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CARRYING THE CROSS Christian Blog Site
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CARRYING THE CROSS Christian Blog Site
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Welcome to CARRYING THE CROSS Christian Blog Site
Help us deliver God’s Word across the country and into homes, highways and byways, shut-ins and divers places, as well as jails and prisons across the country. We need your support. DONATIONS ARE WELCOME AND OUR ONLY SOURCE OF INCOME.
We sincerely appreciate the blessing and hope that you or your loved ones will enjoy our Christian newspaper. It is small and a labor of love at the moment but by God’s Grace and His love, it will continue to grow and be put in the hands of people who want to receive God’s Word and love Him.
As editor and publisher of CARRYING THE CROSS Christian Blog Site, I want to invite Christian writers to submit Christian articles, devotionals, poetry, photos, church news and briefs, and recipes from anywhere in the USA. We cannot pay writers for their submissions at this time but we will offer a byline and a place to be published regularly.
Be sure to check out our special “kiddie korner”. We publish Christian children’s stories, games, art work and from time to time we will offer color pages for the little ones.
Being a Christian has been and always will be the most wonderful experience of my life, and I want to share that with families and friends everywhere. Serving God has been the greatest blessing in my life and I’d love to share that with you every month.
Let’s pick up His Cross and carry it to the highways, the byways, diver’s places and to all who wish to receive His Word.
Blessings in Jesus Name,
Marcella Meeks, Editor/Publisher
My testimony for today…
For the past four weeks, maybe longer, I was having severe swelling in my feet and legs as well as my hands and wrists. The pain was really bad. But the severe pain in the muscles in both my arms from my wrists to my shoulder blades was worse than anything I ever experieced. My primary care doctor kept telling me that my thyroid was out of whack and caused most of the muscle pain.
The thyroid meds and fluid pill together was working against me but I’d just have to deal with it until my thyroid level got to normal. I prayed for days on end for the pain to stop. I couldn’t get up or down without help and it was becoming unbearable. Finally this week the pain started subsiding and I started feeling better.
I want to thank God everyday for easing my pain and making me whole again. Thank you Jesus for my healing.
If you have arthritis you’ll understand the pain I was experiencing in my wrists, hands, joints and knees, along with the swelling.
Thank the Lord it is getting better.
Ninety percent of the swelling is gone as well as the pain. The Lord is good and I owe Him so much. Thank you, Jesus for healing me again. In your name I pray, amen.
Update on implant. The implant Dr had to order new parts for my mouth and they’ll start on it Friday Sept 4th. Thank you Jesus. I love you precious Lord. Thank you for this wonderful blessing. Prayers please…
The Lord is My Shepherd…
By Marcella S. Meeks
Psalm 23: 1-6
There are times I feel like God is a million miles away from me, especially when I need Him with me so much. For the past 15 months, I have felt so lost and alone and I can’t seem to get past it. I have been sick for such a long time, and I only want to get better. Even though the cancer is gone, I have other health issues that seem far worse.
I have arthritis in both my wrists and hands, my knees and legs swell and hurt me all the time, and my eyes are giving me fits right now. I recently had cataract surgery on both eyes and now have my prescription glasses but my eyes are still blurry to some extent. My vision is off and it is hard to see correctly.
I have prayed about my situation and I get better for a day or two but then I seem to go back to the place where I just came out of. My health has dwindled over the last several months and it has been hard on me all the way through.
Oh, Lord. Where are you when I need you the most? It seems like you are a million miles away. This journey has been long and I feel so lost. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).
I don’t understand why I have to keep going through these trials but according to your Word, Lord, it says, “…all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28). And I do love you, Lord, with al my9 heart and soul.
What reassures me the most is the scripture, Psalm 23: 6.”Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”
I don’t know how long I will walk through this valley but I am going to hang on to the hem of my Lord and Savior, whether I can feel Him or not. I know He is there and He is going to bring me through this and heal my body yet again. He is my Shepherd and He is watching over me. I may not see or feel Him this moment but He it here. He gave me life. All the trials I have been through are out-weighed by God’s love.
Right now, I feel a little lost and need a touch from the Lord and strength through this time of trouble, but it will come as it always does. In Jesus Name, Amen.
