Happy Saturday morning! I hope everyone has had a good Thanksgiving, and a good Black Friday, okay, if you "celebrate" Black Friday. I am enough of a diva, that I love a good Black Friday and this one was very good. I was very disheartened by the major stores bailing on Black Friday, and the main reason was violence. It is a sign to me that things get worse by the year, which we know is Biblical, but sad. That being said, my years working at Walmart pale in comparison to Andrew's and I have to tell you there were years in our marriage when Black Friday was a little scary to me because we knew what the hottest toy was and we knew the limited amount each Walmart was sent and we knew there were going to be fights. I know of two years that things got out of hand for Andrew, once was with Furbys and once was over a computer, but it still happened and I find it sad. I like the Black Friday experience where strangers stand in line and talk, open doors for each other and compare notes on good deals, that was our Black Friday this year. I didn't have nerve enough to tell my previously mentioned, slightly Scroogey husband that I wanted to leave at 2 am because I wanted to go south of Indy, so I got us a room and told him we were leaving at 4 pm on Thanksgiving, much better, lol. Looking at the haul we brought home, when you take Christmas gifts out of the equation, he made out like a bandit yesterday, lol.
Our Thanksgiving was very nice too, I got to host and my mom, Robert and Abby came down. We had a nice lunch and a nice visit and I just love days like that. Robert made the statement during Grace that it felt good for everything to be normal for a day, and he is so right. 2025 has been a really, really tough year for us. I am glad we are getting ready to move into a new year and praying it is a new start for many new things.
As this Christmas season approaches, God has laid it on my heart to tell you the story of Jesus, from the beginning. If you have been a Christian for a long time, you probably understand this, if you are a newer Christian, maybe not, and I get the chance to show you Christ in the entirety of the Bible, and if you don't know Christ as your Savior and my Bible Study in anyway is just educating you for now, I will be showing you through several things in the Bible why my hope is in Jesus Christ and what that means to me.
We will get back to James after Christmas, but for today, I want to start with looking at Genesis.
Let's look at Genesis 1:1-3
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
Highlight= "Let there be light", Explain= Have your ever really realized that this was NOT God creating the sun? God created the sun on the 4th day. This light that God created on the first day was not just physical light, it was a spiritual light. If we look at John 1:1-3 (there are no such thing as coincidence Genesis 1:1-3, John 1:1-3), it says, "In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made through Him, and apart from Him nothing was made that has come into being." I also want to look at John 8:12 where Jesus says, "I am the light of the world. The one who follows Me will no longer walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Christ has always been part of God, we know God is three parts, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but we always seem to think of Christ coming into being at his earthly Birth, not so. He has always been and has always will be. This is such a hard concept for many but I believe the best illustration I have ever seen of this is an apple. An apple has three distinct parts, the seed, the flesh and the skin. Together, these three parts make up the apple, but if you take them apart and set them side by side, they are still an apple. Our triune God is the same way. Apply= There is a lot of debate on why we have the old testament. Some don't study it because they feel like it is JUST history, some study it BECAUSE it is history. I study it because God ordained the Bible to be presented in the state it is in so He was handing it to us as instruction. And the very first thing we need to see is long before Jesus came to earth as a man, He was in Heaven with God, making every step of the way happen. When you read the Old Testament knowing this, it changes things, Everything in the Old Testament points to the cross. Because we have an all knowing God, He knew before Adam and Eve sinned that they were going to. He knew the serpent was going to tempt Eve and He knew Christ was going to come to earth to save everyone who believed. Respond= Lord, help me remember Everything You do, You do for us. From the time You created Spiritual Light to this day, you have us, You are in control and You will take care of us.
I am going to share bonus content today. I have never seen the Devil try to work in my life harder than he is right now and it has made me very aware of his presence. Everyone knows the last 3 1/2 years has been a major struggle with our family and Robert's alcoholism as well as my eating addiction. Many don't know all the gory details, but it has been a lot. Robert got shook to the core the end of September. Ironically, it wasn't because he was drinking but it was most certainly an aftereffect and it has made him learn to lean on God harder than ever. With that has came a new found voice, testifying what God has done. I am watching this with awe and wonder, literally. Many of you have been reading his posts which are little sermons. He is doing a great job. Why am I in awe and wonder? Robert is dyslexic. He was diagnosed in the 5th grade. Reading was a challenge for him growing up and writing was something he used to avoid like the plague, and yet, he is finding now that one of his best defenses against the devil's urges is telling others what Christ is doing in his life daily, and he is a good writer, which is also very much a God thing. Robert and I start every morning doing two things, we read the devotional in Our Daily Bread and then he calls me and we pray together. I used to pray that God would take all of this stuff away and keep Robert sober, a few weeks ago, I realized, I needed to be praying that God would replace Robert's urge to drink. We watched so many of the apostles have less than perfect lives and I finally understand why Paul never told WHAT his thorn in the flesh was. It doesn't matter what it was, it was a problem that Paul needed strength in God to handle. I have heard people theorize many different things, but it was God's ultimate plan that it not be named because we all (or many of us anyway) can find an area of our lives that are our own thorn in the flesh. If Paul's had been named one certain thing, it would have been less relatable to our own thorn. Mine is overeating and eating junk my body doesn't need, Robert's is alcohol. I have seen a change in Robert since September and he is more outwardly speaking Jesus than ever, so the Devil is mad. The Devil gets upset when you accept Christ, don't get me wrong, he just lost a soul to eternal Hell, but he gets a whole new kind of mad when a Christian decides to really turn others to Christ and we are seeing it. I will wholeheartedly admit through everything we have been through, it has been hard to trust Robert and he knows I can tell almost instantly when he has been drinking and he would still deny it and actually be able to con me into believing him but it came to a point where I just knew and that was it. Right now, I know he is not drinking but the past two nights, I have dreamed I caught him with a bottle. This is truly the Devil trying to put thoughts in my head.
We look in awe as we see God work but we don't really pay attention all that often to the little things the Devil does everyday to bring us down. It is bad enough to lose one soul to God but when he sees the potential of that one soul making him lose many more, he goes into overdrive. I never really realized that until this morning. I know we all know evil is present when there are mass murders, and school shootings and innocent little girls abused and then killed but I am afraid, just like God can be in the little things, so can the Devil and we have to stop him in his tracks before it turns into big things.
Sorry not sorry for the long post this morning, it all needed said. I needed to call the Devil out on this and let him know I know what he is trying to do. If he can't get to Robert through Robert himself, he is going to try to get to Robert through me and it isn't going to happen. God has got both of us and we will both work harder to be bolder in this fight.
Hope you all have a wonderful start to the Christmas season.
💓 Mindy
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