Inspiration – Abundant Gifts

The Gift of Giving

Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

This is often taken to mean, “Only give, don’t ever receive.” But I think Jesus is just describing the beginning of the giving and receiving cycle. It is more blessed to give than to receive because giving is how everything starts.

Dr. Tony Evans says, “Whatever you want to receive, start giving that.” It’s the principle of sowing and reaping. What you sow, you will reap. And the amount you reap will depend on your sparingly or generously you sow.

A few experiences brought these lessons home for me several years ago.

My husband and I were always faithful tithers, but some years ago we went through a very financially lean time and I just couldn’t see how we could give the full tithe. Around that time two things happened to cause me to commit to tithing, no matter what. Continue reading “The Gift of Giving”

When The Gift Is YOU

The one kind of “abundant gift” I most resist, yet often becomes the most precious, is what I call “disguised gifts.”

These are the things in our lives that we don’t welcome because they involve suffering of some kind, but afterward when we look back, we see that in fact, it was a gift.

Such was the case for Dr. David Wolf, a prominent doctor whose life was dramatically altered from an accident as he was indulging his passionate hobby, adult go-cart racing.

The story of the many ways that accident became a “disguised abundant gift” will inspire you.

I also believe it will open up your own heart to allowing God to take whatever “hard stuff” is in your life and turn it into something beautiful.

Please click the book cover or http://abundantgiftsblog.com/giftisyou today and order a copy from Amazon.com. Read it, and pass it on to a friend who also needs encouragement and inspiration. Or get one or more for other loved ones.

The way God worked in Dr. Wolf’s life is unique, but that God can do the same kind of amazing things through your troubles is certain.

Whether your “disguised gift” is a financial issue, a relationship issue, a work problem, or a health challenge, God is able to use it in such a way that you can look back and say, “Wow, look what God did with THAT trial!” But that transformation from trial to gift is not automatic.

This book will show you how that transformation can happen. Read it and live into your own version of it. When you do that, the gift will be YOU.

Resurrection Vision

For an audio version of this, click here.

During a session in something called Immanuel Prayer, a process to help people connect relationally, intimately, personally and securely with God in a prayer ministry session, I “saw” with my spiritual eyes a vision of Jesus’ Resurrection.

First, I “saw” Jesus’ lifeless body in the tomb, wrapped in the grave cloths. An invisible hand begins unwrapping the cloths on his head. Jesus opens his eyes and looks up. He smiles, gets up. The invisible hands take off the grave clothes from the rest of his body.

Jesus raises his hands to heaven and looks up and around, and says to the Father and the Spirit, “You did it!” Meaning: You did not leave my body in the grave. I trusted you all the way to the cross, and you were faithful to keep your promises.

The Father and the Spirit look at Jesus, and exult, “YOU did it!” Meaning: You went to Calvary, you tasted death for all humankind, YOU were faithful to the end.

Then Father and Son turn to the Spirit and crow, “You DID it!” Meaning: You raised Jesus from the dead by your great power.

Then all three dance together and shout, ‘WE–DID–IT!!” It is a roar of triumph, of joy, of indescribable power.

And that “WE DID IT!” is the frequency* that holds the whole universe together. It is the frequency from which all healing, all forgiveness, all grace originates.

Anyone who believes this comes in line with that frequency, and is in tune with Life itself. Anyone who believes this–that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit who together made salvation and redemption possible–enters into what Jesus referred to as “eternal life.” It’s such a new dimension of living that Jesus called it “being born again,” not into a physical family or kingdom, but a spiritual one in which we become the children of God himself. (See John 3.)

When you’re born into this kingdom, you receive spiritual sight. You see God at work. You have new desires, a whole new perspective.

In another Immanuel Prayer session, this time when I was facilitating with a client, Jesus asked my client, “What do you say is the good news?” She said, “That everything we hope for deep down really is real, it really is true. That YOU, Jesus, are more real than anything else.” This she felt so deeply, so personally, in that session.

Jesus told her, “You just have to receive it.”

She said, “It’s so simple. Why don’t more people receive it? Why do we resist, when you are such love?”

Jesus’ answer was to show her her own heart.

Shocked, she said, “It’s so . . . so rotten. It’s all black and rotten.”

Jesus asked her, “Are you ready for a heart transplant? This heart you see is made up of all the rotten things done to you, all the rotten things you have done. It is the heart your own ego created. Would you like Me to give you a new heart?”

That is the question before all of us. The invitation is there. The ‘WE DID IT!” resounds through the universe and calls to each heart.

We need only the humility to acknowledge it and then receive the new heart that Father, Son and Spirit made possible . . . and then live in the power of the “WE DID IT!”

*For more about frequency and the physics of the universe, I recommend chapter six of Quantum Glory: The Science of Heaven Invading Earth by Phil Mason

In God’s Providential Care

I lay down and slept,
yet I woke up in safety,
for the LORD was watching over me. –Psalm 3:5m NLT

A good friend of mine, Cathy, had a near brush with death a few months ago. Here is her story.

