“When you pray and you ask for something, believe that you have received it and you will be given what you asked for” (Mark 11:24 GNT).

Faith is not believing God can do something. Faith is not hoping he will do something. Faith is thanking God in advance.

Jesus said, “When you pray and you ask for something, believe that you have received it and you will be given what you asked for” (Mark 11:24 GNT).

You say, “Wait a minute! I’ve got to thank God in advance before I get it in order to get it?” Yes. If you thank God after you’ve got it, that’s gratitude. When you thank him in advance, that’s called faith.

This illustration really helps explain the idea of thanking God in advance: If someone handed you a check right now for a thousand dollars, would you wait until you cashed it to say “thank you”? No!

You’d thank that person right away. Yet the thousand dollars wouldn’t really be yours until you actually cashed it, because that check is simply a promise. When you are given the check, you can genuinely say thanks, believing that the promise is credible and that the person has enough money in the bank to cover that amount.

Faith is like that. It is thanking God in advance.

What I’m saying is this: If God tells you to go after Moby Dick in a rowboat, take the tartar sauce with you. You’re going to have a fish fry tonight!

Jesus said, “Because of your faith, it will happen” (Matthew 9:29 NLT).

Chaplin Rob

God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time. – Matthew 6:34

The day Martha Stewart went to jail, I mentioned to a group that we should pray for her as she entered her new ‘gated community’, and the group laughed at that. But seriously, jail can indeed be a gift. We prayed for her because good things can happen when people go to jail or hit their proverbial bottom.

In the Bible there’s a story about a man named Joseph who refused to sleep with the queen and was imprisoned for more than 13 years. That was a huge chunk of his life, but it must have been the chunk that prepared him to later be in charge of the entire nation.

Then there was Chuck Colson. While imprisoned for crimes committed during the Watergate scandal he came to trust in God, and when released from prison, Chuck founded what has grown into an international prison ministry that has touched the lives of thousands upon thousands of prisoners.

Your situation might be just as humiliating as Martha Stewart going to jail, but God can redeem it. He makes the best come out of the worst, if you’ll trust Him to do so.

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what’s that? Come up with a smiling face. It’s nothing against you to fall down flat but to lie there, that’s disgrace. – Edmund Vance Cook

Blessings,

Chaplin Rob

Recently I have been working through a book that I highly recommend to you all. The book is by Rev. James Harish entitled “A Disciples Heart; Growing in Grace and Love”. This morning’s reading offered a story that I wanted to share with you.

The book shares an interesting perspective on Mt Rushmore ( that I didn’t know).

A pastoral colleague, Rev. Magrey Vega recently reflected on the amazing work of Gutzon Borglum’s Mt Rushmore.

After viewing the breathtaking spectacle of Gutzon Borglum’s carving of the four presidents, he stopped by gift shop where he purchased a photograph of the mountain taken in 1902, before the sculptor started his work.

It took Borglum 12 years to carve away the stone in order to reveal all the faces that he alone could see on the mountain.

This could be a metaphor for the way God sees something within each of us that no one else can see.

The new discovery for Magrey was that Borglum allowed an extra 3 inches in each figure’s features to account for the weather , which wears away an inch of granite every one hundred thousand years. This suggests that it will take three hundred thousand years for the carving to actually fulfill the sculptors intention.

Margrey wrote.

I can see that at every turn, God has been at work, chipping away at our hardened hearts and rough edged personalities, teaching us– sometimes painfully– about being utterly dependent on God and clear in our commitment to God’s ways. Just like Borglum’s crew used both explosives and nail files to carve granite our lives are filled with monumental moments, both great and small, that change our lives forever.

As I reflected on this story I realized how true it is to our lives.

As followers of Christ, we are always a work in progress; imperfect disciples on the way to perfection through God’s grace; ordinary men and women who need the continuing work of the Diving Cardiologist to heal our stony hearts, replacing them with hearts that are fully alive and being formed into the likeness of the heart of God.

Often I tell people when they come into my office, That God is not done with them yet. How true this is. Every day if we are open to God’s movement we can witness first hard that God is chipping away our pride, our doubts, and our character defects, allowing the true beauty of who God wants ust to be to shine through.

My prayer for each of you today is that you will take some time to look at the areas of your life that God needs to chip away. Maybe God needs to work on your pride. Maybe God needs to work on your ability to forgive, maybe God simply wants to soften your heart. I don’t know what it is for you, yet I know that God is at work in your life.

Don’t Quit until the Miracle Happens,

Chaplain Rob

Better a patient man than a warrior. A man who controls his temper than one who takes a city. – Proverbs 16:32

Let’s look at a few popular, but sad, bumper stickers:
•My kid beat up your honor student.
•Welcome to America, now get out!
•Keep honking, I’m a good shot.
•All men are idiots, and I married their King.

What do these bumper stickers have in common? The messages are dressed in humor but they’re actually about anger. While some people struggle with anger, these people are flaunting it, celebrating it, and inviting you to join in.

This type of anger–aimed at hurting or ridiculing–is obviously wrong. Yet not all anger is wrong. Anger can also be an appropriate and good response at times.

If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Attention, is another bumper sticker I’ve seen.

Injustice, cruelty, and greed should evoke anger because they contradict what the Bible teaches. Things that are unjust or go against what God’s plan is for the world should make us angry.

I am reminded of how anger channeled the right way can transform the world. William Wilberforce, sickened with anger over the slave trade in England, devoted himself to ending slavery there.

If you don’t ever feel anger, you need to worry about your heart.

Its what you do with your anger that is important. Before you blow up, take time to think about how God would want you to handle the situation. Before you say things you will regret during anger, make sure to think about what you say and what might God has you say in this circumstance.

