What are you waiting for?

What are you waiting for? In today’s podcast, Beth shares from the story of the man with the infirmity laying by the pool of Bethesda. Jesus passed him by and asked him if he wanted to be made whole.  Do you want to be made whole? What is it that you are really wanting or needing from Jesus?  Join Beth as she shares how Jesus is challenging us that we have been laying down in defeat long enough, and need to get up and walk in our destiny and calling.

Sexual immorality in Christian marriages

This week I’ve been focusing on blogs relating to marriage  problems.  As believers in Christ, we have an enemy, satan, who wants to destroy Christian marriages. He uses many weapons of destruction to accomplish this purpose:  the couple’s own selfishness, severe financial problems, blended family difficulties, in-laws’ interference, and sexual immorality, to name just a few of the major causes. Divorce rates are skyrocketing, even among Christians.  

	11% of the adult population is currently divorced.
	25% of adults have had at least one divorce during their lifetime.
	Divorce rates among conservative Christians were significantly higher than for other faith groups, and much higher than Atheists and Agnostics experience.

 

Sexual immorality ranks among the top ten reasons for marriages splitting apart.  Dr. Shirley Glass, author of Not Just Friends and recognized expert on infidelity after hundreds of clinical cases and two decades of research, found that:

“after reviewing 25 studies – 25% of wives and 44% of husbands have had extramarital intercourse.” Increase that by 15% if you include sexual intimacies and emotional involvements.
Not Just Friends, Shirley P. Glass, Ph.D., 2003, pg 3

 This problem is becoming more prevalent in the church, but few people want to openly discuss it and to find Biblical solutions – or to repent.  Join Apostle J.E. Bowser and a panel of ministers at Blog Talk Radio below as he discusses this topic with bold truth and shares what pastors, leaders, and married couples should do to fight it with God’s help.

Speaking calendar

Here is my new calendar for upcoming speaking events. I am very excited about these opportunities, and do ask for your prayers! 

Please pray for God’s peace, His anointing, and His favor for me with the judges at the Toastmasters Area Speech contest this coming Saturday, October 3. I am giving the same humorous speech that I recently gave for my club contest, Just Be Yourself: The Four Types of Personality.

I will let you know how it goes! 

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.” (Psalm 19:14)

Who have I become? For hurting wives & husbands

My friend, Mindy, is a woman of God, gifted with wisdom, love, and compassion. She and her husband have a great calling on their lives from God.  Mindy and her husband of 14 years are seperated from each right now. They have four beautiful children. 

Mindy says about their troubled marriage , “Basically, we’ve spent most of our married life putting everyone and everything before each other. Not purposely necessarily, just unintentional neglect. I want to break the cycle and move forward with the love of my life on earth. I pray that we will have that opportunity. I know God promises to bless us if we will put Him first. I will not waste any more time being a “double-minded Christian”. I pray my husband will desire that too and will be willing to give our marriage another chance. I pray he will see our future as an adventure in Christ rather than tolerable in ourselves.” 

Below is Mindy’s guest post on marriage, Who have I become?  Please keep her, her husband, and their children in your continual prayers.

“If someone asked you on your wedding day why you loved your husband, how would you have responded?

If someone asked you that question today, would your response be the same? Would you even be able to respond?

What if over the years, your husband stopped being all those things. What if he no longer was so loving, humorous, generous, helpful, supportive, good-looking, affectionate…

Would you still love him?

Logically, the answer would be “no”. If the above qualities you saw in your husband gradually disappeared you’d probably find yourself feeling like your love for him was gone. You’d probably feel like there was nothing else to look forward to so why try. Why stay. Why continue in a marriage where you feel unimportant, unloved, uninvolved, unattractive…? I’m not going to tell you tonight that this is any way to live. I fully understand the gamut of emotions that accompany this life. What I am here to tell you tonight is you don’t have to live this way. And you don’t need a new man to make the difference.

Did you really mean it when you said “I do” to the good times and the bad times? Of course you did at the time because you probably hadn’t really had any bad times yet. You know, we are supposed to love our husbands unconditionally. Unconditionall means NO DEMANDS OR LIMITS. Isn’t this how God loves us? Does he decide at some point were not worth the effort? Absolutely not. He said, “Never will I leave you; Never will I forsake you (Hebrews 13:5). Have you or your husband said, “I have fallen out of love with you” or “I don’t love you like I’m supposed to”? If you have, what you are actually saying is, “I never really loved you unconditionally to begin with”. Our love is generally based on feelings and circumstances. When we marry, the man we say, “I do” to is someone who makes us feel loved and accepted. Obviously he was a good man or you wouldn’t have agreed to spend a lifetime with him.

