WHEN PEACE, NOT PAIN GETS THE FINAL WORD.

Angie’s bags were packed.  She’d walked back into the room a dozen times. Each time in hopes to renew her strength to let go and leave.  She knew she wanted nothing less, but somehow the uncertainty kept tugging at her.  How was she going to do this? How was she going to walk out and leave?  All she had ever known had happened here, but she knew she wanted better for herself.  As she stood in the middle of the room one last time it was as if the words of the past seemed to seep from the walls.  The countless nights of sitting up in her bed, head in hands crying because of the rage filled drunkenness outside her bedroom door. 

A sudden noise from her door being opened her snapped out of her memories.  Her brother smiled, “Are you ready, sis?”

She stared at him, as if her sudden rush back to reality was just sinking in.  “Yes, I have to do this.” 

As her car drove down the entry way to the freeway she looked over at her brother.  “Do you realize what I just did? I just packed up my entire life into a few boxes and left.”

Her brother grabbed her hand. They rode in silence for a while.  Each in a bit of shock that they were doing. The sunset beaches of L.A. called her name, but she couldn’t help but hear all the echoes of her past crawling in.

Her heart so full of promise to what lay ahead.  With each passing mile marker, her excitement grew.  I’m out, I’m finally out.  I won’t have to watch the drunken stammering.  I won’t have to listen to the endless hours of yelling, anymore.  I am finally free!

Angie was free, but only in the physical sense.  She was right, she no longer was going to lay site to the alcohol filled evenings, endless mood swings, and nightly screaming sessions that her childhood home had held for her. But the pain of what she had been through… Well, she had packed that in her suitcase and that was coming with her to L.A…..she just wasn’t aware of it yet.

I think many of us have thought as Angie did.  Out of sight out, out of mind, right?  And while this theory might work with certain things in life, it doesn’t work with the deeply embedded pain we have suffered through in our lives. Pain is a sneaky issue. We can do our very best to wrestle it down, and keep it at bay for a bit, but inevitably, be it a year…5 years….10 years… it finds its way back up to the surface of our thinking. 

For many of us, the pain of our past won’t even leave us for a day. This was the case with Angie.  All she had to do was close her eyes and the events of the last 19 years would play back over her memory.  The doubt, the fear, the guilt, so tangible that at times, that she was sure that the events had just taken place. 

I would venture to say that by this time in the story, you can identify with Angie in some form or the other.  The desire to not face the pain, but instead to ignore it…. I can’t tell how many times I tried applying this strategy to my life.  Yet no matter how many different ways I tried to deafen the pain, it never was permanent. 

Angie tried these methodologies as well, but none of them worked for her either.  She too found herself amidst a temporary distraction at best, but nothing ever permanent.  Life had been very hard on Angie while growing up at home and while she had known Jesus and loved him, she was not utterly sure she could trust him with the pain that she had undergone.  She knew he loved her, but did he love her enough to be trusted with her deepest cut, her Achilles’ heel of the heart? Was she sure that Jesus would in fact see the pain for what it had done to her, how it had broken her?  Or would Jesus look at the pain and instead of treating it with tender care, would He in fact become insensitive to her needs and hurt her further?  These were all risks that Angie was too scared to take for many years of her life. 

Years later, Angie had worn herself out.  She had spent so many years thinking that she was the only one she could ever trust with her pain….but in shelling herself off from Christ’s help, she had also exhausted herself.  It was so tedious living with her fists in the air, her heart buried deep within where nobody could see it. It was overwhelming always trying to look out for where the next hurt might come from. She had mentally and physically reached a dead end road.  She KNEW something would have to change, but what?

Exhaustion wanted to speak louder than anything in her life, but she kept feeling a nudge within her thinking.  “You haven’t exhausted everything yet, Angie, in fact….you’ve never even given Christ a chance with your pain.”

Angie tried a few more vain attempts to “fix” herself, but each fell apart quicker than she could put them together.  Finally, Angie decided to take Christ at His word to help her. But she knew she could only manage to let go of a small amount of the pain to Christ.  With each passing day, she would waiver between releasing it and pulling it back.  A few months later, she found that she was a little bit better at releasing some of the pains and not having quite the same tug to pull it back within her.  Her guards were still up, and quite high, but step by step, day by day, event by event.

Angie is still working to move on in life, but it has been two years now, since she decided to take Christ up on His offer to help her.  She has seen changes in her life.  She lives with a more sustained peace that she had ever seen in her life. She is also learning that Christ is like nothing she has ever experienced.  All He wanted her to do was to be willing to let Him in, even if at the smallest amount at first, so she could start experiencing His Peace and His Love.

He started helping Angie to see that He agreed that what had gone on in her life was not fair, and yet that none of it had the final say over her life.  The peace that Angie has found has begun to have a lasting effect on her.  The movie reel in her head doesn’t play her pains of the past over and over as much anymore.  Instead, she focuses on the promises of where Christ wants to lead her.

I think many of us feel as Angie did. We become convinced that Jesus wants us to quickly rush and just “get over” the pains in our heart. As if it is a great sprint to take part in.  But, Christ is not like that.  He does ultimately want to see you free in every way of your life, but Christ knows that our pain runs deeper.  In fact, in many cases, the pain runs deeper than we understand, but at the root of every pain in your life, is a seed and that is where Christ goes to work.  We, as human’s can only hope to keep pruning the pain back in our life.  Yet in all our efforts, all we ever seem to do is cause the pain to rise up stronger than it was prior to our trying to “fix” it.

Christ brings the only one who can truly understand how wide, how deep and how vast your pain is, and the wonderful thing is that His love covers everywhere that your pain reaches. Being Loved for REAL for the FIRST time in your life, is what we are being offered in Christ, and He is willing to take a lifetime to show you. 

On a Personal note:

I know how hard it is to start letting go of the pain.  But, I can’t encourage you more to believe that Christ isn’t out to hurt you, He’s out to help you.  It’s going to take time, but Christ couldn’t be more committed to you. Pastor Daniella

  

I remember when I was younger reading the footprints poem. Places in the sand marking whether the Lord had carried me through the troubles of life or walked with me side by side. I remember reading over this poem finding it beautiful and yet maybe in a way utterly missing all that this could mean to me. When I read the poem I was left with a thought, "Why wouldn't Christ want to carry me through all the troubles I face in this lifetime?" Isn't that a sign that He loves me? In particial, I am right..it is the mercy and love of Jesus Christ when we are carried through a difficutly. Yet, my understanding was limited. If Christ's carrying us means He loves us, then does that mean that all the times where my feet walked out the steps of my troubles, Christ didn't love me? For many years of my life I warred deeply in this troubling feeling. I lived like a pendulem. My mindset was, if all was going well in life, God loved me, but if things were not going well, then I had angered God and I was inturn being punished for it. Christ's love is not failed the way human love is!! We try to be unconditional, and in some cases, we do succeed, as much as a human can, but never once have we offered the same calibur of love to others or ourselves as Jesus has for us. His love is not based upon a merit system. His love not based on whether you offer it in return to Him. Instead, Christ's love is based on a choice, a nature, so in unison with WHO Christ is that He can be nothing less!!! The times when we are carried through troubles as opposed to walking the trials out side by side with Jesus, seem a moving target at points in life, doesn't it? The minute you think that you've decided just when Christ is going to carry through a situation, He will cause you to walk it out. Is this due to His feeling the name to toy with our emotions? No, honestly, it is not. Instead it is the Wisdom of the Lord and His understanding that complacency within the human heart is very easy to come upon. If we KNEW that we weren't really going to give much effort towards something and yet we were going to have fantastic results, we might easily become less invested in our relationship with Jesus. Nothing that Christ Jesus ever does is an action of impulse. Each of His actions are meant for the betterment of us in life. The fault with this thought, WE can't see what He sees, can we? From the outside....it just translates many times to the feeling that Christ is being cruel or not caring. If I told you that I want to start running marathons, you would say that's great...how long do you run right now? If I answered, "I don't run", wouldn't you find it ridiculous that I wanted to start running marathons? Preparation would be an essential in order that my goal could be achieved, right? Well, each of us have asked some pretty BIG things from God in life, haven't we?? We too have to have preparation times for what we've asked to be apart of. It isn't cruelty from the Lord that causes Him to walk out some of our troubles side by side with Him. Instead, it's a loving action of Christ knowing what it is going to take to be prepared to fulfill the dreams of our hearts. In a way, you are investing in your future self. Allowing your future self to become more prepared to live our in reality what only your heart's dreams have envisioned thus far. Looking back more in life now. The footprints that my feet have made in the sands of my life are many, but each of those prints have written across them a history that I have built with the Lord Jesus Christ. None of them have been easy, but they have caused me to learn so much about my loving Lord Jesus Christ. They are priceless to me. Pastor Daniella

I remember when I was younger reading the footprints poem. Places in the sand marking whether the Lord had carried me through the troubles of life or walked with me side by side.  I remember reading over this poem finding it beautiful and yet maybe in a way utterly missing all that this could mean to me.

When I read the poem I was left with a thought, "Why wouldn't Christ want to carry me through all the troubles I face in this lifetime?"  Isn't that a sign that He loves me?  In particial, I am right..it is the mercy and love of Jesus Christ when we are carried through a difficutly.  Yet, my understanding was limited.  If Christ's carrying us means He loves us, then does that mean that all the times where my feet walked out the steps of my troubles, Christ didn't love me?

For many years of my life I warred deeply in this troubling feeling. I lived like a pendulem. My mindset was, if all was going well in life, God loved me, but if things were not going well, then I had angered God and I was inturn being punished for it.  Christ's love is not failed the way human love is!!  We try to be unconditional, and in some cases, we do succeed, as much as a human can, but never once have we offered the same calibur of love to others or ourselves as Jesus has for us.  His love is not based upon a merit system. His love not based on whether you offer it in return to Him.  Instead, Christ's love is based on a choice, a nature, so in unison with WHO Christ is that He can be nothing less!!!

The times when we are carried through troubles as opposed to walking the trials out side by side with Jesus, seem a moving target at points in life, doesn't it?  The minute you think that you've decided just when Christ is going to carry through a situation, He will cause you to walk it out. Is this due to His feeling the name to toy with our emotions? No, honestly, it is not. Instead it is the Wisdom of the Lord and His understanding that complacency within the human heart is very easy to come upon.  If we KNEW that we weren't really going to give much effort towards something and yet we were going to have fantastic results, we might easily become less invested in our relationship with Jesus.

Nothing that Christ Jesus ever does is an action of impulse.  Each of His actions are meant for the betterment of us in life. The fault with this thought, WE can't see what He sees, can we?  From the outside....it just translates many times to the feeling that Christ is being cruel or not caring. 

If I told you that I want to start running marathons, you would say that's great...how long do you run right now? If I answered, "I don't run", wouldn't you find it ridiculous that I wanted to start running marathons? Preparation would be an essential in order that my goal could be achieved, right? Well, each of us have asked some pretty BIG things from God in life, haven't we??  We too have to have preparation times for what we've asked to be apart of. It isn't cruelty from the Lord that causes Him to walk out some of our troubles side by side with Him.  Instead, it's a loving action of Christ knowing what it is going to take to be prepared to fulfill the dreams of our hearts. In a way, you are investing in your future self.  Allowing your future self to become more prepared to live our in reality what only your heart's dreams have envisioned thus far.

Looking back more in life now. The footprints that my feet have made in the sands of my life are many, but each of those prints have written across them a history that I have built with the Lord Jesus Christ. None of them have been easy, but they have caused me to learn so much about my loving Lord Jesus Christ.  They are priceless to me. Pastor Daniella

In John 8:36, we read, “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.” NLT   We have been set free, but so many of us have allowed the shackles around our minds to bind us so tightly that we aren’t willing to allow the freedom to become a reality to us.  Let’s pretend that I set a gift in front of you, wrapped in a box. When I set the box in front of you, I tell you that within the box you are going to find items you have wanted for years.  You look at me, look down at the box, but you choose not to open it. Due to this decision, you will not benefit from the contents of the box.  This scenario can be used to help further our understanding of the freedom made available in Jesus.  We are free, but we can live an entire life in shackles if we choose.  In Mark 2:22 Jesus says, "And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins." NLTFor me, this scripture shows us that Jesus does not want to pour new thinking into an old mindset.  In other words, if someone has a mindset that keeps them in the shackles, and they are unwilling to part with it, what good is their freedom doing them?  When we allow ourselves to be transformed by the love of Jesus, we will start to soften in our mindsets.  Through this softening, we can begin to identify areas in our lives where we are hindering freedom to be a current reality in our life.  Just one example of this hindrance to freedom would be negative thinking.   Humans can set their minds to see the negative in almost any situation. I will example what I mean.  Years ago, I was at a birthday party for a lady I knew.  When it came time for the husband to give a gift to his wife, he very excitedly presented her with the gift box.  She took one look at the unwrapped box and began to complain about his “gift wrap” selection. She was so irritated at what he chose, that she refused to open the gift.  Find this ridiculous?  It is, but if we allow our minds to stay in the shackles of wrong thinking, we too will miss out on what Jesus has brought to offer us.  Again I site this scripture.   “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.” John 8:36 NLT   The freedom that Jesus offers is there for us.  Please remember that the Lord gives gifts that look different than the World’s definition.  Try applying this realization to your life the next time that you are facing a difficult situation.  God is offering you freedom in the trouble, but it probably does not look the way you are expecting it to, you have to be willing to dig deep within the “gift box” in order to receive of this offering.  Pastor Daniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Many times when trials are upon our lives, when troubles are presenting themselves within our lives, we quickly begin to question the motivations of the Lord Jesus Christ.  We don't mean to, but we do start to wonder if His conviction to bring to fullness the dreams He once wrote on the walls of our heart.  

A lack of results can quickly cause impatience within the mind of the one in waiting.  So often, we see time as our enemy.  Raising its ugly head to make us wait once more upon it. Yet, what if time were our friend? What if time waited was actually a sign that our path towards our goal was being made straight? (John 1:23) I would imagine that if we saw our waiting period as a friend rather than foe we would find begin to question Christ less.  

