to my cry. Give ear to my prayer it does not rise from deceitful lips" This passage is interesting to me. First off David loves using the senses. He spends a lot of time pleading with God to "listen to him" or "give your ear". I know this is my own interpretation of this, but I feel like David is trying to tell God that his prayer is pure and true. He is not speaking any deceit. I feel like there are some times we come to God in prayer and we are like "okay God so here I am again and I need this and this and this oh and don't forget God I'm still praying for this person to get better. Why have you not listened to me?" Etc etc you all know what I'm talking about and we all do it. I believe that in order to come to God without a deceitful heart we need to put all our worries and needs aside and first thank God for everything He has done for us. I am not a fan of the fact that David is stating "God Listen to me". As like God doesn't listen to us.

Psalm 17:6 "I call on you, O God, for you will answer me give ear to me and hear my prayer". When I read this I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. I feel like David is demanding God around a lot. I am not a fan of the word WILL. I feel like David is saying that once he prays God will answer his prayer...I feel like it gives false hope to Christians. Yes God will answer your prayers. He may not answer them the way you want them. He may not answer them when you want him to. He may just give you a straight NO...

Psalm 17:11-12 "They have tracked me down, they now surround me, with eyes alert, to throw me to the ground. They are like a lion hungry for prey like a great lion crouching in cover". This passage has great great great imagery. I am picturing myself in the center of all of these people. They are surrounding me in a circle. Their eyes are piercing to my heart. They all grab some part of my body and throw me to the ground....All these people are ready to beat me and prey on me. I have felt this myself. You wake up some day and you feel like the whole world is just against you. You feel like Satan is just out to get you, but this is why we are told in 1st Peter 5 to "be sober minded and alert".

Psalm 18:1 "I love you, LORD, my strength" I can not think of anything to say to this except AMEN!!!!!!

Psalm 18:2 "The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold" This verse gives me a lot of confidence. When my life is going bad or I feel weak, I can find my hope in the strength of God. I have so many songs coming in to my head while I am writing about this passage... The song "Rock of Ages" and the song "a Mighty Fortress is Our God". These two songs talk about the strength of God against anything that Satan thinks he can throw at us.

Psalm 18:9 "He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet" The world that we live in is a very dark world. God opened up the heavens and Jesus Christ came to us in the form of a tiny baby. He came from His perfect world with God to come to our dark, filthy, disgusting world. Talk about sacrifice....

Psalm 18:16-17 "He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me"... I have been through a lot in my life and I have felt like I was in deep water. I felt myself drowning. There was no way God was going to be able to deliver me from this hurt and pain. But then one day I will feel God holding onto me saying "Trisha your enemies may be to strong for you to take on yourself, but remember I am with you and I will rescue from those who keep you from me"....

Psalm 18:46 "THE LORD LIVES! PRAISE BE TO MY ROCK EXALTED BE GOD MY SAVIOR" The LORD lives??????? why yes He does. He lives in my heart and He is my God and My Savior. "My God He was my God is His my God he's always going to be". This song is called "My Savior My God" By Aaron Shust. My Savior Lives, My Lord Lives, and the rock of my salvation LIVES!!!!!! (sorry i just get really excited about it)

Psalm 19: 1-6 (please grab out your Bible and read this segment) I LOVE THE IMAGERY that David gives. It makes me think of standing out in creation and singing "Shout to the Lord"... "Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of Your name. I sing for joy at the work of Your hands. Forever I'll love you forever I'll stand".  Verse 6 makes me think of a sunrise and a sunset and everything in between. "no one is deprived of its warmth".

Psalm 19:14 "May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight. LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer"... While I sit here and write this blog I wonder "What is God thinking when He sees into my heart while I am writing this?" "Is He please with what He reads?".  Then I think to myself  "my words and my meditations are made perfect through the blood of Jesus Christ"
 Psalm 20:1-5     In these 5 verses of Psalm 20, there are 5 "MAY" statements.


Statement 1: "May the Lord answer you in your distress". All of us go through hard times in our lives. Many of my Friends know what I have been through. This right here gives me hope that the Lord will come to me and see my distress and answer me when I call him.

Statement 2: "May he send you help from his sanctuary and grant you support from Zion" This gives me some hope. God is offering His help. He is watching me from His sanctuary and when the timing is right, He will send His help down to me.


Statement 3: "May he remember all your sacrifices and accept your burnt offerings" When I read this verse I find myself translating this into our culture. When I read "burnt offerings" I think of "may he accept your offerings". As I meditate through the Word of God, we are told that our bodies are our temples. I think to myself that my offering is giving my body as a living sacrifice.


Statement 4: "May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed" I like this verse. I have desires of my heart that i would love to have. Those obviously are things between God and I, but I hope that some of the desires of my heart be given to those who are faithful to the creator. The second part of this verse makes me happy as well. "May he make all your plans succeed". I have many plans going on in my head, but what I really want is for the plans of God to succeed in my life. The biggest plan that I have that I want to succeed through is graduating college. I am 28 credits away from this. I am excited to see what plans God is going to succeed in my life.


Statement 5: "May we shout for joy over your victory and lift up our banners in the name of our God. May the LORD grant all your request".  I have gone through many of things in my life. This give me the hope that once I overcome something, there are going to be people around me shouting for joy. They are going to be happy that I have overcome something that was hard. Something that has been a temptation for me.  I have one thing that has been keeping me from fully giving my life to Christ. I have been getting help from a very great friend of mine. He has been trying to help me come to terms and overcome this stronghold that Satan has over me. I can not wait to have victory over the devil. The one thing that makes me happy is knowing that God has already beaten Satan and he is DONE FOR!!!!!!!!!!!!