Here lies the problem. We expect them to spend a lifetime being that man. If you plan to wait around for the husband you married to magically resurface, you’re gonna be waiting a long time. Like forever. When you got married, did you expect for life as you knew it at that moment to never change? Of course not. Maybe you traveled, maybe you started your family right away, maybe you finished school. Anyway, up until the time when you got married, wasn’t everything you were doing in your life making you in to the person you were? Shaping you? Molding you? Changing you? Of course it was. And everything you encountered after marriage has continued to build on that, right?

Now this is where things might get ugly. How many of you have pointed fingers at your husbands today? How many of you have nagged him…accused him…whined about him…disrespected him…ignored him…pushed him away…screamed at him…belittled him….

I want you to ask yourself tonight…

What have I become?
Do I like who I am?
Do I even know what I like?

If your answers to these questions are all positive, praise God. I pray you will never lose sight of who you are. If you answered these questions and you’re not impressed with the image you see, then it’s time to do something about it. It’s time to admit there are three fingers pointing back at you every time you point at him. Does it matter if he deserves what you dish out? NO. Does it matter if you can list a thousand reasons why you do the things you do? NO. Does it matter that you’ve been nagged at, accused, yelled at, disrespected, ignored, pushed away, screamed at, belittled? NO!!

Not fair huh? Was it fair that Jesus was beaten and nailed to the cross…FOR US? Who are you again? Do you need to go back a paragraph and be reminded? I believe the sacrifice He made for you deserves a “thank you”. What better way is there to show your gratitude today than to choose to be crucified too. Mark 8:3437 says, “…If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross (there’s only one reason to take up your cross…to be crucified), and follow me. 35 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. 36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? 37 Is anything worth more than your soul?”

Have you lost sight of who you are? Who you always wanted to be? Well, today is the day to be found. Remember the hymn Amazing Grace…”I once was lost but now I’m found”? Well, the next line is “I was blind but now I see”. If your blinders have been removed and you don’t like what you see, there’s no more time to waste. Don’t live even one more day in bondage to that woman. Romans 12:2 says, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a NEW person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is GOOD AND PLEASING AND PERFECT.” It’s guaranteed if you begin to work on you, allowing God to mold you into His likeness, it will only be a matter of time before you will see a difference in your marriage.

I want to remind you that God must be the foundation of your transformation. Only God holds the love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things” (1 Cor 13:7).

Lord, I pray that each woman reading this message will be submissive to your desire to transform them into godly, virtuous women. I pray they’ll all be willing to make the first sacrifice in order to enter a lifetime of blessings and promise in their marriages. I thank you that you will protect them from the enemy waiting to strike them down and discourage them. They will be victorious in you Lord! Help us to all fight this battle. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

WOW! This couldn’t be more fitting considering this message.Today’s “Love Dare” challenge is to make a list of areas in your life that you may need to be more flexible. Choose to react to tough circumstances with love rather than irritation.

Thank you all so much! Please continue to pray for my protection. I’m a little under the weather and you all know how emotions can run rampant when you don’t feel well. So far so good but please continue to pray.”

Article Copyright 2009 by Mindy Sweat

Women surviving abuse

Each year 5.3 million women are abused and 1,232 women are stalked and killed by an intimate partner. Almost five children die everyday as a result of child abuse.   More than three out of four children are under the age of 4.  These situations break the heart of God. What are solutions that really work for this prevalent problem of domestic abuse?  Do these women and children have any hope? 

Tune in today to The Bill Sapee Show on Blog Talk Radio, where he interviews a panel of women including a doctor, a domestic violence shelter worker, an evangelist, and survivors of abuse, who share about women surviving abusive relationships. I was very honored to be one of the panelists on Bill’s show today, sharing some of my personal testimony about a former abusive marriage and my faith in Christ which helped me to overcome and to heal.

You can listen here with the player below, or at Blog Talk Radio. I’d love to hear your feedback from this show – any comments, questions, or prayer concerns. You can email me personally at elizabethdjones@gmail.com or comment here at this blog.

It is 1 hour and 30 minutes long, so be sure to first get a refreshing, cold drink or a cup of hot coffee or tea, kick off your shoes, and stay awhile.  Your heart will be deeply touched with the painful and courageous stories. You will take away more understanding and compassion for these survivors, and receive hope through their strength and God’s encouraging words of life and truth.