As a very goal oriented person, I am also someone very excited by the idea of quick resolutions to all matters. Yet there have been areas of my life that I haven't been able to rush to the result in.  One of the largest of these areas has been that of an emotional healing from what I have gone through as a kid/teen.  I have wanted to rush through the healing process, so desperatley I wanted this.  I just wanted a check list placed in front of me where I could quickly start clicking off each of the boxes and be done with it.  But that isn't how God works. 

He does believe in healing, but on His time and in His way.  Why His time and His way? The reason can be found in some simple life application observances.  I remember years ago, I had some friends who were desperate to build a deck in their back yard.  My friend and his buddy poured out the cement, spread it and then waited for it to set and settle.  My friend, not known for his patience decided the cement was taking too long for him, and instead of waiting for the cememnt to finish setting, he was going to get started building the deck.  Quickly he set about walking around on the still drying cement, setting the posts and building the landing area. He worked at a feverish pace, but the next morning when he came out to observe his progress, he saw that the decking had settle at different heights.  In his hast, he had rushed too many of the process that required time, and instead of a quality product, he and his buddy came to the conclusion that they were going to have to start most of the woodwork over.  

Now you might ask how this applies to your life due to the fact that you're not building a deck, neither am I, but I am trying to build a life founded in stability and a good foundation and it is there that my scenario has application in our lives.  Each of us wants progress, but if we are impatient and we start trying to rush the Lord, we are only harming ourselves. God knows that each of us need to have certain understanding prior to different break through's in our lives.  If we don't allow time for these understandings to take place in our lives, we are at risk that the break through's won't "set" right within our lives, and before long, we will find ourselves back where we started.  I don't know about you, but the idea of cycling over and over this pain I have been living in for many more years to come is a thought that I do not want to entertain.  

I want progress in my life, deeply, but I also know that I have to wait upon God to build the foundations in my life to be strong enough to uphold me upon each step towards getting better that comes my way. 

Christ wants nothing less than healing in our lives. In fact, the healing has already taken place, we are just learning what it is to walk within its reality. Waiting is not our enemy, it is a foundation.   

Personal note:
I, like you, am on this journey of life. I do not even begin to pretend to have it all figured out. I share these blogs because life's events have been difficult, just as they have for you, but I am determined to learn from my Lord and turn these Pains of life to Promises yet to come within my life.  I pray the same will hold true for you.  Pastor Daniella. http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

The joy that we have been given as a gift from the Lord Jesus Christ is priceless. Many of us struggle to understand how to apply the joy of the Lord into our lives enough to gather strength from it.
I remember when my kids were younger, I would observe the events that would trouble them.  Many of these events were simple fixes to a parent, but to child, this was not the circumstance.  I feel the same is applicable to most of the situations that we are facing in our lives now. We trouble our minds so deeply over every issue in our lives, and yet with each, God has already set into motion the solution we will need to the problem.

God knows so much more than we do. I think many of us know this, but we don't apply it in times of pressure.  We resort to statements like, "Since I can't really do anything about what I am dealing with, I guess I will have to ask God for help." We often exhaust everything we can as a human and then reach out for the Lord.  Many of the times when we are rushing around trying to figure out what to do on our own, we are hindering the very strength that God is trying to render to us within our application of His joy in our lives.  We have such strength when we remember that Christ loves us and we are always within His protection, His assistance, His comfort, His sustaining all that we are not on our own. Each of these statements our strength to our ailing souls, but we have to let them live a longer life than just being words upon a page.

Instead, they need to become words where we draw the strength from in order to face all that we are in life.  My daughters will come to me at different points in worry over different matters. After talking over the matter, I am able to help them place perspective to what they are facing and that they can feel reassurance that I am here to help and that they don't have to face their troubles alone.  I reassure them of how loved they are and that we all make mistakes.  You see, this and SO MUCH MORE is what Christ is trying to do for us in our troubles.  He wants us to come to Him to find our strength because He is an unless pool of love, joy, and all things true and positive.

Christ never has a feeling anything less than being in love with us and living for us.  Always deeply desiring to help you lift your head from your troubles and instead to stare into His eyes that bounce in joy over you.

We are loved. We are worth it to Jesus. He's already proven what He felt over us. He already came and gave His life in order that a permanent connection would be eternally in place between you and him. Others in life might have let you down, but this is not true of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So the next time you face something that seems to suck the strength right out of you, instead of rushing to try to fix it all, take a moment.... place Christ first and ask Him to fill you with the joy that He alone can strengthen you with.  Troubles come and go in life, but Christ lasts forever. Pastor Daniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com  https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

A Life Walked Out, Step by Step

Remember being a kid and reaching up with arms out stretched in that universal signal children give of "Pick me up"? You, the kid, were so tired of using your own will to walk around, and instead you wanted someone else to do it for you.  Laziness, not really, just a realization that someone else was there that could, in fact, make life easier.  

When you become a follower of Jesus, you feel the same sort of "relief" is being offered to you again in your life.  Yet, we don't always get carried everywhere, do we?  What do I mean?  Think over the past four years of your life.  Make a mental note of the events that have taken place in those years.  You might have just listed some very powerful miraculous events, but more than likely, you also listed several moments that didn't feel so miracle filled. Let's leave that mental list on hold for a minute. Instead, follow me in a thought...

In life, an incorrect perspective can form.  This incorrect perspective can cause a follower of Jesus to feel that Christ is not rendering help unless He is carrying you out of a situation.  Remember above I asked you to make a mental note of the events that have taken place in the last four years?  Many of those events that you noted weren't situations where you were carried out of the trouble, were they?  This didn't mean that Jesus wasn't there for you.  Those times you weren't carried were actually times where a deepening of your trust was forming in your relationship with Jesus.

The Bible teaches us that we can only please Jesus through faith.  Faith is a very difficult idea to maintain in life, isn't it?  We fade in and out of this idea many times over the course of our walk with Jesus, but there has to become an underlying base of faith.  A foundation that starts to form.  The foundation becomes a faith not based on whether Jesus is there for you in a miraculous manner, but rather a firm understanding that Jesus is there for you all the time, no matter what the natural looks like.  This faith forms when we start exercising out trust towards Jesus.  Times in life when we are not being carried out of a situation serve to further a more personal relationship with Jesus.

Remember those times when you were young, when you did ask to be picked up by a parent, and they told you instead that you were going to have to walk.  At first, you didn't take it so well.  You might have even thrown a bit of a fit at the idea, but as fatigued and frustrated as you were, you still made it.

Don't we feel a bit the same way when we realize that the trial we are facing is not going to be one that Jesus will be carrying us out of?  What one of us wants to hear that we are going to have to walk out a difficult situation step by step?  Yet, if we yield our spirit to humbly learn from Jesus moment by moment, we will find that an inner strength is birthed.  This strength is fortified by the relationship that you and Jesus are building as you together walk out, step by step, of the trial you are facing.  A new relationship between you and Jesus is taking new form.  In place of wavered faith, a new foundation is forming where a vital trust for Jesus is coming to the forefront of your life.

This strengthening helps us to understand the very personal relationship Jesus wants from us. Which one of us really wants a God that only shows up for the miracles, and then walks away?  I know I don't.  I love miracles, but I will not allow life's precious moments of tender help from Jesus pass me by.    Pastor Daniella

 http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com TWITTER: https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Safe Guard Your Dreams

Doubt has an insatiable appetite, it will quickly devours our dreams, if we let it.  Each of us have dreams within our heart.  You might not have spoken them to a single other soul in life, but they are none the less a dream you feel will come to fruition.  I know from personal experience just how hard it is to believe that a dream once placed upon your heart, will in fact come to pass.  Doubt, at times almost seems in step with your every thought.  You exert effort towards believing, and just as quickly, doubt rushes up beside you to tell you how ridiculous your efforts are.  With doubt so quick to war against our dreams, we must learn how to “safe guard” our dreams against it.

The Bible teaches us that we overcome all evils with good.  Since doubt is an evil thinking in our lives, we must apply positive thinking in order to overcome it. 

1.       Invite Christ in.  John 15:5 tells us, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”  In everything we must include the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is the most vital step you take in setting out to accomplish anything in life.

How do we invite Him in?

First, ask Jesus Christ to help you in being sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s quiet nudging.   The Holy Spirit seeks to lead us to Jesus daily.  By requesting that Jesus help you to be sensitive, you are admitting that the human spirit can very quickly drown out the Holy Spirit, in order to follow our own ambitions.  You might not think of doubt as an ambition, but our soul seeks emotional extremes at points in our lives, and doubt can lead us to a great emotional extreme. 

2.       Trust that Jesus does want to bring the dream to pass in your life.  Isaiah 30:18 shares with us this, “The Lord longs to be gracious to you.” Niv   Christ planted that seed of a dream in you.  But just as everything planted takes time to come to harvest, so too do our dreams.  The waiting period that we go through while we anticipate our dream to come to pass is a blessed and has anointed time.  Luke 12:48 expresses why the waiting is needed. “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.”NLT   Too often in life, much is given and an utter failure shortly follows.  Jesus is not a careless giver.  He is preparing you to be ready for all your dream is going to require of you in life. 

3.       Learn to rejoice in the journey towards the dream with each day that you wait, and are willing to be changed and molded by the love of Jesus Christ, you are coming closer to the dream coming to fruition.  When we learn to trust that Christ knows what He is doing by having us wait, we will start to learn that each day’s wait is another day closer.  Remember, we overcome evil with good.  Perspective greatly determines how we can overcome many of life’s difficulties.

4.       Find daily things you can do that cause you to daydream about your dream coming true. 

Examples:  

•   Find music that inspires you, and uplifts your spirit.  

•  Place motivational scriptures in places that remind you that God is good and what He starts, He finishes. Philippians 1:6  

•   Make up a poster that announces your accomplishment as if it has already come to pass, place it in a room where you will pass by multiple times a day. 

•  Find something motivation to wear.  My husband had a ring made up for me that has “Abide, Pastor” written on it.  Do you have an heirloom that means something to you?  If it is small enough place it on something you can wear, a chain, or a jacket, some place where you will see it daily.  

5.       Guard Your Dream Many dreams are stolen by the devil in the blink of an eye.  Just one bad day can be enough for the faint of heart to give up.  If God placed this dream in your heart, then you have to understand, it is not up for grabs by the devil.  It is your dream that only you and God have together.  Protect your dream as you would the front door of your house.  You don’t just leaving it standing wide open and go to bed.  Why would you leave the door to your dream open to anyone who wants to walk in and steal from you?  You wouldn’t, but we do get lax in guarding our dreams.   Don’t leave your dream up to the interpretation of other people’s opinions.  Many people, whether deliberate or not, snuff out others dreams.  Their criticism is taken to heart, and when our dreams are unguarded, the criticism can be the poison that taints the entire work God has begun in you.

Vitally Important:  This thought has been very empowering for me in my life, JESUS IS THE LIFTER OF OUR HEADS. Psalms 3:3 He loves you with a real love.  One that you will experience nowhere else but in a relationship with Him.  It is out of this love for you that He has planted a seed of His dream for your life, in you.  Believe in Christ first, then together you and He will bring that dream into a beautiful state of reality.  https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella 

When I was young, we would bring my grandmother on some of our family trips. Many times, she would hand me a book filled with pictures that had purposely misplaced items within them.  With each picture, you were to scan over the items and then decided whether something was misplaced, disordered, reversed, or had nothing no place within the image.  I came across an old picture in a memory box the other day. Many times when when playing this game, you were to find about 22 items that were incorrect within the image.  I thought of how strange it was that many times when she first handed me the photo my mind was so quick to compensating for the mistakes within it that often times they would remain “hidden” to me.

Let me ask you a question? If I were to ask you to quickly name off 10 things that are not going well for you, wouldn’t you be able to do this within less than a couple of minutes? Probably.  Why do I bring this up this question?  Honestly, I think we don’t spend enough time, at points in our life, focused on what’s going well.

Rather than keeping a running tally of all the things that are right in our life, we tally up what’s wrong.  Instead of allowing a growing list of “thank you’s” to be mounting upon our lips for the Lord, we begin our morning prayers with a list of what’s wrong.  Life is not stress free.  My family is facing more than one difficulty in our lives right now, but to remain in a state of constant focus upon it, or to remain in a state where I am in constant search for yet another mistake within my life, serves no real purpose. Do we ignore the trials in our lives?  No, we can’t, but to let them become our primary focus is to missout on so much of life’s joy.  Try to begin a running talley of the good in your life, okay at first it might be harder to find, but a perspective change will aid you in this search.

