Welcome! So glad you're here!

I invite you to come on a journey with me!

God is leading me to teach everyday people I meet what God and Jesus are all about and how They pertain to our everyday life. Being a recovering control freak, God and I have gone around and around. First with my health, then money. Then it was our adult children. Being codependent no more has found new meaning! I literally limited God, and didn't know how to "Rest in Him." Well, I'm learning! And I would love to share what I've learned with you.

In the bible, God is portrayed as our shepherd, and we are portrayed as His sheep.

God sent Jesus to show us His love for us. Not to condemn us. But to save us.

The word says that God sent His beloved Son to die on a cross for us. Why would He do that?

He created a plan that allowed us to come close to Him! To know our worth and to believe that we matter. He also wants us to live lives that glorify Him, and that cause others to see light when they observe our lives. He wants our lives to be attractive to others. That is why doesn't want us to sin. Not because God punishes sinners, but because He wants to save them from self-destruction. The laws in the Old Testament, including the ten commandments, were given to show us just how short we fall in trying to keep the law in our own strength. When Jesus died on the cross, He knew that in our flesh, we could never do it alone. Jesus paid a huge price for you! Why? Because He loves you! He is LOVE! We have a principle in this world that says once judgment for a crime has been punished, it cannot be punished again. That is called "double jeopardy."

Your sins of past, present and future were judged in and on the body of Jesus Christ. THAT is why we are forgiven once we accept Jesus Christ as our savior. Jesus came so that the world might be saved, not punished. However, if we choose to go on making poor choices, we will have consequences in this life from them. Overeating, drug addiction, and smoking cause health problems. Those are the consequences. They also produce guilt, shame, and remorse, which are not from God.

We have an enemy that roams about seeking whom He may devour. He whispers lies to you about who you are, and all the negative things you do, or the things you are not doing enough of. THOSE THOUGHTS ARE LIES the devil put there to try and steal your joy, peace, faith and hope.

God also gave us the Holy Spirit. He is also called the comforter and the helper. His Spirit lives inside us. He is there to remind us who we are as a new creation in Christ.

That is what the gospel of Grace, which is a gift from God, is all about. You cannot earn this by anything you do. It is a gift that cost Jesus His life. Every passion that you have in this life was put there by God. They are His gifts to you, for you to share with the world.

There is an awful lot of controversy concerning the teaching of grace. First of all, Grace is not a teaching. You could say that Grace is a person. His name is Jesus. He/Grace is the object of the gospel that Paul preached in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, believers would go to a temple and worship, and there they would go before the High Priest, and offer bulls and goats as a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of their sins every year.

But now, because of the cross of Jesus Christ, we have a new way. Jesus is always a picture of things to come throughout the Old Testament. Here He is the High priest of the Old Testament. His blood sacrifice on the cross is a picture of our forgiveness of sins. The bible says we are cleansed once and for all of all our sins. The blood of bulls and goats covered sins in the Old Testament only for one year, but in the New Testament, the bible says the blood of Jesus Christ doesn't just cover sins, it washes them away forever. He says our sins have been washed away as far as the east is from the west! Now that's good news! He knew you were going to mess things up before you ever did. He created you.

We are not giving people a "license" to sin by believing the Good News of the Gospel. We are giving them a reason not to! Who would want to continue making bad choices when they know how deeply they are loved and cared for!

Won't you take a minute to thank God for what He accomplished at the cross through Jesus? Receive the free but high-priced gift of His salvation today! Just tell the Lord that you want to be a part of this plan of His. Thank him for the plan, and find a good tribe or community that points people to Jesus, and what He has done for us! It doesn't have to be a church. Reach out to like-minded people on Facebook, or search for groups that interest you. You would be surprised. There are groups for everything you can think of! Just don't isolate. Let people into your life and learn from each other!

If you want a greater revelation of what is yours through Jesus and his gift of grace and righteousness, start reading the bible in Galatians or Romans. Ask the Holy Spirit to help give you a greater meaning or revelation of what He is saying to you! He will! I promise. Enjoy!

Surrender?

A huge life lesson for me!

Someone once told me I need to "just surrender". That's hard for a recovering control freak to do!

So it's time I share what the Lord is trying to teach me about how he operates.

One of my favorite teachers puts it like this. When you are "working", (on whatever the situation is - kids, finances, health, fill in the blank) God is resting. He is waiting for you to give the situation to Him so He can do His work. And likewise, when you are "resting" (trusting that God is in control, and He wants to fix the situation more than you want it fixed), God is working! He is a gentleman like that. He'll sit back and wait as you go around the mountain of self-effort again and again. When you are finally tired of going around the mountain, and you give it to Him, He goes to work!

I'm learning that when I am "losing my peace" over a particular situation in my life (kids, finances, health, fill in the blank), and then I try to "fix it" in my own strength, I fall apart and nothing positive comes of it. Usually, stress comes in a form of sickness or anxiety in your life. Instead of trusting that God is the God of the universe, and that He might know best, and that I should trust Him, I think I have to use self-effort to control or fix the situation.

God is showing me that this is called "walking after the flesh". Most believers have been taught that walking after the flesh is a sexual sin or some other horrible sin. It is not. It is merely trusting in your own effort, instead of resting and trusting that God's got this! When we totally surrender all our self-efforts and simply believe that God is for us and He loves us, and he has our back, that is called "walking after the spirit" or "being obedient".

I like Romans 4:1-6 in the Passion Translation when it speaks of this:

Let me use Abraham as an example. 1 It is clear that humanly speaking, he was the founder of Judaism. What was his experience of being made right with God? 2 Was it by his good works of keeping the law? No. For if it was by the things he did, he would have something to boast about, but no one boasts before God. 3 Listen to what the Scriptures say: Because Abraham believed God’s words, his faith transferred God’s righteousness into his account. 4 When people work, they earn wages. It can’t be considered a free gift, because they earned it. 5 But no one earns God’s righteousness. It can only be transferred when we no longer rely on our own works but believe in the one who powerfully declares the ungodly to be righteous in his eyes. It is faith that transfers God’s righteousness into your account! 6 Even King David himself speaks to us regarding the complete wholeness that comes inside a person when God’s powerful declaration of righteousness is heard over our life. Apart from our works, God’s work is enough.

We also see this in Galatians 4:21-26 speaking about Abraham's two sons, one being born of the flesh {self-effort}, the other being born of the spirit (the result of a divine promise).

21–22 Tell me, do you want to go back to living strictly by the law? Haven’t you ever listened to what the law really says? Have you forgotten that Abraham had two sons; one by the slave girl, and the other by the freewoman? 23 Ishmael, the son of the slave girl, was a child of the natural realm. But Isaac, the son of the freewoman, was born supernaturally by the Spirit—a child of the promise of God! 24 These two women and their sons express an allegory and become symbols of two covenants. The first covenant was born on Mt. Sinai, birthing children into slavery—children born to Hagar. 25 For “Hagar” represents the law given at Mt. Sinai in Arabia. The “Hagar” metaphor corresponds to the earthly Jerusalem of today who are currently in bondage. 26 In contrast, there is a heavenly Jerusalem above us, which is our true “mother.” She is the freewoman, birthing children into freedom!

I hope this encourages you to look to and trust God for the answer to your situation instead of trying in your own self-effort to find an answer.

Blessings!

Tammy