Defeating distractions

Every day we’re bombarded with distractions that cause us to get our eyes off of Jesus.  Today I want to share a word of encouragement with you about defeating distractions by waiting on the Lord, with my newest vlog.  Enjoy!

Wait on the Lord from Beth Jones on Vimeo.

Not Perfect, Just Forgiven

I got today’s blog idea from a friend, who saw a church brochure which had a picture of Barbie and Ken on it and which read, “No Perfect People Allowed.” I thought this was such a great idea!  It spoke to my heart, too, about how often people view church attendance, and even prayer to God.

So many people think they have to be perfect to go to church or to pray – perfect like Barbie and Ken.  And yes, lots of times so many people go to church each Sunday looking so good on the outside, but inside they are just a mess. They don’t feel they can be “real” with others and let down their masks, admitting they are hurting deeply or struggling with a sin.  And yet God is the only place we can go to with our sins!  He’s the only one who can make us clean and who can make us whole.

Psalm 121 says, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills – from whence comes my help.  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

Psalm 51 says, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. And cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight – That You may be found just when You speak and blameless when You judge.”

When we come before God and acknowledge our sins to Him, He is so eager to forgive and restore us to Himself,  just as the father did with the prodigal son in Luke 15:12-31.

Christians are not perfect, just forgiven. We don’t have to be afraid of God and hide from Him. We don’t have to avoid church or prayer.  We don’t have to try to look or be perfect like Barbie and Ken. Jesus already has perfect covered. He was the perfect, spotless Lamb of God, who died over 2,000 years ago for our sins so we could be reconciled to God and live with Him forever in heaven.

God invites us to come to Him with this sign:  Very imperfect people welcome and  greatly loved!

Imperfect but useable by God

Peter is one of my favorite disciples in the Bible. Loud, mouthy, impulsive, Peter and I have a few things in common. He even had the nerve once to tell Jesus that He had things all wrong, and Peter knew better.  God needed to do things HIS way.  (Matthew 16:21-23)

And yet Peter was the only disciple who walked on water. He was the one to whom God revealed Jesus’ true identity. And despite all of his sins and his weaknesses, God still used Peter in a great way for His glory.

If you feel that you can’t be used by God because of your struggles or sins, read the gospel stories about the imperfect Peter.  God wants to use all of us  – imperfect as we are – to further His Kingdom. You can read more about Peter in my article here.

Making the days count

We all have regrets about things we have done in the past. But that was yesterday and it’s gone. Today is a brand new day with God’s new mercies.  Today we can make our lives and days count. Join Beth today in her podcast Making the days count as she shares five ways to make your days count for a more productive, happier, successful life.

Toastmasters speech contest

Today I did my very first Toastmasters contest speech. The assigned speech was a humorous speech. Initially I objected to competing in this type of speech when a fellow Toastmaster encouraged me to do it at the last meeting. I said,  ”But I’m not funny.” (Everyone in the room laughed at that.)   It was explained that for this speech, you did not have to be a stand-up comedian. You just needed to give a 5-7 minute speech which included humor. Well, I usually include humor in speeches, so I thought, “Ok, I can do this!”  

So I prepared as much as I could, and prayed for the best.  Yesterday our daughter Leah, who had been hearing me practice it at home all week, said to reassure me, “Mom, there is nothing whatsoever funny about your speech.”

Nothing like some encouragement from your family, is there? (I got to tell her when I came home that people DID laugh.)

Only one other Toastmaster was competing against me, but it was still nerve-wracking, especially when the judges were making their final decision. They teasingly said they were keeping us in suspense as long as they could.   

The name of my speech was Just be yourself: The Four Types of Personality, based on the book on the four personalities called Personality Plus, by Florence Littauer.

Well, guess what!  I won FIRST place!  Here is a picture of my certificate. I am SOOOO excited!  Thank you, Jesus!   I was so surprised when they announced the winner, but so happy! What was so commendable of the man who competed against me was that after the meeting, he encouraged me about my speech and encouraged me to go ahead and compete in the next level!

The next level contest is the area contest on October 3 in Kansas City.   One winner for the area contest can then advance to the next level contest, which is the division contest on October 31st.  The winner at the division contest will then advance to the district contest, which will be on November 21st in Topeka.

I am very excited about the next contest. Today my heart is just singing over this!

“Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye land; Sing forth the honor of His name; make His praise glorious.”  Psalm 66:1-2

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