When I would be doing those picture search pages that I spoke of above I would often reach a dead end about four away from finding them all.  Often times, I would decide to put the image away from my eyes for a few minutes and then revisit it.  When I would return to looking at the picture, I often times was able to very quickly identify the remaining 4 items. Why? Due to perspective.  I feel that perspective plays and enormous part in our lives. Some of the difficulties within our lives now are actually helping us to grow…they just don’t feel like it right now.  God’s blessing you all this evening. Pastor Daniella https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com

I remember years ago my friends and I decided to turn the typical game of “Mother May I” into a game of “Trust Your Mother”, or so we called it. We decided that instead of the original theory of asking, “Mother, may I take two steps? To which the one picked to be “mother” would answer, “Yes or No you may or may not” depending on what they decided about your progression through the game….We would turn the game into a game that would cause you to trust the person playing “mother”. You would exemplify this trust that you placed within the “mother” in your willingness to believe that they would guide you, by verbal commands, around a series of obstacles in the room, all while you were blind folded. The game, silly and childish, but I look back on that game at points in my life and think over the frequency of my unwillingness to trust the one directing me. I would analyze their motivations, were they sore losers? Did they favor someone else in the group typically? Should I really trust that they had my best interests at heart? To Trust- we give certain levels of trust every day, don’t we? Much of it is due to necessity, but we do exert it daily. We place some level of trust that our vehicle will not break down on us or that the subway will in fact reach the station. We trust that the elevators inspector has checked that the elevator has met all safety needs. We trust that our food has been correctly packaged and inspected. These and multiple other examples show that we do in fact exert trust daily. Many of us are struggling with the ability to let ourselves delve further into trusting Jesus Christ. At the slightest downturn of events in our lives, we quickly begin questioning whether Jesus really does mean to be the Lifter of our Heads, or uphold the promises that He’s given to never ignore the slightest glimmer of hope that still burns within us. Trust is a choice that we make. Yes, sometimes the trust that we are placing within those who do the above jobs aren’t always met with their end of the deal being fully upheld. Food does get tainted, elevators break down, vehicles don’t perform to their full potential, and occasionally, I would end up with a friend within the above mentioned “Trust Your Mother” game that didn’t guide my steps safely. A wariness sets in within our thinking that if it happened once, couldn’t it happen the next time just the same? This is entirely possible when it comes to human frailties and failures, but Jesus Christ has NEVER let down humanity and yet we are so easy to stop trusting Him or be very fearful to even start out doing so. Christ shows His “credentials” well prior to His asking us to trust Him. How? He came to Earth and gave His life for you in order that you would want to walk this life out with Him. Prior to his asking us to trust him He showed what he was really “made of”. He knows this journey that you are on with Him towards trusting in not an easy one, but it is through His very action of showing His true intentions to you ahead of time, that you can allow yourself liberty to realize NOW that Jesus Christ is the One that we can trust in life. Jesus Christ is patient, but He does ask you to be willing to keep walking towards Him daily in your journey of trusting Him. Pastor Daniella

Many of us spend years waiting in great anticipation for a blessings arrival. Yet when that moment arrives, often times we are met with a feeling of being utterly overwhelmed. Whether is be a new position at work, or a dream vacation long planned….these and many more can be situations that are filled with great dramas, both good and bad. God promises never to give us more than we can handle. I think this this idea applies to blessings as well. Often times, we are being “prepped” in our current situations in order to be prepared for our much anticipated blessing to arrive. Blessings come with frustrations. With a raise in position comes more deadlines, and more people depending on you for guidance. With a dream vacation come unforeseen hiccups in your travel plans and added stresses of full itineraries. Many of us apply the promise of God never giving us more than we can handle to the awful things in life, but do we actually allow ourselves to realize that the good things that we are waiting for are affected by this too. If God can see that you are going to be overwhelmed with a blessing you’ve been waiting on, wouldn’t it stand to reason that He would lovingly want to prepare you for its arrival? Allowing yourself to be worked with by God gives Him the ability to build you to be who you need to be for those amazing things to start taking place in your life. Above all, God wants to bless us, but He never wants His blessing to be seen as a curse in your life. He loves you. Pastor Daniella

I remember years ago when my daughter was a toddler she came into the living room holding a box of building blocks. The box so tightly gripped by her little hands, like she’d found the greatest of all treasures, she was beaming. My husband asked her if she would like to open the box and build something with the blocks. She quickly dumped the contents of the box on the carpet. When my husband started to pick up the blocks to build something, she said, “No, they need to stay in a pile.” Perplexed my husband looked at her. My daughter didn’t seem to understand that the blocks were meant for a loftier purpose than to lie in a pile on the ground. I think many times, we too don’t realize what Jesus is trying to build something amazing out of our lives seemingly mismatched pile of troubles. Many of us have had very difficult events take place in our lives. And through that, we have allowed these events to start to define our thinking. We decide that we will never be more than a child of a rage filled alcoholic, or no more than one who suffered at the hands of abuse, or someone who will never overcome to afflictions of verbal pain that we were placed under. But when we start to allow this mindset to grow within us, we are depriving our lives of the involvement of Jesus Christ. When we do this, we are shutting out the very involvement that will help us to build a beautiful life out of the pains we’ve suffered. Christ isn’t interested in our living with a pile of broken spirits and dreams, instead He wants to build a beautiful life for you. When my husband was able to realize that my daughter could not understand why he wanted to use the blocks to build a building with, he slowed down and asked her if she wanted to make something beautiful out of the pile on the floor. She answered that she did. He then very gingerly started to pick up the blocks one by one and build a tower. With each block that would leave the pile and be added on to the building, my daughter’s eyes would widen. She was so excited that such a large structure was in front of her. As the height of the building grew so did her cheers for her daddy. “Higher daddy, higher!” I believe that the more we start to release the pains of our past and present situations into the capable, trustworthy hands of Jesus Christ, we too will find that we become amazed by what Christ is trying to build with them. Isaiah 61:1 tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ has come to heal the brokenhearted. He came to proclaim that instead of our living captive to our pains that we are instead set free in Him. Freedom is a beautiful word with an amazing meaning behind it, but until we are willing to take hold of the fact that the reigns of our pain don’t have to dictate how we see this life, we aren’t really going to live in the freedom that Christ is seeking to give us. Until my daughter was willing to let go of her need to have the blocks in a scrambled pile and instead trust her dad to build something with it, the blocks remained nothing but a pile upon the floor. We too can often make this mistake. We hold so tightly to the pains of our past/present life that we don’t ever see what Christ was trying to make out of them. Allowing yourself permission to think differently than what your emotions dictate to you is one of the most amazing steps to recovering from the chains that pain can hold over us. Tomorrow, we will begin to talk over what is it like to start walking out of the power of the pains in our lives. For now, many blessings upon you. Until tomorrow, Pastor Daniella.

One of the most powerful promises being offered to us from Christ Jesus is the Promise that He will be our firm foundation, our stability. I think many times we over look this offer. Why? Because by the time that we are conscience of this offer from Him, we are so damaged by life that we have long been living as Pain as our foundation, not Christ. Many of us have been living with instability in our lives for so long that we have lost the sensitivity to understand that this is not how we are to be feeling. Have you felt utterly overwhelmed in the past few months? Have you found yourself in a state of saying, “this is more than I can handle”? What about this one, have you said, “If even one more thing goes wrong, it’s going to be my undoing.”? If you’ve found yourself saying these or other statements kin to these, please know you are not alone, many of us struggle with these thoughts as well. One of the most powerful steps we take to living differently in life is to recognize that the current condition to in not working. As you begin to identify the areas in your life where instabilities exist, don’t beat yourself up over them, instead just try offering a prayer something like, “My weakness is made perfect in your Jesus.” This is not about condemnation, this is about getting better! Jesus is the Lifter of our Heads, my friends. Lock that statement deep within you. How do you start working on the area you are beginning to identify as a trouble spot? When the situation arises where you would normally become disrupted, try to allow yourself the permission to react more out of the Peace of Christ than you do fear, worry, doubt, anger…. In order to live in Peace, we will do it by choice. Often times, instabilities in our lives are due to the fact that we allow the physical situation that we are living through carry more weight on our heart that Christ wants them to. Does that mean the life situations we are facing are not powerfully difficult? No, in fact they are, but each time that we are losing our Peace we are actually losing one of the most powerful tools we’ve been given in Christ Jesus. Allowing the Peace of Christ to begin filling your life with the stable foundation of Christ means that we are daily and hourly choosing to stare longer at our Christ than the situations in our lives that seem to be sent out to swallow us. As you begin to identify the areas of your life where you let instability steel your footing, your foundation, your PEACE, don’t allow yourself to forget the vital need it is to pray daily. In doing this, you are asking Christ to be the offering of strength that you need. Taking this journey WITH CHRIST is so important to its success, apart from Christ we are nothing, but it is in the journey of life that we find the strength to earnestly TRUST Jesus. You will eventually begin to live in a state of mind that sees that your Peace and Stability are not up for grabs. You will begin to live a life where more and more of your life is spent in stability, not because all is going well in your life, but instead because each time situational instabilities take place in your life, you seem them more as something that you will ride out with Christ than an event that you will allow to cause you to lose foothold. In this journey towards stability in Christ, you are going to have times where you feel set back. You cannot allow these to be an utter derailing for you. Remember, you are learning to live differently than you’ve ever lived in life. It’s going to be foreign to you at first, but the longer you walk it out with Christ, the more will come to a point where you value the stability and Peace FAR BEYOND you do giving into the “feelings” you are having of allowing yourself to become unraveled or overwhelmed. Above all—Keep your head up! Jesus has come to free the oppressed, to be the firm foundation on which we can build, and to be the Lifter of the heads of those who are broken. Jesus Christ offers you a love that has already shown its intention…for it is HE that has already given His life in order that you could live out this life with Him, united in a journey. I wish you nothing less than stability on the foundation of Jesus Christ in your life. Forgive the length of these past blogs, but these are some of the more important subject of frustrations that we face in life, instability, and I find it to be one of the most powerful promises being offered to us in Christ, the KEY is learning what it means to be being offered Peace in Christ as our stable foundation. It doesn’t mean that life is going to be perfect from here on out, but what it does mean is that you have a faithful friend/confidant within Christ Jesus and it is through Him that you are being offered more stability than you would ever find by everything going perfect to plan. I pray this blog is a blessing in your life. Pastor Daniella

Christ Jesus is trying to offer each one of us a firm foundation in which to build our lives on, but I think many times we over look this offer. Why? Because by the time that we are conscience of this offer from Him, we are so damaged by life that we have long been living as Pain as our foundation, not Christ. To begin to live upon the foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ means that you begin to allow yourself to understand that you’ve been living among instability. One of the quickest ways to start identifying this instability in your life is to ask yourself how many times you feel “overwhelmed” in a given year. How many times do you begin to believe that if “just one more thing goes wrong”, it’s going to break you and be too much for you? When something goes wrong in your life, does it unravel the entirety of your emotional and physical being? If you are finding yourself answer yes to any of these questions… TAKE HEART!!! Many of us have lived in this state and are learning to live differently. (Instability in life sneaks up on us. Often times, I am finding that many of us have never truly lived within the Peace of Christ and this is the catalyst to our instability.) The most important thing we do in a road to changing is to make the decision that we WANT the change. We decide that we WANT to get well. Once you’ve come to the understanding that you are tired of living in the instability that you have been and that you want something different, then please allow yourself to take in this next statement as the truth that it is. Jesus Christ is more committed to being the help, support, and shelter you need as you set out on this goal, than anyone in your life! His offer to help you is iron clad and never reneged on. His support, help and shelter that are being offered to you are explored by your involving Him in your journey. Therefore, the next step you want to take towards living in stability with Jesus is to PRAY! This prayer is one that you will offer in variation over and over through the course of your life from now on. Why? Because we are to give the Lord Jesus Christ our First thoughts, desires, wishes, hopes, dreams….. The Bible very clearly tells us that we can do nothing without Jesus Christ. He means this not egotistically, but more rather from this aspect… Jesus Christ knows how hard life pushes at you, and He knows that you, just like He when He was here on Earth, need divine guidance through your journey. By involving Christ in the very beginning of anything you set out to do in life, you are “opening the door” of your heart, your trust, your thinking to Him. I will leave you with this thought tonight. This section of learning to live in stability, where your feet are starting to find firm footing is very important. I am going to break this blog up into section so we can take our time over the matter. As your day comes to a closing this evening, please allow these statement to wash over you. Christ didn’t intend us to live this journey of life alone. He didn’t want us to be stressed and overwhelmed by life. Many of us are, but instead of that being an area of condemnation, let it be the cry of help it needs to be in your life. Each of us are in need of help in life, and Christ is willing to fill that need. Tomorrow we will continue this journey towards learning the idea of applying a new thinking towards living without instabilities in our lives. Pastor Daniella

I remember last year walking out to our apple tree that we have in our back yard and picking an apple. Upon pulling it from the tree, I seem to unsettle many others from their connection to the tree.  Down from the tree fell about 10 more apples. This story seems irrelevant right now, but I ask you… Are there times in your life where one troubling event seems to send ripples throughout your entire existence?  As I your stability is no more than quilt hanging by mere threads of connectivity, each thread so feeble, so freighted in its own structure that if someone began pulling only at one of the threads, the entirety of your “stability” will fall to pieces.

If you aren’t familiar with this feeling in a metaphorical sense, these thoughts might sound of those that you’ve heard before.  “If even one more thing happens, I am giving up!” “I am barely holding on, I can’t possibly be expected to take on yet one more.” Any of those have a familiar ring to them?

One of the most powerful areas of our lives that Christ Jesus is trying to offer His Promises in our life is the Promise He gives to be our firm foundation. I think many times we over look this offer.  Why? Because by the time that we are conscience of this offer from Him, we are so damaged by life that we have long been living as Pain as our foundation, not Christ.

To begin to live upon the foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ is to allow yourself to understand that you’ve been living among instability. What you might feel has been offering you stability may merely be situational stability.  The first way that you will know if this is the case would be by asking yourself if you often feel overwhelmed in life. Do you only feel at rest when life is running according to how you see it should? If it does, don’t worry… Many of us have lived in this state and are learning to live differently. TAKE HEART! The first step to solve anything is to recognize that the current condition to in not working. Due to the importance of this subject, I am going to split between two different blog entries. Tomorrow, we will talk over the life application ideas of learning to live with Christ as your firm foundation rather than the situations of life. I pray that these blogs are of a blessing to you.  May God bless your evening. Pastor Daniella. https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Trust is a very difficult idea to build in a relationship. It is a time stamped process built around a slow growth of belief that someone is who they say they are. 

Jesus’ character has been misrepresented on so often a case that people being believing the deceptions of Him, rather than the Truths of Him. The antidote, to present the Truth of our Lord Jesus Christ in hopes to “clear up” the misrepresentations of Who HE really is for us in our lives.

So far, I have spoken of the Lord Jesus Christ being our Life, our Light, and now we are speaking of His being our Truth. Yesterday we talked over the level of deceit that many of us have lived under in our lives. Powerful lies that have recycled within our minds as we strive to live out life. Thoughts that often defeat us well before we even begin to live.

Trials and troubles raise their heads within our lives many times. Many of us have spent years letting each of these derail us at their onset.  But in Christ, we are being offered Promises that are life altering to our thinking. The Truths of Jesus Christ are the beautiful promises of Who He is for us.