 I have been beaten up by Satan and I'm hanging on by a small thread. I am getting closer to God and Satan is not happy with it. I look back over the last 5 statements and I can find hope and joy through those statements. Even though I am going through a lot right now, physically I will go from Sickness into Health. Mentally I will go from Sickness into health. Spiritually i will go from being Under the power of Satan to the power of the RISEN KING!!!!!!! BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

all creation will praise Your name.

From Fasting to Fulfillment

Even though yesterday was a very hard day, I woke up this morning very spiritual refreshed and renewed. Of course we all know that Satan does not like it when we are spiritually refreshed and renewed so of course he had to throw off my game. I started off this morning in a great mood. Had some great conversations with Kiearra and Jamaal about God and attitudes. Then my day got slammed when people brought negativity into my life. Satan saw a great way to throw me off my game. He knows that I care about people and I want everybody to be happy. Satan made some pokes at people I really care about and tried to make them angry so it would distract me from my good mood. Well Satan succeeded but only for a short while. I am starting to get back onto my game and I'm digging into the word of God.... :) Psalm 11-16

Psalm 11:4 "The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD is on his heavenly throne. He observes everyone on the earth; his eyes examine them."   When I read this passage it brings tears to my eyes. I am one of those people who believes that our loved ones are looking down upon us as well. This also makes me think about all the bad things I have done and tried to keep secret from God, but yeah God sees everything. All the little lies we tell, all the mean things we say about people, all the thoughts we have in our minds. God looks down and sees and hears all of it.

Psalm 12:1 "Help, LORD for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race"...Oh goodness nobody is faithful anymore. This couldn't be anymore true. When I look around my town, my state, my country I am disgusted. When I watch TV, when I go on the internet, when I watch movies, all I see is sex, sex, sex, vulgar language, more sex, and teen pregnancy.
 There are no faithful people any more. In the New Living Translation this verse reads "Help, O Lord, for the godly are fast disappearing! The faithful have vanished from the earth". This makes me really sad for the people back in David's time, but it also makes me sad for our world right now. There are mass murders, people being killed by mentally unstable people, war is raging and the only thing we can do is Cry out for help to our God who is looking down on us.

Psalm 13:1-2 "How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 "How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? A lot the past few weeks I have felt like this. I have felt like God has abandoned me and that God doesn't care about me. I feel like He is far off, but in all reality, I have walked away from Him. He is the one constant thing in my life. He is the only person that hasn't walked away from me. We all have our off days or our down days, but we have to remember that God is looking down on us and cares about us. (resort back to Psalm 11:4)

Psalm 13:5 "But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation" This verse made me think of the song "Your Love Never Fails" by Jesus Culture. I shared that song at the bottom of my last blog

Psalm 13:6 "I will sing the LORD's praise, for he has been good to me" As some of the people reading my blog know, I am BIG into music. A lot of the time when I read through God's word and dig into it, some songs start to make sense. For example the song that comes to my mind is "You are so Good to Me" by Third Day. The 1st verse and the Bridge make total sense to this verse it goes as follows

•  You are so good to me
  You heal my broken heart
  You are my Father in heaven  (VERSE1)

•  You are my strong melody
  You are my dancing rhythm
  You are my perfect rhyme
  And I want to sing forever  (BRIDGE)

Psalm 14:2-3 "The LORD looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if htere are any who understand any who seek God 3 "All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one" This verse brings me back to Psalm 11:4 and Psalm 12:1 where the Psalmist looks at the people and says "you are all corrupt and non of you does good or loves God" there is no good in this world anymore. Very True and I agree 100% with the Psalmist. But on the flip side you may be reading this blog saying "but Trisha there are some people that do good". This is true but the question is "what are their intentions"? Do they do good because they want to look good in front of people, or do they do good because they want to glorify God? sit and ponder this before you move on....

Psalm 16:2 " I said to the LORD 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.' " Apart from you, I have no good thing? ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW... this is a hard one for me to wrap my head around .I have so many good things in my life. I have so many good people in my life. But apart from God I have no good thing? Can someone please comment and explain to me what this means?

Psalm 16:11 "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand." The New Living Translation reads "You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence, and the pleasures of living with you forever".  This brings me back to Jeremiah 29:11 where Jeremiah presents the word of the Lord to those who are in captivity. He states "For I know the plans you have for me Declares the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" This right here is my theme verse for life. I know that God will present me with His plan. The thing is it will not be in our time, it will be presented in HIS time. If we follow Him, follow His plan, and follow what is written in His word, we will be filled with joy while we are in His presence.

The past day has been interesting. I have spent a lot of time in prayer, a lot of time in the Word of God, and I completed a fast. God reveled to me a few things during this time, and I would like to share these things with you... I am a senior at Kuyper College and I have been in pursuit of an internship for quite some time now. I spent a good amount of time in prayer about this internship. I asked God where he wanted me to go and he was silent. I asked again in a different way and God was still silent. Now for me when God is silent I feel like He is ignoring me, but like I said before, God is not away from me or ignoring me, I am ignoring him and walking away from him. So finally I said to God "okay I can't worry about this anymore. Please make it known to me where you want me to go somehow so I at least know something is there. I opened up my email on Thursday, and there was an email from a worship director who wanted to meet with me. Coincidence? I don't think so. I think that this is part of God's plan and it makes me think back to Psalm 16:11. He has a plan for my life. He has set a path for my life and after a while he will make it known to me. Blessings on your day :)

http://youtu.be/9vCNvWvJvnk