Where do you need to feel God’s shepherding care right now?
The Need to Forgive
By Marcella S. Meeks
936 Words
Ephesians 4:32 & Colossians 3:13 — Believers are called to be kind, tenderhearted, and forgive others just as Christ forgave them.
Matthew 18:21-22 KJV
Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.
When I was a little girl, not more than six or seven, I was sexually abused by an older brother. Not one time, but many times. He started out just touching me and then he raped me every night until he eventually found a girlfriend and moved out.
Mama knew he was doing it but she never stopped him.
I was too young to understand what was happening to me but I knew it was wrong. I didn’t understand why he doing this. I told my mother what he was doing and she spanked me and told me not to ever say anything, so I didn’t.
I grew up living with the shame of what he did to me and what he took from me as a child. I lived with that dirty secret for the entirety of my childhood. The shame and guilt lingered long after he left home.
Several years ago, I was at work and this same brother came after my girls and it was then that I knew I had to bring this nasty little secret to life and stop this pervert. He never got the opportunity to touch my girls, and for that I am forever thankful.
I told others what he had done to me as a child and all at once, he became the victim and lied his way out of it all. The sad part was, he did the same thing to his own children and possibly his granddaughters but nothing was ever done about it. When I talked to his daughters, they said he never touched them but when they were teenagers, they told my daughters what he had done and warned them to stay away from him.
All my adult life, I remembered those horrible nights and the longer I lived with it, the worse the shame and guilt haunted me.
Later on, right before he passed away, my sister called and told me he wanted to apologize to me for what he had done. I accepted his apology but refused to see him or go to his funeral. Some of my family thought I was wrong but I had lived with the shame of what he did to me all those years and I just didn’t think I needed to be around him. Forgiving him was one thing God required me to do and that I did. But that was as far as I could go with it.
I decided not to take it to the authorities before he died. I figured that someday he’d have to pay for his hideous crime. When he was dying, I figured death was his reward for his evil crimes. I did forgive him and to me, that was all that mattered.
I never once heard my mother tell me what he did was wrong. She never discussed it with me all the years after I grew up and she didn’t want to accept the fact that I didn’t want to be around him at all. I avoided social functions that he attended if I knew ahead of time that he would be there.
Later on, I found out from older siblings that mama had been abused by some of her brothers, and her step son-in-laws so that explained a few things to me where mamma was concerned. I forgave her after I found that out. All she had to do was be honest with me and maybe together, we could have figured out how to handle things better.
Mama never liked drama, and she tried to keep peace in our family as much as possible. She was just that kind of person. But her young daughter suffered abuse because she chose to look away and keep trouble from stirring. That was a hard dose to swallow.
I’m just the opposite in a lot of ways. I don’t like trouble either but if you try to hurt my daughters, then you’ll deal with me.
When my daughters were very young, I always told them that if he ever showed up at their grandmothers house while they were there, to stay away from him. And they did.
I had to live with the abuse as a child and the shame and guilt left behind. But when I became a Christian, Jesus removed the shame and guilt from my life and I can handle things much better now.
Thank you Jesus for allowing me to be able to forgive my brother for what he did to me as a child. My sister told me later that he cried for hours for what he had done to me when I was little, and he told her that he wished he could undo his wrong. She said he prayed before he died and asked God to remove that sin from his life. I am thankful that he realized what he had done and was able to ask God to forgive him as well.
Is there anyone in your life that has wronged you in some way and you need to forgive him or her? Ask God to help you find the strength to forgive.
In Jesus Name, Amen.
Rusty Nails
By Marcella Meeks
Matthew 5:42 KJV “Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”
Galatians 6:2 KJV “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
In 1974 when I was just little girl, my daddy got laid off from work and it was several weeks before he found another job. We were broke and we were hungry.
School was out and it was hard on me and my two little sisters. If we were at school, we’d be able to eat lunch everyday. Mama made biscuits and gravy every morning and pinto beans at supper until we ran out. I remember going to bed hungry several times that summer.
My daddy finally found another job but it would be several days before he received a paycheck.