 -Promises that He makes Perfect our Weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:9) Times when it seems that the only “truth” rushing to meet our thinking are all the frailties of this physical life, Times when more Fear lives within me than Faith, Times when the evidence that surrounds me seem far more convincing than believing….these times and millions more are times where our Lord Jesus Christ is stepping in and perfecting our weaknesses.  When you are no more than a pile of broken dreams, hopes ,and wishes…please realize it is in our weakest states that Jesus’ strength is being offered as a backbone to our brokenness. Instead of beating yourself up that you don’t feel all the strength you are hoping to within every moment of life, come to the feet of Christ and pray. It is HE who perfects our Faith. He offers not a hand of judgment, but rather a heart of compassion.

-Jesus Christ is our Daily bread (John 6:48) We are being invited to sit at the table with the Lord and dine more on His love and Promises than we do the daily dolling of painful thoughts of life’s lies. I remember when my children we young. They would be readily accepting of food offered until they reached a point of being “full”. Their bellies so content that there was no need for further nutrients.  We too must live ready to dine only on the love, comfort and promises our Lord and then once filled up on Him, be ready to set out to take the day on.  Why be full of the Lord? So that when the lies of life come to offer their falsehoods as something for us to feed on, we have no room to eat of them.  We too, just as my children would do, push the spoon being offered away and shake our heads.  The longer we allow Jesus Christ to be the one who feeds us, the more readily we will come to see that the lies of this world offer no sustenance to our lives. This is a daily journey and one that Christ Jesus is willing to walk with you.

Tomorrow we will continue to learn of the truths that Christ is for our lives by exploring both his promises and the actions that He takes within our lives. I pray that you are blessed by the words shared with you in this blog. I pray your evening is a good one. Until later, Pastor Daniella. https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com

Yesterday I talked about the fact that trust is a time stamped process. Trust is not built in a day, but more rather it is a seed planted within us that is slowly and lovingly fed in order that its strength gains daily. In order to truly “trust” anyone in life, we decide that we have learned enough of their character and habitual actions that we can feel “safe” to allow a belief that they are someone who won’t hurt us. 

Jesus’ character has been misrepresented on so often a case that people being believing the deceptions of Him, rather than the Truths of Him. The antidote, to present the Truth of our Lord Jesus Christ in hopes to “clear up” the misrepresentations of Who HE really is for us in our lives. 

In preparation to our speaking about the Truth that Jesus is in our lives, I spent time talking about the deceit that many of us are faced with. The things we treasure most in this life are often precious to us because they are rare. The Truth of Christ is the rarest of its kind.

Many of us have awakened to thoughts that we quickly start mulling over and taking in as our truth. Thoughts like: “You aren’t worth it. You will never be able to accomplish what you’ve set out to do. That thing about Jesus never giving you more than you can handle is such a crock. No one in life will be able to love me, I am not lovable. I can’t overcome this addiction. I will never be able to rise above the situations I am facing. Pain is all I am ever going to know in life. I am so stupid, I’ll never learn this. I’m the only one I can trust in life.” Each of these and many more are greatly difficult to overcome, and left to our own devices, many of us will not overcome these thoughts.  Yet we are not alone in our daily battle to overcome the deceitful thoughts that we each struggle with. Jesus Christ is Truth and He is willing to live as that truth in your daily life.

Above I listed deceitful thoughts that meet our minds. These thoughts are very powerful in their nature, aren’t they? In a world where we are forever struggling to keep our heads above the water, it doesn’t take much being said in order that we would start to believe that we are in fact in over our heads, or not worth it, or that pain is forever going to be existent in our lives.  I spent years getting into agreement with the painful things that have been said over me in life, but then I slowly started seeing them as lies. But here’s a key…the only way that I started to see them as lies was through the fact that I started believing that Jesus Christ was the ONLY TRUTH in my life. I started seeing that His viewpoint of me was the only Truth that held weight in my life.

When I was growing up, my father, so hurt by his painful past, would drink heavily. His drinking left him with a nightly rage session that he would take out on us. Due to this, I have lived with guilt ridden thinking and enormously overwhelming anxieties that have been a burden that I have carried almost my entire life.  Due to this thinking, I have allowed enormous deceitful thinking into my life.  I allowed myself for so many years to live in a state of emergency. Peace had never once be present in my thoughts, not once. Even in a moment of joy in my life, I had such a deep dread for the oncoming of something going wrong that I truly can say peace was utterly foreign to me.  But as I spoke of above, my life started changing when I discovered what it mean to have the Truth of Jesus Christ present in my life.  I found that when a situation would present itself where I would normally become replete with anxiety, that I could in fact learn to become more peace driven than I was anxiety driven. I started seeing, over time, that in those first few seconds of doubt, worry, anxiety….became present in my life I was being offered a moment of Truth in which to view the situation, I was just too wrought with the anxieties of my emotions to hear it.  I found that the more I exercise not reacting in the first few seconds of life’s troubles and instead waiting for the Truth that Christ was trying to show me in any given situation, I found that the deceitful thoughts started losing more of their power over my life.  As anxieties, worries and doubts lost their power of my thinking, I found that I began to gain in strength of my Trust towards Jesus Christ. In turn, I began to experience Peace, Stability, and Strength in my life.

The Truths of Christ are the promises that He has left with us. Tomorrow we will visit what some of those promises are in our lives in order that we can learn how to start viewing WHY we would want the involvement of Jesus in our lives.   

On a personal note: My friend, the relationship that we are in with Jesus Christ is a journey. Please understand that Jesus Christ knows how hard it is for those of us that have been deeply hurt in life to trust. Due to this, He IS a patient God! He knows that Trust is not built overnight, it is a lifetime’s journey. A journey that can be filled with your heart being healed by His love. I wouldn’t trade the journey I have been on with Jesus Christ for anything. He will forever be the Lifter of my Head and the provider of my joy and Peace. I pray my blogs are a blessing to you in your life. This is my deepest desire. To allow those who feel they have no more hope to know there is ALWAYS hope in Jesus Christ. Pastor Daniella. 

Daniella. https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com

Trust is a time stamped process. Trust is not built in a day, but more rather a seed planted within us that is slowly and lovingly fed in order that its strength gains daily. In order to truly “trust” anyone in life, we decide that we have learned enough of their character and habitual actions that we can feel “safe” to allow a belief that they are someone who won’t hurt us.  This process of thought holds true within our relationship with Jesus.  We are on a journey with Jesus Christ, learning to trust that He is all He is said to be.  Please understand something, Jesus knows how HARD it is for a hurting person to open their lives to Him. But, Jesus is patient and better than anyone in your life, He truly seeks the best for you.  He’s willing to walk a lifetime with you in order that you learn of Him and grow in your trust of Him daily. He just wants you to begin the walk with Him, step by step, day by day.

One of the ways that we learn to trust Jesus Christ is by beginning to truly allow ourselves to accept that He is Truth, but in order to present truth, we must spent time thinking over the idea of truth and why we value it so heavily.  Many times, we value something because it is a stark contrast to our daily exposures of life. In preparing for this evenings blog, I spent time allowing myself to freewrite my thoughts are the contrast of truth. The first that came to mind is the most evident, lies and deceit.  

All of us, at some point or the other, have been victim to rumors spread about our character that were not built upon a single validity.  Those rumors often warp the perception in which people view us.  The only antidote to the believability of these spreading lies is people learning the Truth. 

Jesus’ character has been misrepresented on so often a case that people being believing the deceptions of Him, rather than the Truths of Him. The antidote, to present the Truth of our Lord Jesus Christ in hopes to “clear up” the misrepresentations of Who HE really is for us in our lives. 

Deceit runs ramped in this world, doesn’t it? Whether it is a commercial claiming to be the “world’s best”, a boss misrepresenting his intentions to his employees, or cover ups so magnificent in size that they topple entire corporations, we have all been exposed to deceit.  Yet there is a much quieter, conniving deceit that is present in each of our lives daily. It is fed to us in palatable spoonfuls and many times coated with a tasty substance designed to encourage our devouring the lies to such a degree that we begin to take them on as truths.  

These lies that we swallow are not as easily distinguishable as a company that hides its red ledger books only to be found for the fraud it is. No, these lies, readily accepted among the masses, have encompassed many of us well before we knew we were being brought for a ride.  These lies are those words that float around in your head that tell you: “You aren’t worth it. You will never be able to accomplish what you’ve set out to do. That thing about Jesus never giving you more than you can handle is such a crock. No one in life will be able to love me, I am not loveable. I can’t overcome this addiction. I will never be able to rise above the situations I am facing. Pain is all I am ever going to know in life. I am so stupid, I’ll never learn this. I’m the only one I can trust in life.” You may not have heard all of these lies, but at some point in your life, you’ve heard something a kin to them.

Each of these lies and millions more are fed to humanity daily. We take them as truths because we are hurting and utterly starved of hope.  But these lies have provided nothing but depression, anxiety, fear, worry, doubt, smashed dreams, addictions, and mistrust among us as a people. To reach for something different than what we’ve currently been accepting as truth, we must decide that we want an alternative to the roller coaster of emotions that we’ve been living.  It means that we will start to allow our thinking to come up out of the fog of deceit we’ve been living among and instead start to have faith in Christ being Who He says He is. 

Tomorrow I will speak of the Truth that Jesus Christ is in our lives.  I look forward to this. I have lived many years in an emotional struggle against the battles of overcoming the pains of my childhood.  I share these blogs with each of you in hopes that your heart, too, will start to experience what real freedom and truth tastes like. I want nothing less for you. May this blog be a blessing to you in your life.  Until tomorrow. Pastor Daniella. https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com/

Yesterday I spoke of the idea that many people are willing to accept the idea of there being a Jesus Christ, but few allow themselves trust Christ to become intricately involved in their lives. 

When people are told that the love of Jesus is offered only through a merit system, When the courage is summoned long enough to step foot in a church only to be met with judgmental glances, When those sent to be the “children of God” find more reasons to exclude than to include………you can easily see why a discouragement towards the involvement of Jesus can begin.  

Jesus Christ is not a religion. He is the Son of God seeking to love the whole of humanity…not just the select few that others of this world would deem “worthy”.  When Christ is presented in a light that cast undue shadow upon His character, the result is an overwhelming mistrust of just Who Jesus Christ is and the true intentions that He has for our lives. 

Today, I would like to talk about discovering, perhaps for the first time, the true heart of Jesus Christ. In order to truly “trust” anyone in life, we decide that we have learned enough of their character and habitual actions that we can feel “safe” to allow a belief that they are someone who won’t hurt us.  This process of thought holds true within our relationship with Jesus.  We are on a journey with Jesus Christ, learning to trust that He is all He is said to be.  Please understand something, Jesus knows how HARD it is for a hurting person to open their lives to Him. But, Jesus is patient and better than anyone in your life, He truly seeks the best for you.  He’s willing to walk a lifetime with you in order that you learn of Him and grow in your trust of Him daily. He just wants you to begin the walk with Him, step by step, day by day.

As I spoke of above. Trust is a time stamped process. Not built in a day, but more rather a seed planted within us that is slowly and lovingly fed in order that it’s strength gains daily. In order to learn of the Lord Jesus Christ, we must first turn to the only source that has never misrepresented Him, the Bible. Many of us know some scriptures that have been quoted here or there on a social media sight or seen on a billboard. Each of them powerful scriptures, but when we are unsure how to apply them to our lives, we find can find ourselves thinking, “Great text, what do I do with it?”

We are told (John 1:4) that Jesus Christ is the source of Life, and that this Life is the Light of all humanity.  The morning breaks and the day’s events seem to slap each of us up the face with stresses. Each of us are seeking a renewal within our bodies and minds daily. Jesus Christ offers to be this renewal of Life that we are desperate to find.  The Life that He brings to our daily life is to be the Light shed across the day’s events encouraging us to not take hold of the reigns of worry, but instead to seek the Face of Christ, our Life giver and Light bringer, as our day’s motivation.  I say Face of Christ, and something like that might not make all the sense in the world at first.  I guess in a way, I used to think it didn’t myself…but then I after the birth of my children I started to understand what this phrase truly meant in our life.

When my children were babies they were never really grand about going to anyone but me.  When they would find themselves in the arms of someone other than me, their face would become distressed and quickly their eyes would start to dart around in search of me.  All their stresses would subside and peace would return to them once I came in to view.  I picture this scenario being much to our lives as it was to my children’s…Our lives are stressed, out of sorts, and we are in constant seek for the source of comfort. This comfort we seek comes from only One source in our lives, the sight of Life giving Light bringing Jesus Christ.  

When we allow Life’s renewal and comfort to brought to us through Jesus Christ, we are learning what it means to allow the Light within the Lord’s life giving love to be the guide we need. We are learning that grasping at the fragility of life’s situations to be a source of peace giving comfort and stability is never going to play out in our favor. Life’s circumstances offer many a frustration, not a comfort. And if it is comfort that we are finding in a situation, it’s often times a temporary comfort.  Learning to let the Life that Jesus Christ is for our lives become the first thing we seek in a day, will aid us in setting the tone for our day and through that mental state of being we find that less of our thinking is quickly shaken by the disappointments and troubles each of us are dealing with.  Tomorrow we will explore another truth of Who our Lord Jesus Christ is to our lives.  For now, I remind you that Jesus Christ knows this takes time, but the most important thing is to start STEP BY STEP, allowing Jesus Christ into your lives. I wish you a blessed evening. Pastor Daniella https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com

She wakes, her feet hit the floor. Thought of the day begin to fill her head. They weigh upon her. “You’ve so much to accomplish today. How will you get it all done? You know it’s more than you can handle.” She sighs, worry and dread fills her heart. This scenario plays out in many a home across this world. The seemingly inevitable position of worry and dread of the days coming events. Many of us are facing uphill battles in our lives. None of which are honestly without their frustrations. Yet each of us are to be living a life of becoming renewed in Christ, not daunted and dismayed. True, many of us do face tasks that seem overwhelming and left to our own devices they would be, yet each of us are being provided an opportunity to live out this life with Jesus Christ at our side. Many people are willing to accept the idea of there being a Jesus Christ, but few allow themselves trust Christ to become intricately involved in their lives. When people are told that the love of Jesus is offered only through a merit system, When the courage is summoned long enough to step foot in a church only to be met with judgmental glances, When those sent to be the “children of God” find more reasons to exclude than to include………you can easily see why a discouragement towards the involvement of Jesus can begin. Jesus Christ is not a religion. He is a God/Man seeking to love the whole of humanity…not just the select few that others of this world would deem “worthy”. When Christ is presented in a light that cast undue shadow upon His character, the result is an overwhelming mistrust of just Who Jesus Christ is and the true intentions that He has for our lives. Tomorrow I will focus my blog on some of the truths that Christ shares Himself to be within the Bible. For now, I will ask you to please be willing to open your heart to understand that it is people who break our hearts and judge us harshly, it is not our Lord Jesus Christ. I too have fallen victim to the pains that people have caused in my life all in the “name of God”, but I want to encourage you that our Lord Jesus Christ is Love. Until tomorrow. Many blessings on your evening. Pastor Daniella.

