Gateways to Joy

Please listen, reflect and examine your heart while listening {scroll down to pause the music}. Bless you and may your days be filled with remembering Him and enjoying your love ones.  Don't forget to count the blessings!

I n reading the accounts of Jesus' death in Chuck Swindoll's, "The Darkness and the dawn."   I'm horrified at the barbaric way the Romans chose death for their convicted criminals. "How could a soul drive nails in the wrist of another, especially an innocent man, and not be mortified?"  Here God's Son stood in their very midst and they (the many people) missed Him.  Even most of the highly religious leaders missed Him.  How could such a travesty be? In pondering on this I am led to read my bible and open the pages to read these words, "The woman said to the serpent, 'From the fruit of the tress of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.' The serpent said to the woman, 'You surely will not die!  For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing ...

For the past 20 years, our families Easter tradition on my in-laws side has been to head up to Louisiana for a Shrimp and Crawfish boil.  We always enjoy this...the gathering together with fun and fellowship with our loved ones.  Though my heart is happy in these times, I've always felt as if I was forgetting about the "true" meaning of the Easter event.  Even when we are home and don't go to Louisiana we get up and go to early service for that day, but again the true meaning of really celebrating the leading up to the death and supernatural act of Jesus being raised from the dead truly gets lost over here. I noticed that every year Ann Voskamp posts a link to John Piper's site.  This year, actually last year I prayed and asked the Lord to really help me learn more about this season and to pass it along to my children.  I want this celebration of lent and Jesus' resurrection to be life long traditions in our family.  Something to be pass down from gener...

T oday we will continue looking at how Jesus 'let go' of His ways, and submitted to the will of His Father to bring salvation to mankind.  We're continuing our Walk With Him Wednesday participating with Ann Voskamp and community over at A Holy Experience. " 'Jesus went beyond the ancient tradition, says Chuck Swindoll, after the blessing, He passed to His disciples the broken fragments of bread and told them, 'Take, eat; this is My body.'  The bread was now not just a reminder of 'the swiftness of God's deliverance' from Egyptian bondage; it was linked definitively to Jesus, the Bread of Life, and His impending death. Jesus had given a new significance to the Passover bread, superseding the ancient meaning with the concept that His brokenness, His death, would secure salvation for all time.  Just as the Passover signified, 'the greatest redemptive event' of the Old Testament and looked forward to 'the coming of the Messianic a...

'D espised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief ... we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.  But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet He opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth . ... He was cut off of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. ...  There was no deceit in his mouth.  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief." ~ Isaiah 53, 3-10 Each Wednesday I participate with Ann Voskamp and a few other bloggers in community over at a holy experience  ...