He was hungry!

I nearly always close my garage door when I leave, but Saturday night as my Houston guests and I were headed into The Apple Shed for my monthly date to entertain the diners, I drove off and left it open.   At 8:30 we arrived home, I pulled my Honda pickup into the garage, ...and Omigosh! The garage refrigerator was on its face, freezer door flat against the floor,  plastic frozen food containers split open, smashed, chewed and scattered.  What a mess! Not one forkful of my beautiful peanut butter pie was anywhere to be found.  Somewhere in our Valley there is a brown bear lumbering around with whipped cream all over his face.  Pussn'Boots, their eyes glazed over and their furry ears at full tilt were inside and heard it all.  The refrigerator is back in its upright position and actually none the worse for the trauma it experienced.   Shutting my garage door has moved to the top of my to do list.

I love my Texas friends. We had a fabulous time.   The Thursday girls each spoke to Carole Lewis,  recently retired Founder of FirstPlace4Health and her daughter Lisa who continues with that life-changing ministry,  telling them what grace has come to mean to them.  All have been freed from Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, and other bondages.  It was a high octane afternoon.  On Friday Michele took us to her favorite thrift shops in Tehachapi and Lancaster. The most expensive purchase was a classy London Fog rain coat in perfect condition for six dollars.  The costs of everything else we bought hovered around $2.99.  I may be hooked!  That night Lisa cooked a delicious dinner for us at Michele's house and some of the Thursday girls came to make it a party!  On Saturday by 7 A.M. a stream of visitors began to come to be with Carole and Lisa.  We left for The Apple Shed at 4 P. M. then capped off our day with a visit from a Hungry Bear.  I try to send away each guest with something they will never forget!  Sunday we had dinner on a farm with a precious family, then on home for a visit with a  well-known Christian writer who lives nearby.  Michele came to fetch our Houston friends to take them to LAX and for a couple of days I  wandered around  trying to gear down but it isn't easy after four days of fun. ...bear and all.

For hours each week I sit on the other side of my living room from people who come to me for discipleship.  You may call it "counseling" or "mentoring"  if you like.   If Jesus were not The Discipler/ Counselor/Mentor I wouldn't think of putting my foot in the dark waters that hide what Satan wants to keep hidden. Check out the blog entitled "The Iceberg".  Most couples marry (or don't) without a clue as to what is submerged beneath the waterline.  Ted and I were virgins when we married;  had we not been Satan would have had even more fuel for emotional distancing than he already had.  Without Jesus our personal Titanic could have sunk.  I have yet to meet one person who does not wish they had begun their marriage as virgins. Homosexuals?  Don't even go there with me.  The horrible effects of same sex sex are indescribable. The "tolerant" folk of our country are clueless because the evil one hides the truth beneath the waterline.

Today there doesn't seem to be any guilt, shame and blame about sleeping around before marriage, and for by-passing marriage all together. Don't you believe it!  People,  whether Christians or not do not get away without consequences when breaking God's laws. ...which are not just "suggestions".  Oh, dear ones, I don't know when Jesus is coming back to get us outta here. Nobody does. ...not even Jesus. Yeah Yeah Yeah.  I hear all the prophecies just like you do.  Why would we think we won't suffer famine and worse? Why would we think the visible church will not be forced underground as are millions of Christians in other countries?  Why would we think we will not have our heads chopped off or be burned at the stake if we do not denounce our faith in Christ?  Who do we think we are, anyway? ...God's only chosen people?

Please memorize all the scriptures you possibly can. You may not have a Bible in the future.  Please become dependent only upon the Lord and not upon your church staff or people like me.  I am steadily working myself out of a job as I am supposed to do.  The number of members of a Church does not signify that those members are infiltrating Satan's territory to bring the Lightning Rod Good News of the Gospel into the Black World of Bad News. The impressive budget for missions of a church does not mean that those who give to it are "in the world but not of it",  winning souls for Christ and discipling them themselves.  I just read this morning in Acts 1:9 through 11: "After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 'Men of Galilee,' they said, 'why do you stand here looking into the sky? That same Jesus, who has been taken from you into Heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into Heaven.' "  

Every heart with Christ is a missionary. Every heart without Christ is a mission field.  We can't stand around looking up and march at the same time. 

Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war
With the Cross of Jesus, going on before.

Love, Jo