A NEW RELATIONSHIP Have you ever had a teacher that believed in you? If not a teacher, a parent, a friend, a boss, a co-worker, a peer...someone who extended belief in you prior to your rising to the occasion? Due to this belief that they had in you, you decided that you could stretch yourself farther than you believed. You saw your potential through their eyes. Well then, you have seen a bit of what this relationship with Jesus will feel like. But, let me encourage you. HIS IS MORE, much, much MORE. Jesus does not just encourage, He gets right in the middle of the situation with you, rolls up His sleeves and works beside you. Do you look over and "see" Him, no...but it almost feels as if you can at points. I have not been perfect in my life. I have made many a wrong turn and at points just stood in stubbornness against what Jesus was trying to do in my life. He patiently loved me through all of that, and He will do the same with you. A teacher, a boss, a co-worker, a pier... their belief in you is only so deep. Jesus' belief is so strong for you that He DIED for you. Stop a minute. Take that in for what it is. Jesus believes in you so strongly that He Died in order that you could live. It is that man, the one who has given all that you might live, that asks to be in a relationship with you. Not some angry, overbearing, heartless Lord...instead the one that was moved in His heart so heavily that He offered forgiveness knowing full well that it was going to cost Him EVERYTHING! If you knew that you were going to be put to death in order to save the lives of people who are currently seeking after everything you hold abhorrent, would you still die for them? Jesus did. He offered forgiveness to those who were societies worst, knowing full well that each time He offered it, it was going to mean His life. We are being offered that same forgiveness. For while we are sinning He offers love. It is that Jesus that we can be in a relationship with. Not a Jesus that sees the stains of life upon us first, but instead... a Jesus that sees the beauty underneath...FIRST. He sees the one He loves first. He has seen your hurts, He knows the damage they have done, and wants to start a relationship with you that offers healing that will far outreach your pain. Pastor Daniella

Want to live with real courage? Choose Love instead of Hate. To hate takes little effort. To Love takes remembering you are no better than the person next to you. Seek to build one another. Pastor Daniella

The Power of Surrender As a kid, did you ever try taking on a task that was larger than you were? You decided to carry milk from the refrigerator to the table, never mind that the milk weighed more than you did. Did you jump from a height that in all reality was much taller than you thought it at first? What about deciding that you would get dressed without the aid of an adult, and upon presenting yourself you quickly learned that your shirt was inside out and backward, and your shoes were on the wrong feet? All of these are simple feats that we tried to surmount on our own, but have you ever thought how many tasks you take on as a believer that you should have offered to Jesus first? I know I am acutely aware of this very fact. Why? I don't enjoy it when life seems out of control. Okay, overstatement...but in desperation for normality and stability in my life, I have often taken on tasks that far outreach my ability to surmount them. Although John 15:5 tells me that if I try to live a life without Jesus I am nothing, I have still tried to somehow prove that I am the exception to this statement. In every attempt, my self-made solution has crumbled beneath my feet. Through this, I am learning a life lesson. We are to offer Jesus not only every situation in our life, but allow ourselves to be stretched even further by offering Him the first thought on every situation in our life. Have you ever found yourself about nine steps into trying to solve something, meeting up with a dead end, and thinking, "Well, I guess I could pray about it." I know I have. I am trying to allow myself to stop my natural thinking and instead heed what Jesus is warning me about...my efforts are not going to produce fruit if I don't first offer my initial thinking on the matter to Him. Not the easiest for a driven person to consider, but none-the-less, a lesson I am better off for learning. "Be still and know that I am God", another time in the Bible that I am told that it is better to have just waited, let God be the Lord of my situation, and then allow Him to guide me. When I first tried to start implementing this into my life, I honestly thought I was going to go stir crazy. I kept thinking, "What good does it do to wait upon the Lord, there are things that need to be done." But, as I started to see the fruit of this sacrifice I was offering Him in my life, I started to see why it is that He requests this of us. Jesus is not an egomaniac. He does not make a request of us that is somehow self-serving, instead it serves to deliver something to us. We are shown peace through surrender of every situation in our lives. We are allowed in surrender, to taste what it is that He had here on Earth with His Father in Heaven. Jesus tells us in John 5:19 that He does nothing without the Father. If we are hoping to have peace here on Earth, where evil runs rampant, then we must finally come to a position of understanding that there is power in our surrender to the Lord, not impotence. Pastor Daniella

Aren’t there times in your life when you wish you could see the entire staircase prior to taking the first step? I know that I have often wished this of life. Yet in this lifetime, we are called to start seeing with the “eyes” of the Lord long before we start seeing with our eyes. My daughter was given an acting instruction recently in her drama class. They asked her to see if she could quickly familiarize herself with a particular room and then once blindfolded be able to perform a couple of simple tasks within that space. At the completion of the exercise she said that she was taken back at how quickly her other senses had become the master control of her mind, rather than her site. I would like to use this exercise to as life application for us. We are being challenge in life to learn how to live more out of what the Bible shows us to be more trustworthy senses: Faith, Hope, His Promises to us, His Love for us…than we do the situational evidence that all is going to work out for the betterment of us. I have spoken many times of the difficulties that anxiety has inflicted in my life. When difficulties present themselves I used to go pieces over the matter. I am learning, through the Grace of God, that I don’t have to lose Peace just because I can’t SEE how a situation will in fact work out. Instead, I am learning to ignore what my sight tells me and instead trust my other senses: Faith, Hope, His Promises, His Love. Trusting well before there is evidence to the matter---not the easiest thing I have worked on in life, but I continue to strive to apply it better daily. I am learning that the less I feed my fears and anxieties, their reign within my heart dwindles. I am a work in progress, but aren’t we all. God be praised for all He does for each of us! I pray this message is anointed to help you this evening. Pastor Daniella

Yesterday I shared something that I have been learning in life concerning Peace. I spoke of the fact that so many of us have grown up believing that Peace is more situational than it is a state of allowing Christ to work in us.  

My life growing up was so utterly filled with anxiety. Anxiety was as close to me as my skin, oddly enough…almost a “trusted friend” at points.  As long as I was feeling anxiety over a matter I felt I was somehow “prepared” for what life would throw my way.  But anxiety is a leach and after a while I became mentally anemic.  I had nothing more to give to anxiety. The slightest trouble would enter into my temporary peaceful state and I would fall to pieces over it.  I became desperate for a change within me.  Broken hearted, fear filled, and uncertain where Peace would take me I decided I afford nothing less but to step out and see where it led me.

When I stepped out, I started a very slow process of adapting my thinking to coincide with Peace filled thoughts rather than anxiety driven fear.  When trouble presented itself I started to question myself if I was viewing the difficulty through Perspective or through Fear.  This questions many times allowed me the moments I needed to collect myself and in order to remind myself that I wanted Peace more than I wanted anxiety.  Once I was calmer I would literally say out loud, “Perspective, Daniella, Perspective.  What is actually going on here? See the situation for what it is rather than what your anxiety wants to build it in to.”  Perspective rendered many situations powerfulness, and prompted me to see that the more that I started to see Peace for what it is, a doorway to the love that Jesus had for me, the more found that my stability is based in Jesus and all the power that He holds, not in situations.

I found that I needed to find ways to overcome the anxiety that sought to capture the first few minutes or hour prior to a difficulty presenting itself to me. 

It was here that I started learning to apply a series of small quotes. Scriptures from the Bible that reassured me that I was never beyond the Love of Christ. Quotes that empowered me to remember nothing is beyond the Lord’s control. Because many times, when difficult times present themselves to us, we lose start letting our trust that Jesus does honestly love us, or that God isn’t really going to hold up His statement that He never gives us more than we can handle.  Finding ways to quickly harness those insecure thoughts helps greatly in the battle to against anxiety.  We can control what we allow ourselves to “digest” as valid information and when we are start to feel the onset of thoughts that tells us that God stops loving us, we need to see those for the lie they are. But the longer you allow Peace to reign within your thoughts, the more you will find it is a trusted friend like none other.  The Lord Jesus Christ seeks to lift our heads.  It is in His eyes that we see the love that we’ve all been desperate to find and it is through his love that we will finally find a Peace so utterly irresistible that anything less becomes powerless against us.

I continue in my journey with the Lord daily. His love is slowly piecing together a heart that had never truly tasted Peace, but due to His patience with me…. I can’t imagine life without Peace now. It is a daily fight to keep my eyes more focused on the Peace of Christ than anything else presenting itself in my life, but I never again want to return to the grips of anxiety.   “He that has been set Free is Free indeed” (John 8:36)  May this be of a blessing to you, my friends.  Pastor Daniella https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Peace seems an allusive friend throughout most of life, doesn’t it? What seemingly sets out to be a peaceful day seems to quickly unravel at the onset of frustrating circumstances. For years, I would live in such temporary peace. I felt as if I were on a roller coaster. As long as life’s circumstances were meeting my expectations, I felt at Peace, but the moment that a situation presented itself less than ideal, I would feel my Peace take a down turn. It took me many years to start seeing that I was living with a mindset that Peace was circumstantially based. When I first came to this reality, I almost argued with myself on the matter. I honestly didn’t see why circumstantial peace was such a bad idea. After all, when frustrating circumstances are taking place in life, aren’t we supposed to react to them? I mean, this is all that I had ever seen emulated, so to think anything less than that was a foreign thought. I then started to be led by God to see what His Peace looks like. I started to understand that Peace from Jesus wasn’t anchored in anything to do with my circumstances meeting up with my expectations, but more rather it was anchored in the love that He has for me. Tomorrow, I will speak on how I started learning to apply the Peace of Christ to the difficult situations of my life. Until then, I pray you have a blessed evening. Pastor Daniella

I feel that so many of us are faced with daily obstacles that seemingly create such an utter impasse in their presence that we start to feel the fabric of our dreams unraveling. I know even in my own life, daily bombardments of discouragement can feel an ever present stumbling block. Yet I have seen how imperative it is to fight back against these discouragements. I think that often, our inner being starts to convince us that IF we would just get in to agreement with the discouragement more than we are in agreement with our dreams that life would become easier. While this thought might give a temporary, at best, reprieve to the fight you feel within to stay positive, do you realize what you are giving up when you agree with discouragement? You leave in your wake your dreams. To live in belief that your dreams will in fact come to fruition is not easy. Honestly, it’s not. Each of us that have dreams deeply imbedded with our hearts are in a constant battle to look more at the trust that God will bring them about than our current realities. But really, when you allow yourself to step back from this struggle long enough to assess if you are truly willing to GIVE UP… I think most of us would objectively answer---“NO!” Every one of us is afforded the chance to refuse discouragement entry into our thinking. The next time you are facing discouragement, please take a minute to ask yourself if you truly want to allow the words spoken or the actions taken entry in to your thinking. Ask yourself if the statement the person made, or the action done towards you has warrant in your life or not. Ask yourself if you are honestly willing to give up on a dream that has meant so much to you in life… all for the sake of another person’s opinion over you. I think that when we allow ourselves permission to see question the true weight of the discouragement in our lives, we start understanding that we in fact aren’t willing to give up. We start seeing that we are in fact more determined to move forward. We being to give more validity to the dream than we do the discouragement. I pray this is a blessing to you in your life this evening. Pastor Daniella

For tonight, I wanted to share a scripture that I enjoy taking comfort in. I pray your evening is blessed. Pastor Daniella Here’s the scripture… Psalm 34 (New Living Translation) I will praise the Lord at all times. I will constantly speak his praises. I will boast only in the Lord; let all who are helpless take heart. Come, let us tell of the Lord’s greatness; let us exalt his name together. I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears. Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces. In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened; he saved me from all my troubles. For the angel of the Lord is a guard; he surrounds and defends all who fear him.

Fear sees the obstacles that block the path before you. Faith sees the Lord that makes straight your paths.

Many times in life, we are greatly tempted to focus more on the reasons why something can’t happen than why the can happen.  God is GOOD and if the dream that lives within you has been placed there by Jesus, then it is His utter desire to bring this dream about in your life.

Often times, we are easily distracted by the frustrations that arise within the journey to our dreams.  We start out in the journey towards the coming true, with a belly full of hope. Commitment, assurance, and trust seem in ample supply, but before too long, we come across our first seemingly impassable and it is here, that many a dreamer abandons their belief.  The times when we should be digging deep within the Lord’s strength, we instead become fixated on the difficulty or discouragement. 

My conviction here is not to point fingers at you, more rather encourage you.  I too have felt victim to such a thought.  I too abandoned a dream long ago.  I know how convincing the obstacles and discouragement can seem.  I write this blog tonight and offer the encouragement with you that I wish someone had given me when I was struggling to keep my eyes more on the Lord than the obstacles that stood in my way. 