On October 25, 2011 I had a heart attack.

The problem was, I didn’t know it was a heart attack. Women, pay attention! It’s true that our symptoms can be VERY different. I woke up somewhere around 2:00 AM with ‘discomfort’ in the middle of my chest. It was so minor that I told myself to go back to sleep. I couldn’t. So I got up and went to the living room wondering what it could be. It was not pain, pressure, indigestion – just an uncomfortable ‘sensation’.

Here is the Angel part. I decided to call a good friend who lives close to me. I dialed her number and it rang twice and I got a fast busy signal. Hmmm – I tried again, paying particular attention to the digits I was dialing. I got a busy signal. I thought about it a bit more and decided to dial 911. I didn’t even know what I was going to say but when the dispatcher answered I told him I THOUGHT I MIGHT be having a heart attack. Where did those words come from? They were not in my consciousness before I said them. When I got to the hospital I asked them to call my friend and they got right through. She looked later and I didn’t even show up on her caller id!

IF I had gotten her on the phone, we would have talked about it some, then she would have gotten up, put on some clothes and came here. By the time that would have taken, I was in the ambulance (they took 5 minutes to get here from the time I was talking to the dispatcher) and I already had an EKG, nitro, aspirin and an IV and we were flying, lights and sirens, to the hospital. I was furious that I could not get her but later realized that it might have saved my life that I could NOT get her on the phone. Thank you God!

Be encouraged; the heavenly Father and his angels are not only watching over Cathy, but you as well.

If you have a story of God’s care or a miracle, feel free to share it below or send it to diane at abundant-gifts.com.

Good Friday Message (On Parenting)

One day in church–it was Good Friday, actually– I was sitting in the back of the church and a dad was quietly explaining what was going on to his young son. I thought, “I never did that with my kids. No wonder they say they don’t believe in God now.” I felt guilty, and confessed my failure as a parent.

God’s reaction took me by surprise. Very distinctly in my spirit, I sensed him say, nonplussed, “Of course you failed.”

He added, “I don’t expect anything else. That’s why I died. And remember, I rose, and it’s all okay, because I’M the one who makes it okay.

“You are forgiven….”

So I know we’ll survive, and it’s my own perfectionism (and pride) that thinks I can be anything but a failure. It’s not that I’m beating myself up about it; quite the opposite.

I’m free to fail, as a parent or in any other way, because I am a sinner and Jesus is the one who took care of sin, once and for all. So now I’m forgiven and can stand in the truth that he can redeem anything.

If only I believe … but even then, if I don’t believe “enough,” that’s okay, because I can’t do that either, and Jesus believes for me.

Isn’t Jesus wonderful?

That was my personal Good Friday sermon.

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Lessons in Seeing

“I can’t find my boots! Where are my BOOTS?”

This was, of course, a crisis because we were dealing with a 15-year-old daughter who absolutely needed her boots RIGHT THEN because at the football game, they were supposed to dress as “cowboys or Indians.” And of course her ride was about to pick her up any minute.

I told her where the boots should be in the basement. She couldn’t find them, of course.

I looked where I thought they should be, on the shelf in the “boiler room” as we call it.

There was a small box there, which I passed over. Surely that couldn’t contain boots, since I knew mine were with hers. That much I remembered.

I ended up clearing out a lot of junk in the basement trying to find those boots. (God’s grace and sense of humor. I did need to clear out all that junk months ago. Guess God knew Continue reading “Lessons in Seeing”

The Center of the Bible

Do you know what the central verse in the Bible is?

I didn’t.

Now I do, and if you can extrapolate that perhaps the central verse of the whole Bible might be the one thing God wants us to “get,” then it’s worth knowing, even memorizing.

Enjoy!

What God’s Doing in His World …

When you’re tired and overwhelmed by the news and all the havoc human being are wreaking in the world, come back here and view this. Be reminded that this is God’s world, and indeed, where he’s at work, “It’s a Wonderful World.”

Let the images and song linger … and become a mental break after listening to the news.

Love in the Cracks of Life’s Road

Love int the Cracks of the road of lfie The roads were icy, so I looked down as I trudged along on my usual morning walk.

Our roads are a mess here. Many cracks, many potholes. This snowy, icy winter has added even more damage.

As I walked, I suddenly stopped. Something caught my eye.

The shape of a particular crack arrested me. It looked just like … a heart!

Our newspaper recently did a photo story on heart shapes in nature. God’s hidden messages–hidden except for those with the eyes to see.

Here was another heart shape, symbol of love. But not in the natural world. In the world humans made, in the road made up of asphalt and dirt and salt.

It’s not so difficult to believe God’s love shows up in the natural realm. But in the world so marred by both human and natural affliction–can we expect to find God’s stamp of love?

Yet, here it is. Here in the broken road is a symbol of love.

It made me think of a verse in Jeremiah 18. “This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: ‘Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.’ So I went down to the potter’s hour, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him” (verses 1-4).

Here we are, going along the road of life, and Continue reading “Love in the Cracks of Life’s Road”