One morning, mama got us girls out of bed and said, “Let’s go around the neighborhood and pick up soda pop bottles and take them to the store and get a refund on the empty bottles. We can get a little food.” Back then, you could get 5 cents per bottle for each empty soda pop bottle. We must have walked around for two hours but we never found any bottles that day.
Mama decided to take a short cut on our way home. We came to an intersection and we were waiting on the light to change. There was an older man sitting on a pile of lumber next to his shop. “Hello,” he called out to us. “Would you like to make a little money today?”
Mama answered, “Yes sir, what do you need us to do?”
“There are rusty nails in all of these boards and I need them pulled out. I have hammers and gloves if you guys want to help me pull these nails out. I’ll pay you a penny for each nail you pull out. I am very tired already and I need to get these nails pulled out soon. I have to attend church this evening and I just don’t have time to get them all out.”
Immediately mama agreed to help. We all started pulling nails and by 1:00, we had pulled out about $13 dollars worth of nails.
When we were done, the man told us to go wash our hands at the water hydrant on the side of the building. He gave each of us a glass of ice water and a bologna sandwich.
Mama thanked the man for letting us work after he paid her and we headed home. We stopped off at the little corner market on our way and mama bought some groceries and bought each of us girls a few pieces of candy each. We had enough food to last us until my daddy got paid.
I never forgot that day that we worked for that man. We didn’t have to go to bed hungry any more.
Through the years, I wandered if that man remembered us. I will never know but I remember mama praying several times that day and thanking God for letting that man help us. I remember her telling my daddy on several occasions what a blessing that man had been. At the time, I didn’t understand what she meant by that.
When I think about that time, I can’t help but think about this scripture. Proverbs 19:17 KJV “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.”
If you see or know that someone might need a little food especially those with small children? Be a blessing to them and offer to buy them a few groceries if they need them, even if it is a small amount. Or cook a casserole and take it to them as a gift. Your small blessing may be returned to you some day. You never know how many times a child may have had to go to bed hungry.
That day we pulled nails many years ago, a glass of water and bologna sandwich would have been payment enough as hungry as we were that day. What a blessing that kind man was to us.
By Marcella S. Meeks
James 4:17 “If anyone knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
1 John 1:8 “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
There is nothing more annoying than when a person researches stores like Walmart and Amazon about their merchandise return policy, and then uses it to their advantage to get extra time use out of products for free. I’ve seen people who order merchandise, use it for thirty or ninety days, return it right before the return policy grace period ends and they get their money back. That way, they can make sure if they like the merchandise or not.
If they decide it’s what they want, after they’ve returned it, and got their money back, they go into the store and buy it or they simply order again and do the same with it.
That is wrong. It is sin, simple as that. James 4:17 says, “If anyone knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” They already did the research and knew ahead of time they were returning it for a full refund after using it for thirty or ninety days. That’s not a good thing, it’s a sin. They already knew what they were doing to begin with.
That is not what the store return policies are set up for, to let someone decide if it was what they want or not. It’s not a ‘try it for free’ policy.
The policy is set up for customers who may not be satisfied with the quality or how it works or doesn’t work. They shouldn’t be allowed to use the merchandise for a month or longer and decide that it wasn’t what they wanted, and then return it.
That costs the business owners money. Packaging, shipping costs, staff payment, right on down the line. Someone has to pay for all that.
The thing is, this person already knows from the offset that he is going to send it back after he uses it for the thirty or ninety days. That is plenty of time to make up his mind if he wants to buy it or not. He gets several months of use out of it for free to make up his mind.
He has done his homework by knowing the return policy and how it works.
The business owner cannot sell it as new after a customer uses it and returns it like this. That is deceitful and wrong. No matter how small it seems, it is wrong. The person who does it knows it’s wrong, too.
People have no right doing this to businesses but they do it everyday. Some people may think this is OKAY and that no one is watching, but God is. He sees it.
Anytime you cheat a business like this, no matter how you try to justify it, it is wrong.
Pay for the merchandise like everyone else if you want it. It’s deceiving when someone already knows he is going to return something before the return policy grace period is up. Don’t be tempted and think that you’re getting by with it because God sees it all before you ever do it.
***
James 1: 13-15 “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
CARRYING THE CROSS 