The obstacles before you is merely a distraction, no more.  Please be willing to stay focused in your Faith.  If you are currently feeling your Faith waiver, please do not be ashamed to offer that to Jesus. He desires so greatly to offer encouragement and strengthening to you in your struggle. After you’ve made such a prayer, please be willing to find a way to allow yourself some peaceful time to receive what Jesus will offer you. The Holy Spirit connects with us daily, but we have to calm our Spirit enough to be witnessed to.  If your schedule looks as many people do…busy, busy… I offer this suggestion.  Right before you go to bed at night, stand or sit at your bedside and just allow quiet to wash over you.  Give those minutes to God. Don’t allow a recapping of all that is wrong with that day, but instead, just allow yourself to live present in the moment knowing that you are loved by God and His utter desire is to see the dreams that He’s planted within you come about. 

I have picked up my abandoned dream that I spoke of, and I am more committed to it now than I was before.  The suggestions I just made are ones that I implemented in to my life in order that I started learning to feed my FAITH more than I did my FEAR.  I pray this is of benefit to your lives this evening.  I wish each of you the best in your journey with our Loving Lord Jesus.

 Pastor Daniella https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com

   

Life's pains will always strive to talk louder than your Faith does, but we are called to walk by FAITH, not Pain. May God be the strength you are seeking in this time of trouble. We truly do serve a God who seeks to empower you daily. Never let the pain in your life blind you to just how amazing His love truly is. Pastor Daniella https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Many of us have had very difficult situations to overcome in life. If each of you were to write to me about some of the most painful events in your life, I would receive an array of utter devastation that each that you have faced. Yet underlying to each would be the footprints of pain that now walk the halls of your heart. Pain meant to tie your every thought to the worst of life. I understand pain linked to difficult events. The footsteps of my painful past ran a regular pathway through my thinking. I became imprisoned by the pains of what life had offered. Then the Lord started opening my heart to see how I had allowed my thinking to become altered by the pain. Where faith had been the strongest emotion in my life, I had allowed pain to become dominate. Where hope had readily sprang from my heart, I had allowed fear of being hurt again to reign. It starts slowly, these changes…I had allowed Fear to start speaking louder than my Faith was…and I had started listening to it more than I was the comforting love of my Lord Jesus Christ. Many of us fall into this cycle of thinking. We don’t mean to allow this to take place, but it does. God started helping me to understand that the Fear is a natural temptation of life, but it didn’t have to be something that I gave in to. But if I started spending more time staring at Him than I did my past pains, I would start gaining an inner strength that I would be able to use to fight against those temptations of fear. God was right. Honestly, I have to fight down painful thoughts over my past, but I do live now in a freedom that I had not been experiencing prior. The painful things of my past happened, there is nothing I can do to change that fact, but what I can do, and am doing in the STRENGTH of Christ, is learning that His love in my life is far greater than that pain ever was. I will never truly be able to express to the Lord how grateful I am for this experience with Him, but I will do my BEST in life to continue to share with you all the utter love that is available in Jesus Christ for those of us that have been broken in life due to any number of reasons. For each of you, I wish only that your journey with Christ can become one that starts touching the freedoms that are available in the Love of Jesus. Pastor Daniella

Fear Devours, Faith Empowers. Each of us is waiting for amazing things to take place in our lives. Yet at many a corner it seems that Fear and anxiety are the only thing that awaits us. We aren’t going to be able to see the path that leads ALL the way to the day that our dreams take place, but what we can do is KNOW that our dreams are in fact going to come true and work greatly to stay in Faith. The Faith that it takes to stay positive that dreams are coming, even when all you seem to be faced is a reality that would tell you that you are the fool to be dreaming as you are, is faith that is exercised by CHOICE. Pray daily for the Holy Spirits empowerment of your Faith. Fear Devours your hopes, but Faith…will empower your dreams. May your dreams be empowered tonight! Pastor Daniella.

Never allow the words of the doubters in your life take residence within your heart. You will encounter many people in life that will not share the same dream for you as what has been placed in your heart. I think that many of us can easily be discouraged from our dreams when we look for other people’s opinions to give validity to the dreams housed within us. The trouble with this thinking lies in the fact that it is only God that we are to look to for validation in life. God is the author of your dreams. They reside inside your heart because He placed them there. He believes in you more than you do your own self. When you look to God for validation of your dreams, you are looking for the very ONE who authored them to be written across your heart. Allowing Him to be the fuel by which you set fire to your dreams, is to tap in to an endless well of support. May God be the fuel you are seeking for your dreams this evening. I wish you the very best. Pastor Daniella.

There are so many times in life where it feels that our human will and the will of the Lord Jesus Christ have come to an impasse. The will we were born with seeks to rush forward in order that quick resolution is made of any difficulty we are facing. The will of Jesus, doesn’t always align itself with us. It is in these times that many of us have to cling to the belief that when we yield our will to the Lord we are actually opening up doors for Him to further in our lives. One of the worst parts of this yielding is the waiting period. That period of time where you are yielding and yet you seem not to be seeing any results from your actions. When you are feeling yourself begin to question the Lord’s commitment to resolve situations in your life…when you are feeling yourself begin to worry more than trust...please keep your head up and involve Jesus. Don’t feel that you have to place a false face of bravery on for Him. Involving Jesus means that you share with him all the troubles you are facing, where you are beginning to feel yourself fail, and how you need Him. We are loved more than we truly understand, by the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the lifter of our heads. Allow Him in. Pastor Daniella.

 I know that it is a daily struggle to believe for the best. 

Each of us is living with circumstances in our lives that can, if focused on long enough, steal our sense of Hope so quickly. I cannot encourage you more to please, hold on tight to hope.  

I grew up in a home that was being such dry of hope daily.  A loss of hope is one of the most astoundingly large black holes.  Many times in life, hope is not a product of your current circumstances.  In fact, many times in life...Hope is a result of a deliberate decision that you fill yourself with.  I often say that hope is what we choose because we have decided that nothing less with do.

If you are someone struggling with great difficulty to hold on to hope, please first of all do not feel you are the one this happens to.  Secondly, know that holding on to you hope is very important.  Getting in to agreement with doubt is not the answer.  Doubt is not a merciful thought.  Doubt will seek to break not only your hope but to utterly deplete your life of anything that you could use as fuel to start hoping again.  

What steps can you take to hold on to the of hope that you do have right now? Above all, involve Jesus Christ...ask him for the help you need and that he would bless the steps you are taking in order to keep your hope alive. 

• Set in your mind that you will not allow loss of hope to be an option. Decide that nothing less than Hope will be something that you will accept from yourself.
• Try your best to listen to that quiet voice within you telling you that you are right to keep hope for better things to come.
• Each time you start to feel the urge to doubt remind yourself that you have the power to choose what you thoughts you entertain.  
• Find inspirational things that breed hope within you.  

ideas: 

Read scriptures that give you cause to believe that God is more than in control of your life and loves you.

Find music that moves you to believe in the good that is to come to your life.

Read books about astonishing things that people have overcome.

Place words around your house that inspire you.

Find a need that is not being filled in your community and try to fill that need. (volunteer work is very empowering to the soul)

Please remember, hope often times is a choice.  Yet to live with hope is one of the greatest gifts we have as believers.  Jesus Christ is so merciful to give us the ability to hope. 

I pray blessings in to your life. 

Pastor Daniella 

Follow me on Twitter: https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella

http://pastordaniellaministries.blogspot.com

                       

Jesus Christ knows where your heart is at tonight. He is such powerful love. He knows if you are struggling to place faith before fear. He knows if one is winning the battle over the other. Please, if fear is winning this evening, don’t allow it to be what keeps you from praying to Him tonight. Not sure where to start talking to Him tonight? Maybe just start by asking Him to help you start seeing all the ways that He loves you. Try maybe asking Him to be the sustainer of your Faith as you stumble your way in to His arms of Grace. No matter where you are in life, you are NEVER beyond the Love of Jesus Christ….NEVER! I know life can be a struggle, but the struggle does not have to be fought alone. Please allow yourself to start involving Jesus Christ—He honestly does love you and seek to Lift you, not harm you. Pastor Daniella.

So many of us can easily be misled in to thinking that we must FEEL something in order for validity to be assigned. This thinking does serve its purpose at points. I know as a performer, my choices as to what songs to do were often based upon whether I “FELT” them or not. I don’t just want to sing a song, I want feel an emotional journey with it and in turn perform it. Yet early on in life, I started applying the this need to “feel” everything. At first, you might think this idea of mine wasn’t faulted, yet let me purpose a question for you. Have your feelings ever mislead you? Relationships turned sour that you never felt would end, impulsive purchases, off the cuff comments birthed out of feelings of frustration that in turn ended a friendship…each of these and more could be a prompting for your memory to conjure up examples of why feelings can mislead us. I remember early in my walk with Jesus, I started to understand that Jesus Christ knew how fleeting, misleading, and volatile feelings of a human can be. When I saw this, I began to comprehend that Jesus wouldn’t want to use such a temporary medium as feelings in order to paint his presence in our lives. If Jesus’ love, faithfulness, comfort, mercy…. were dependent upon my “feeling” them…my relationship with Jesus would be very tumultuous, a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Jesus Christ is offering stability to our lives. Something that many of us have thirsted after for years. Through his stability, we are offered permanent love. Not love based on whether Jesus Christ “feels” something, but instead based on the FACT that HE IS LOVE--His very nature can be nothing less. The validity of Christ’s presences in our lives has nothing to do with our feelings and EVERTHING to do with His promise to never leave us—His Faithfulness—His devotion—His Life Giving Love. Our Feelings cannot be the fuel we seek in our relationship with Jesus Christ, due the fact of the frail nature. Instead, we must remember that it is He that is He who has given the validity to His love for us…Not our feelings. May God be the blessing you are seeking this evening. Pastor Daniella.

It is Jesus Christ, alone that gives our dreams wings. Instead of thinking that our dreams don't matter to Him, realize that He is actually the author of the belief that you hold within you for amazing things to take place in your life. He does care. In fact, He is impassioned with an absolute love for you and your life.

I know at times there can be such Fear that rises up within us towards the idea of continuing to place Faith in the idea that Jesus is in fact working in our life. With a feverish pace, this Fear can quickly overtake our Faith. I was thinking this evening though just WHO it is that we are placing our Faith in. When we are placing Faith in Jesus Christ, we are placing Faith in the One who….healed this sick, turned WATER to Wine, Saved the LIVES of everyone who has ever Lived, Is Living, or Will Live, the One Who spoke the World and the Universe in to existence…. I think that we quickly lose our sense of AWE in life, and in turn we can quickly forget just WHO it is that we are placing our Faith in. Tonight is a quick blog. I guess this idea has just been on my heart a bit today. We truly are blessed beyond all we could ever ask for, to be allowed to place Faith in such a Perfect Life Giving Jesus Christ. I pray your evening is full of Jesus’ comfort. In Christ, Pastor Daniella.

To live with a belly full of Hope is to live in a constant belief that you are not living a life of stagnate situations. When we are full, we have no more “room” for anything else. When we fill up on Hope, we are not allowing room for anything less to enter in our thinking. Is it easy to live in this status of constantly being full of hope? No, many times it is not. Doubt wars a great battle against us. But we are not fighting this battle alone, we are in this battle with all the powers of God right beside us. How can you implement the help of the Lord into your life? 1. Talk with him over what it is you are going through, daily-hourly if need be. In my case, I talk with God more in a “play-by-play” term throughout the day. Since I never know exactly what’s to come, I try to allow myself to share daily life with the Lord. Frustrations, joys…they each get equal focus in my talk with God. If I don’t allow myself to release my frustration to God, then I am limiting where He can help me. If I don’t spend time allowing God to know that what He does for me and others is special to me, I am not living in a thankful heart. 2. How do you find the time? Honestly, I just talk with God even while doing everyday actions and events. I do spend time in knees to the floor prayer, but I, just as the rest of you, have many situations in my life where kneeling down every few minutes that something comes to mind to pray about, would become very hindering to the accomplishment of tasks. So, I started just praying when thoughts came to mind. 3. Understand that No circumstance is too small to be out of the interest of the Lord Jesus Christ. When I was growing up it was taught to me that many of our “small” life troubles or interests were not of a concern for God, so why involve Him. Once I started reading the Bible for myself, I came across the scriptures that talk of my Lord being concerned to every little need of the animals of the Earth. I quickly saw that if God was concerned over the needs, then He would be concerned over all of my needs as well. In turn, I began to involve Him and made a point to stop the thinking that starts to creep in that tells me that I don’t need to share something with God. 4. Be willing to be fed by the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants, with the greatest of desires, to share His love with you. It is a beautiful thing to allow yourself to express all aspects of life with Jesus, but it is imperative that you learn to let Jesus share with you how MUCH He loves you. It is through this love that you will find a BELLY OF HOPE FORM! We cannot allow anyone but Jesus to be the One who feeds us. Through Him, we can keep a positive outlook on life. When we start to feel ourselves “running low on fuel”, Jesus is a bottomless pit of encouragement, joy, peace and love that we are all seeking. Turing to Him, sharing with Him, and being Filled by Him, these ideas can help us to stay full of the Hope and help us to understand that this battle against doubt is never fought alone. Daniella.

Where you would doubt, Jesus fills you with Trust. Where you would worry, Jesus empowers you to execute Faith Where you would run away, Jesus steps forward to rescue Where you would fear, Jesus protects Where you would dream, Jesus would encourage it. We are loved by the most astoundingly loving man in the history of life-Jesus. It is His love that we are living for daily. Invite Him in. Don’t over formalize this-just start talking to Him. He seeks to Lift you! Daniella.