I realize that we all get angry from time to time and sometimes we let anger get the best of us.

My prayer for each of you is that God would quiet your spirit today. That you would feel the anger slip away. And that you will only use anger for things that matter.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one. – Ben Franklin

Blessings,

Chaplin Rob

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. – 1 Peter 2:9

Why do we so often miss the boat? I think it’s because we settle for second best. We grasp at flashy substitutes instead of taking hold of the genuine article. I invite you to surrender all of your excuses today. Be honest with yourself, and recognize where and how you need to change, grow, improve, or surrender. Change is the essence of life, and it’s worth the inconvenience, the difficulty, even the pain, because living is what God designed us to do.

Friend, stop for a moment and ask yourself if you’re diving into the life God planned for you, or merely dog-paddling on the surface. Take a moment and look at yourself and your surroundings. What skills or talents do you possess that could help to meet the needs around you? Change is the path to the full, creative, satisfying life God calls us to live.

Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are. – Bernice Johnson Reagon

Blessings,

Rob Dunbar, Chaplain, Maj,

The fruit of the Spirit is . . . longsuffering (patience).” Galatians 5:22

We’ve all heard the prayer: “Lord, make me more patient—and do it now!”

Why is it that patience evaporates when we are late for a critical engagement and are caught in a traffic jam? Or we rush to the “10 items or less” line at the store, only to find someone in front of us with 16 items!

Being forced to wait ratchets up the stress and shortens our fuse. When that happens, we not only fail to be patient but we undercut the Spirit’s work in our lives.

Patience is not just a virtue, it’s a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22)—which means that demonstrations of impatience reveal the sour fruit of our fallen hearts rather than the sweetness of Jesus in our lives. Since God is a patient God, when we abandon patience we miss the opportunity to show our world the glory of God through our lives.

Bursts of impatience only demonstrate that we are more concerned with our own agendas than the needs and struggles of others. So let’s all take a deep breath and turn our focus away from ourselves by patiently loving others instead of ourselves in the midst of stress.

Patience gives us the privilege of sharing the refreshing fruit of God with others.

Be patient. Show your world what God is really like.

Blessings,

Chaplin Rob

Don’t abandon wisdom, and she will watch over you; love her, and she will guard you – Proverbs 4:6

Who is in charge of your emotions? Is it you, or have you formed the unfortunate habit of letting other people—or stressful situations—determine the quality of your thoughts and the direction of your day? If you’re wise—and if you’d like to build a better life for yourself and your loved ones—you’ll learn to control your emotions before your emotions control you.

I struggle with this almost daily. My grandmother was so filled with emotion that she was often called the “German General”. I think I inherited some of her strong emotions and propensity to go zero to angry rather quickly. I have to work on this daily.

Human emotions are highly variable, decidedly unpredictable, and often unreliable. Our emotions are like the weather, only far more fickle. So we must learn to live by faith, not by the ups and downs of our own emotional roller coasters.

Sometime during this day, you will probably be gripped by a strong negative feeling. Distrust it. Rein it in. Test it. And turn it over to God. Your emotions will inevitably change; God will not. So trust Him completely as you watch those negative feelings slowly evaporate into thin air—which, of course, they will.

I may no longer depend on pleasant impulses to bring me before the Lord. I must rather respond to principles I know to be right, whether I feel them to be enjoyable or not. – Jim Elliot

TODAY’S PRAYER

Heavenly Father, You are my strength and my refuge. As I journey through this day, I will encounter events that cause me emotional distress. Lord, when I am troubled, let me turn to You. Keep me steady, Lord, and in those difficult moments, renew a right spirit inside my heart. Amen

Blessings on a safe and relaxing weekend,

Chaplin Rob

“Everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescues his people, but not with sword and spear. This is the Lord’s battle, and he will give you to us!” (1 Samuel 17:47 NLT).

In the story of David in 1 Samuel, he actually had to fight four other giants before he got to Goliath. They weren’t physical giants, but they were giants in his mind.

You are far more likely to have to face those giants than a Goliath, but they can be just as big and intimidating, and they can keep you from becoming who God wants you to be and fulfilling the dream that God has put in your heart.

The first giant in facing your dream is delay.

No dream is fulfilled instantly. God gives you the dream on one day, but he doesn’t fulfill it the next day. It may be years before you see the fulfillment of your life dream. There is always a waiting period.

In David’s case, his dad held him back from the dream. After Samuel anointed David as king, Jesse told David to get back to tending the sheep!

When God’s plan contradicts somebody else’s plan, there’s going to be a delay, and people are going to try to hold you back — sometimes even the people who love you the most. But God is faithful, and he will complete his work in you in his time.

The second giant you may face is discouragement.

Goliath created a climate of fear in Israel, and everybody was convinced they were going to lose the battle.

Who are you listening to who says it can’t be done? Who is putting down your dream, saying it won’t ever happen?

Sometimes you just need a fresh voice — a kid from the village with fresh eyes who says, “This guy’s nothing. We can take him down.”

The third giant standing in your way is disapproval.

In David’s case, his own brother questioned his motives and disapproved of him going after Goliath.

When other people are afraid of your God-given dream but you go for it anyway, you will be misjudged, maligned, and misunderstood. You have to decide what matters more to you: the approval of other people or the approval of God.

The fourth giant you may have to face is doubt.

Nobody was a greater expert on war than King Saul, and he told David he was crazy for thinking a boy could fight a warrior like Goliath.

Maybe the expert is saying you can’t do it, either. That’s enough to make you start doubting yourself.

The reality is that God has powerful and unique plans for your life. Make sure to stop today and begin discerning what those plans are.

Blessings,

Chaplain Rob