“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