You are never beyond the Love of the Lord Jesus Christ. No matter what has been told you, you are loved by the Lord Jesus. Many of us have experienced the hand of those who would taint the Love of Jesus Christ to appear so staunch and harsh that the belief that His love could be afforded you still, seems far beyond a dream you should grasp for. Yet it not as they painted it. God is LOVE-- Love that is extended you no matter what your life looks like right now. I feel so desperate to communicate this to those of you who are hurting. The Love of others can fail us, harm us, betray us, disappoint us, break us…but the Love of Jesus Christ is unlike that. I paint a more human picture. I will draw a few scenarios that take place in our modern day world… You’ve wrecked the family car, it’s utterly totaled. You lost your dad’s wallet, while on the family vacation. You dropped your mother’s wedding ring down the sink. You failed to close the deal that your company has to have in order to stay afloat. If I asked you to attach the anticipated ending to each of these scenarios, you would more than likely have imagined each person’s action being met with anger. And with many people their action would be anger…but NEVER would it be that from Jesus Christ. We become so convinced that we’ve stepped out of the Love of Jesus Christ that we shut Him out. Jesus is the LIFTER of your head. No matter what your life looks like, His love is already in action. Never once has He stopped loving you. No matter how many times you’ve questioned Him, doubted Him, turned from Him….HE was/is loving you. He knows what you’ve done, where you’ve messed up, where you are messing up now and yet all He wants to focus on is your coming to Him in order that you learn of His love. Why? Because it is His love that heals life’s worst pains and fears. My prayers are for you, whoever you are this evening reading this. I know what it’s like to be taught that God doesn’t care for those who do anything less than perfection. It breaks your human will to want to come to Jesus. But I also know what it is like to be in a relationship with Jesus where you trust in His love more than you do the pain of what has taken place in your life…and that alone is worth the journey you are contemplating on taking. Blessings-Daniella.

Each of us fear similar and very diverse subjects in our lives. Fear can provide both good and bad in our lives. Good how? What about fearing to run in to the road, or jump in front of a train? These are things that fear keeps us from. But where I come from this evening is more the focus of when Fear is our hindrance…no I want to state that in a more deliberate way. I speak this evening of the FEAR that builds within us to a point that we allow it to KILL the very dreams we are believing for. If I were to ask you to picture something in your head that you have really been hoping for, a purchase you’ve been really excited about having: an awesome car, the newest tech devise, a great purse, tickets to some greatly anticipated show…I would get an array of answer in return as each of you shared what you were thinking of. Now, pretend that I told you that tomorrow morning you were going to be given the money to rush out and buy that very item. Excitement would FILL your heart, you probably would not sleep this evening----but you would NOT be losing this sleep out of Fear would you? No---it would be out of great anticipation, gratitude, thrill, excitement, or joy. Okay, hold on to that thought a moment. Now let me take you to a dream that you’ve held DEEP within your heart. You don’t need a minute to conjure up on. Why? because this dream is synced exactly to your very core being. You know the dream I speak of. It’s that one that’s been written on your heart even before you knew of its existence. That dream that serve as motivation to your very essence- where your dream being and you end have become seamless. I want you to keep that dream in your mind right now. Do you feel that? Do you feel that STIR of emotion right now? That part of your being that is almost utterly scared over this very idea coming true? Listen to what your inner dialogue is right now: Questions like, What if I do succeed? Do you I honestly have what it takes to make it? Once there, do I have what it takes to keep it afloat? Do I really believe that I have something special to bring to others? What will people think of me? Will they like me? Will they continue liking me? What if I can’t live up to others expectations? What if I can’t live up to my expectations? What if I’ve been lying to myself this whole time and really this dream is just a stupid thought I had once that I have desperately clung to” The myriad of questions that we ask ourselves is as diverse as the people asking them, but there is a common thread that weaves amongst each of them….FEAR! I asked you above a few paragraphs ago to name off a purchase that you were greatly looking forward to owning at some point. At the end of the paragraph, I asked you to picture yourself being told that you were going to be given the money to purchase your item. I asked you to picture your night before the purchase, and the emotions that you would be feeling. I named off anticipation, gratitude, thrill, excitement, or joy. So what’s my point??? We would never think to place FEAR among the emotions of something as amazing as finally purchasing a greatly anticipated item. In fact, if Fear were to try a rear its head within our emotions, we would be quick to question its existence, and to shut it down in our thinking. We would see the Fear for what it was trying to do----STEAL!! Steal from the experience, the gratitude, the joy, and the thrill. So why then----do we allow FEAR the open door to our dreams? Why don’t we apply the same application of identifying Fear as the horrid dream stealer that it is and quickly fight to shut it down? We do this because we don’t fully trust that if God has written it on our hearts---we will see it come to pass. We do this because we allow the Fear to speak to our thinking more than we do the Faith that what God starts He will bring to fruition. We do this because somewhere along the line we started to let doubt creep in and take hold. We permit this because we are human beings in need of their GOD to breathe daily life in to their dreams. We NEED GOD! He is the One who empowers our hearts. He is the One that stokes that fire deep within our bellies that burn so hot for the dreams of our heart to come to pass. He is the One that we are supposed to receive from daily and when we stop allowing Him to serve in this role, we quickly start looking at our reality more than we do our God and Fear quickly devours the dream. Allowing God to be God of your dreams. In other words, Trust God to such an extent that you stop questioning your role in your dreams, and instead---just prepare for the GOODNESS that is coming your way. Apply Joy, excitement, thrill, anticipation, gratitude—instead of Fear. May God be the blessing of your evening. Daniella.

If someone has treated you in a manner that brought darkest of hurt into your life…if someone made you feel that you weren’t worth it….if the PAIN of life has driven you to an addiction….if right now you sit here reading this feeling hollow inside…please know that you ARE loved by Jesus and you are worth it! There is no hole too deep within our lives that Jesus can’t help you from. No matter where you are tonight in your life, you can open up to Jesus. You don’t need to put formality in to this---just talk to Him. He is the lifter of our heads, and His love is unlike any you’ve ever experienced. Daniella

This is a short blog this evening. But, something has been on my mind today. I have been thinking of validity of our fear towards the Lord Jesus being involved in all areas of our lives. So many of us surrender to Jesus the easy things of life, but guard, with great protection, those areas of life where we’ve been caused the most pain. Convinced that Jesus couldn’t possibly understand just how HURT we truly are, we keep the Lord at arm’s length treating Him as if we feel that the same cruel uncaring heart of the people that we’ve encountered could possibly be housed within our Lord. I’ve been guilty of this action in my own life. The hurt of my child/teen life so evidently alive within my heart… I was sure that I could never truly trust the Lord with those pains. Then I started to read the Bible differently. I saw the Bible as a trusted friend who was unfolding through dialogue the Heart of my Lord and King. Not just an act of healing came out of the Lord, but the act of mercy, love, compassion, tenderness… Not just a man walking to the cross for my sins, but truly a man so determined to never again allow something to separate Him from those He loved, that He would lay His life down as an offering of eternal binding that could never again be broken. I truly started falling in love with Jesus. I became so humbled by the Love that I found within Him. I started to slowly allow the pains of my heart open to the Lord. Of course He had always known what they were, but the act that I was offering was that of involving Him. I asked Him if the same love that He offered to others could be applied to the pain that lived deep within me. Through this act, I have started to feel healing in my life. Are the painful memories still there? Sure…but the pain is not my focus anymore-the Lord’s love is. Blessings--Daniella.

Years ago, my husband and I were on a vacation with my husband’s best friend in the mountain of California. One morning while on a hike, I watched as my husband’s best friend fell to his death right before my eyes. It truly was one of the most devastating moments of my life. The pain was deafening! I felt as if my faith were unraveling around me. I ached for answers from the Lord Jesus. I could not understand why He had chosen to take a life so young. I was angry that He would do something so terribly cruel to those of us that loved him. The details of our friend’s death, I will not linger on. I will just state that they were gruesome. Due to the nature of these details, and all that I saw, I was riddled with nightmares and daily memories haunting my thoughts. My heart seemed as if it could bleed pain. At the memorial service that they had for our friend, I sat with my head in my hands, utterly broken. I just couldn’t believe what we were living through. Minutes before the tragedy, we had been sharing such laughter and plans of new trips we would take. Now, we sat in a service trying to say a “forever goodbye” to our friend. Human reasoning failed to provide any answers to me. Human encouragement offered was nice, but were empty words to my soul. Beautiful on the outside, but once unwrapped, their meaning did nothing to heal my pain. Nothing offered me was going to cause me to “agree” with God that we were better off without our friend. To agree with Him would have been to lie to Him, and I wasn’t going to do that. In order to agree with God, it would require “God sized understanding” and that I didn’t have!!!!!! I only had a broken, desperate, angry, confused human spirit to offer. I still remember coming home from the memorial service falling to the floor and saying, “All I have to offer you is a broken spirit full of confusion, anger towards what you have allowed to happen, and my very frail, unraveled faith. I know you are good, but it doesn’t look like it right now.” An enormous weight was lifted off of me. WHY??? Let me explain. The weight being lifted was this, I began to understand that God wasn’t asking for my agreement, He was asking me to offer Him my brokenness. It was during this event that I realized for the first time that God NEVER expects that we put on a pretense with Him. He wants nothing less than our true emotions, our real fears, our actual worries each of these being offered are music to Him. Not because He wants to see us suffer, but because He knows that a relationship is built on REAL trust and if you cannot trust Him with the reality of your thoughts, your relationship with Him will always be prohibited. It is now some 20 years since the passing of our friend and although I have no human explanation for our loss, I made a commitment on that day of prayer that I would forever be REAL with my Lord. I would no longer feel that I had to “dress my thoughts up for the Lord”. Instead…I come to Him raw every day and wait for Him to fill me. Personal note: human pain such as this event provided in mine and my husband’s life are never going to be explained in this life time. Death is one of the most difficult events we face in life. If you are going through such an event right now in your life, I offer you my deepest respect. May you be blessed even if by one word of this blog. Daniella.

Whether someone else believes in your dream or not really doesn't matter. What matters is if YOU believe in it. Remember it is the Lord Jesus Christ that has written you dreams across your heart. What He authors, He brings to pass. When it seems nothing is moving forward towards your dreams remember that out nothing Jesus Christ created the EARTH. Your reality is not a limit to the Lord Jesus Christ. Stay positive. At the times when we least expect it, the Lord rushes in to turn situations around. May you be blessed this evening. Daniella

I was thinking today about how much we war against doubt in our lives. Such a blanket of emotional discord is sewn within our heart as we swing like a pendulum between faith and doubt. We can awake so full of hope that the dreams we wish for are on fast approach, and before nights end we can be complete defeated as we lay our heads upon the pillow. I know that each of us deal with outside influences. We war with the words of the doubters in our lives daily. We struggle to see beyond the restrictions of our current reality. Each of these and many more are instigators of doubt within our lives, but this evening, I speak more of the battle that each of us are living with our inner dialogue. Have you ever been sitting in front of the T.V., a show be on, and yet be so deep in thought that you have no recollection of the program’s premise? What about the last time that someone was talking to you and yet you were far from “present” in the conversation, so deep in thought that their words drifted by unnoticed? Each one of us listen more to our own assessments, opinions, emotions, determinations….than anyone’s. We have daily access to the love that Jesus Christ holds for us, it’s readily available in the Bible, but the Words are just words in print until you start to allow yourself to believe them for what they are. If each of us spent more of our day believing that Jesus was the One who believes in us, is the author of our dreams, the comforter of the broken heart that we never allow the world to see, compassionate beyond reproach, the best friend who never turns their back, the one who never betrays, and the lifter of our head….we would start to allow a change of heart to spark such a fire within us that when doubt came to war with our faith, we would quickly meet it with such a positive inner dialogue that the doubt would be quickly drowned out. We aren’t supposed to live swinging from one emotion to another. Hebrews 13:8 reassures us that Jesus is the SAME yesterday, today, and FOREVER. This means that the same unbridled passion that burned within the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ the day He died for you, is the same passion in which He views you with today. His love is NEVER any different…it is the love that NEVER fails. No matter how dark your hole in life, no matter how DEEP the pain, no matter how shattered and broken it appears to you….He rushing forward toward you with perfect love, willing to help you. One of the first evidences that He is there helping is that He will lead you to thoughts, people, scriptures…that will start presenting you with the truths of His love. Through this understanding, you will find that your head is being lifted up and you start looking more into the eyes of your Lord, than the difficulties of your present day life. On a personal note: I know the difficulties that you are facing trying to move past the troubles in your life enough to WANT to start listening to anything different. Yet we cannot expect changes to take place if we aren’t willing to start changing something. Don’t feel like you have to change everything at one time. Each strong hold in our mind is broken down over time and a trust that is being built between you and the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows this, understands this, and is willing to work with as the two of you go living in a relationship with one another. Blessings-Daniella

Where does my message find you today? Are you hurting? Do you find life seems to be pressing in more than you feel you can handle? Are there worries in your life that seem insurmountable? Past hurt, do they creep into your everyday thinking seeking to devour any hope you are clawing to? Have you been questioning the dreams you have for your life? Discouragement, has it become synonymous with your self-esteem? Do the painful words that have cut you like a knife try to raise up to cut again? The cycle of doubt, worry, fear, hurts, pains, doubters words…they cause such cavernous emptiness in our lives. And at points, we find ourselves feeling broken. When you find yourself at this juncture in life, desperation can easily start filling your heart. I remember when I reached these cross roads in my life. I still remember falling to the side of my bed and crying out, “How do I heal me? I’m broken. I don’t even know what I need?” Yet it was in that utter desperation that my life took the most powerful turn. I finally saw that there realistically was no way for me to fix myself. Healing my hurt was up to Jesus. I became broken at an early age. Before I even knew what it was like to be “whole” I found out what it was to be broken. I lived in a home of an alcoholic. Although he was a good man, the alcohol spoke louder than his heart. Along with the alcohol came his rage. This rage broke me. I became positive that I was all the reason why his life had come to the state it was in. Many years were lived in this environment. Although I refused to become anything less than a happy person, I lived with an enormous underlying pain within me. I think many of us live as I have, hurting immensely, and yet not willing to trust Jesus enough to start fixing the pain within us. Why would we do such an action? I truly believe it is due to the fact that at some juncture of life, we were taught very misleading information about the love of Jesus Christ. Somewhere along the line, someone discouraged you from being “real” with Jesus (stripped of all formality, raw in your emotion, and truthful of just how much life had hurt you) type of “real”.) I’ve been in love with Jesus Christ since my earliest years, but I kept not letting Jesus Christ be in love with me. I trusted Jesus with almost all of my life, but when it came to the true pains of my life, I decided that the only one that I could trust with that pain-was me! But I hit a brick wall, after many years of trying to hold all the pains of life within me, I came to my point of desperation. I fell to my knees, as I spoke of above, and cried out, “How do I heal me? I’m broken. I don’t even know what I need?” That breaking point that I reached was VITAL to my walk with Jesus. You see, out of that breaking point, I came face to face with one of the most life altering understandings I have ever experienced. I saw, for the first time of my life, that I could no longer trust myself with my pain. I came to a true understanding that I honestly could not heal my own pain. Through seeing this, it concreted my understanding that I WANTED Jesus to be the Lord of All things in my life, not just the areas I thought I could trust Him with, but EVERYTHING. What does this mean? It means that I stopped trying to shut Jesus out of my life due to the fear that He just wouldn’t truly understand how deeply HURT I really was. I slowly started to see that He would be gentler with me than I ever would have been with myself. Where I would spend hours in condemnation of myself, He never once rubbed my nose in my failures. I started to trust that Jesus not only cared about my pain, He was committed to being the healing that I was seeking. I am a work in progress, but I have full trust that Jesus will continue to be gentle and loving as He and I walk this life together. With each step of life, I am learning more and more of the utter love that Jesus truly is for us. On a personal note: When I write to you in these blogs, I share my life’s lessons. I hate to see people hurting. I was hurting for so many years and I felt captive within the pain. I don’t want this for anyone else in life. I am no more than what the Lord Jesus Christ makes me, but in Him…I can offer encouragement to you, and I couldn't be more thankful of this. I praise you, Jesus. You are my love, my friend, my life, my Savior. Blessings be with you this evening. Pastor Daniella. If you are interested in following my Twitter page: https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella

For tonight's blog, I am sharing one of my past articles that several people have mentioned enjoying. A Life Walked Out, Step by Step Picture Remember being a kid and reaching up with arms out stretched in that universal signal children give of "Pick me up"? You, the kid, were so tired of using your own will to walk around, and instead you wanted someone else to do it for you. Laziness, not really, just a realization that someone else was there that could, in fact, make life easier. When you become a follower of Jesus, you feel the same sort of "relief" is being offered to you again in your life. Yet, we don't always get carried everywhere, do we? What do I mean? Think over the past four years of your life. Make a mental note of the events that have taken place in those years. You might have just listed some very powerful miraculous events, but more than likely, you also listed several moments that didn't feel so miracle filled. Let's leave that mental list on hold for a minute. Instead, follow me in a thought... In life, an incorrect perspective can form. This incorrect perspective can cause a follower of Jesus to feel that Christ is not rendering help unless He is carrying you out of a situation. Remember above I asked you to make a mental note of the events that have taken place in the last four years? Many of those events that you noted weren't situations where you were carried out of the trouble, were they? This didn't mean that Jesus wasn't there for you. Those times you weren't carried were actually times where a deepening of your trust was forming in your relationship with Jesus. The Bible teaches us that we can only please Jesus through faith. Faith is a very difficult idea to maintain in life, isn't it? We fade in and out of this idea many times over the course of our walk with Jesus, but there has to become an underlying base of faith. A foundation that starts to form. The foundation becomes a faith not based on whether Jesus is there for you in a miraculous manner, but rather a firm understanding that Jesus is there for you all the time, no matter what the natural looks like. This faith forms when we start exercising out trust towards Jesus. Times in life when we are not being carried out of a situation serve to further a more personal relationship with Jesus. Remember those times when you were young, when you did ask to be picked up by a parent, and they told you instead that you were going to have to walk. At first, you didn't take it so well. You might have even thrown a bit of a fit at the idea, but as fatigued and frustrated as you were, you still made it. Don't we feel a bit the same way when we realize that the trial we are facing is not going to be one that Jesus will be carrying us out of? What one of us wants to hear that we are going to have to walk out a difficult situation step by step? Yet, if we yield our spirit to humbly learn from Jesus moment by moment, we will find that an inner strength is birthed. This strength is fortified by the relationship that you and Jesus are building as you together walk out, step by step, of the trial you are facing. A new relationship between you and Jesus is taking new form. In place of wavered faith, a new foundation is forming where a vital trust for Jesus is coming to the forefront of your life. This strengthening helps us to understand the very personal relationship Jesus wants from us. Which one of us really wants a God that only shows up for the miracles, and then walks away? I know I don't. I love miracles, but I will not allow life's precious moments of tender help from Jesus pass me by. Pastor Daniella

We often look at the troubles that we are facing in our lives and start wondering WHY the Lord Jesus would allow such troubles in our lives. I remember when I first became a parent, I held my daughter in my arms and vowed I would be all the protection and support I could be for her for the rest of my life. When she first started learning to walk, we would walk hand in hand as her small legs would struggle to build the strength on which to eventually support herself. I still remember the day that she let go of my hand and walked out in front of me, of her own volition. My eyes wide with surprise, joy, and fear. No longer would she need my hand as her guide. No longer would her steps be limited to the path in which I walked. She was on her own. As time passed, her feeble steps would cause her to stumble. With each stumble, I would comfort her, encourage her and give her the support that she needed. Yet I knew that the process of learning to walk often involved these little stumbles. Our relationship is similar to this picture that I have just painted you. Jesus sees our life in the larger picture. We think we do, but honestly…due to our being human we are still limited in our view point of life. Jesus sees the trails that are taking place in our lives as the building blocks that each of us need in order to become all the HE knows we are made of. We look at these trials as insurmountable, He sees them as a part of the process. Had I rushed to my daughter, during the time that she was learning to walk, grabbed her and refused to let her learn to walk out of fear that she might trip…I would have kept her from all she’s gone on to do. One of her favorite experiences has been Irish river dancing. If I had refused her the learning experience, she would never have participated in this exciting event in her life. Jesus sees much this life the same way. I have suffered many difficult events in my life, honestly…they have been so hard. But, due to these events in my life, Jesus has allowed me to share encouragement with many. Jesus knew that these trails that I suffered were not going to be the undoing of me, instead He knew they were going to be what built me in to who I am today. He knows the same of you. What you are facing today are the building blocks for your tomorrow. Jesus knows that He cannot deprive us of all learning experiences because we won’t be correctly ready for what His plans are for our future. The Bible speaks of a Peace that passes all understanding. (Phil. 4:7) Many times in life, I have had to lean on this scripture in order to maintain a trust that although there seems no reasoning to the trials in my life, they all further me towards Jesus’ dreams for me in life. A personal note… Jesus knows the powerful struggle that wars within you to mistrust Him during the troubled times in your life. Please know He loves you even in the middle of this struggle. His love for you never waivers or fails you. If your faith fails you at points, remember His is the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow. He will not turn from you, even if all the trust you can muster is what you are borrowing from Him, He sees this, honors it, and loves you. Blessings on your evening. Pastor Daniella. https:/Twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Where you find your knees buckle with fear. When you find your faith failing, remember we are loved by the Almighty Lord Jesus Christ. He is here for comfort, strengthening, and a borrowing of the immense strength that He can be to your life. Where you can’t, He can. When you strive to for understanding that will justify the frustration, He offers Peace in the interim. When you find that reasoning fails, He knows how to guide you in a trust that will begin to birth within you a strength far beyond what you feel you could ever muster. We are loved by Jesus. This is not a statement, it is life blood to our broken souls. May that Lord’s peace be your abundant guide this evening as you seek to reach out to Him. Pastor Daniella. If you are interested in following me on Twitter https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Daily we battle to keep our minds set in the positive and not the negative. Daily the frustrations mound around us that quickly seek to devour our belief that we are little more than the reality that we are surrounded with currently….and yet we are so much more. Each of us have dreams that are set aflame with in our bellies. Every one of us needs to protect these dreams with the same fervor you would your front door…granting entry only the closest and trusted of friends. We cannot allow ourselves to become consumed by frustrations that quickly come to feed upon our dreams. Frustrations are a part of accomplishment, they are not meant to be the undoing that destroys us. The dreams that are housed within you are ones that the Almighty Lord God has placed within you. Where others would seek to place doubt within you, He wants to build you up. Where still others would place within you fear, He places in you a fervent desire to see your dream through to the end. We cannot allow the whispers of the negative doubters in our lives, become the voices that we listen to above the Lord’s help. It is He, and He alone that is to be the guide that we seek in life. Please, the next time your heart is tempted to give up on your dreams….place within you this question….who is the one telling you to give up? Is it you or God? Most likely…it is you. He means to see your dreams through to the end, but He needs you to believe in Him to bring them to pass. Pastor Daniella.

What holds you back from coming to the Lord? Do you feel he isn’t interested in what you would have to offer? Do you worry that He is someone who will fail you, more than someone who will uphold you? Is your pain speaking louder than anything else in your life? Whatever be the reason, I only want to encourage you that He is patient to work with you. One of the more important understandings that we should come to in life is to accept that Jesus is unlike anyone you’ve ever experienced. Where others would fail to reach out to help you, He ran forward to die for you. Where others would fail to love you, He assures you that there is nothing that can ever sever you from His love. Where others would practice little mercy, He not only practices it, but replaces it with new mercy for you daily. Too many, the Lord Jesus Christ’s name has been no more than a written text in a Bible, left long ago. Many know nothing of a relationship with Him that is current, daily and purposely thriving. The Lord Jesus is so much more than a name in the Bible. He’s the author of love, laughter, joy, comfort, kindness, patience, tenderness, mercy…everything that you wish the multitudes were for one another, He is for us. He seeks a relationship of daily support with you. Daily involvement in your life, not out of wish to control you, but more rather out of desire to love you, to share with you, to strengthen you….to comfort you. Jesus is kind, patient, gentle and willing to give you the time that you need to continue to learn about Him. He wants you to open up to Him, but He knows that it takes time for these actions to unfold from a matter of the mind to a matter of the heart. His love is powerful enough to cover you, while you are on your journey. Pastor Daniella.

Have you ever had a situation in your life take place where, in the natural, someone had every right to be completely upset with you, and yet the refrained for this very action? When this takes place in your life, often…you are struck speechless. Questions soon start to follow their refrain from reacting…bewilderment to why the application of grace is difficult for us to understand. Often, we have been subject to quite the different reaction, haven’t we? In fact, more than not, we find ourselves in the company of the overreaction to our failures. It is here, in the overreactions, that we start to condition our thinking to how Jesus must feel about us. We, at points in our lives, decide that our action is so grievous that even the Lord’s love won’t be able to practice patience upon us so…in turn, we start to harden ourselves against Him. So utterly convinced that He couldn’t love us through a painful situation, that we convinced ourselves that we are left alone to solve our own troubles. Jesus is not the interpretation we have of a hardened Lord. Instead, He is the author of patience, grace, and mercy. He wants a relationship with you. If you have apprehension to a relationship with Jesus due to the fact that you feel He wouldn’t want you, then please understand this is just not the case. He loves you. He will rush to meet even the smallest glimmer of belief that you are willing to offer Him. You are wanted! He does love you and He isn’t just being kind to you in order to suck you further in for the lowering of the boom. This is the way of those who seek to harm, not the way of the Lord. I pray you are blessed by this evening. I know how hard it is to let go of the notion that Jesus wants that relationship with you more than anything. You are not a surprise to Jesus. He seeks all, knows all and LOVES you in full knowledge of it all. Pastor Daniella https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella or my website: MyAlabasterBox.org

The Lord Jesus Christ knows that it takes time for us to grow into a trusting relationship with Him. Jesus Christ is a very patient God. He will take the time to walk in this relationship with you committed and faithful to your needs. Jesus knows the past pains that are written on your heart. None of what you are surprises Jesus. He understands why mistrusts have developed in your thinking. He knows why the idea of love has become tainted for you. Please, I think too many times in life, we are made to feel that if we don’t just instantaneously trust Jesus the minute we hear of Him, that we are lesser followers of Christ. This is not the case! We are in an ever evolving relationship with Jesus. Time builds relationships. As we continue on our journey with the Lord, the history of our timeline with him starts to fortify how we truly see Him. Where others told you to give up, Jesus encouraged you to press on. When others failed you, Jesus upheld you. When the false foundations that your life was built on started to crumble, Jesus rushed to meet you and remind you that it is He that you can build your life upon. Each of these scenarios are ways in which we can see that it is our journey with the Lord that begins to feed our trust for Him. What we can do in the interim? Trust that He is all that He says that He is and then allow yourself to be open to the relationship that He is greatly desiring to have with you. I know that many of you are hurting in your lives. So many of us are facing confusing and troubling issues. Yet we cannot allow ourselves to keep the Lord at arm’s length. We were designed to live in a relationship of being constantly fed by the Lord’s love. When we don’t allow trust to develop between ourselves and the Lord, we are neglecting the very One who has been sent to help us. To trust is difficult for many of us, but Jesus has already given His life in order that you would never worry that He wasn't committed to you. God’s blessings for your evening. Pastor Daniella https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella

I pray that this year we are able to progress in our ability to see the good in people long before we focus on the bad. I pray that the Love that Christ is providing for us daily is something that we allow ourselves to find shelter in. I pray that as His Love becomes more of a focus for us, that we start to find ourselves able to allow more healing of our heart’s aches. Although many of the pains we have endured cannot be fixed, they can have the Lord’s comfort placed over them and in turn a Peace is allowed to be birthed within us. I pray that we find joy where is seems frustration is all that is on the horizon. I pray that we remember that dreams come about due to the Glory of the Lord, not the validation of others. I pray these things because the Lord Jesus Christ has made it possible for us to come to Him every day/hour/minute of our lives. We love you, Lord. Amen. Pastor Daniella If you would like to follow me Twitter https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella Blessings on your evening.

Protect your dreams in the same way you would your front door...let only trusted people in. A small thought for the moment. Pastor Daniella.