Category Archives: Other
The Jesus Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!
There is such power in these few words!
Lord Jesus Christ — He is Lord, not I, not anyone else
Son of God — He is the Son of God, He is almighty, He has everything in His hands
Have mercy on me — He is merciful, and when I ask for mercy, He doesn’t hesitate in holding it back
A sinner — That is what I am, that is my human nature, a sinner. This is humbling because it puts me in my place, a sinner, bowing before the almighty and merciful God!
God bless!
Praise
So, today I read the quiet time and it spoke of Christ giving us rest when we are weary. It would have been a perfect opportunity to come to God saying, “Lord, I need you to give me rest!” (not that we need that sort of opportunity to approach God by any means). My point, I guess, is that today, instead of telling God all the things that are bringing me down and burdening my heart, I had a strong urge to praise Him for His perfect work in my life. Instead of griping and complaining about all the things I don’t like about my life, I spent my morning thanking and praising God for all the perfect things in my life. Perspective is a huge thing. It can make or break your day, make or break a relationship, make or break a lot of things. Because I spent my morning praising the Lord for all that I do have going right, I started my day the best way possible! Just a thought!
It Takes Three
What is the fundamental piece of a relationship? Cory’s post today was ON POINT! Check it out!
A Day To Celebrate!
On this day of December 4th, – years ago (I don’t want to be killed now), my mama was born! There are so many things to be said about my mom. Where to begin? Where to begin? Well, I guess I’ll start with her impact on my life. I can never say enough how much she has influenced me — I mean, I’m like an extension of her! I have her wit, that’s for sure! I tell all kinds of corny, cheesey, apparently-not-funny-to-anyone jokes just like my mom does, but somehow when the rest of the world thinks these jokes are lame, the two of us keel over into the other’s arms with laughter no matter how many times we’ve repeated the joke. My mom has this compassion for the people around her that can’t be explained. She takes time to ask about others, to listen to them complain, whine, moan and groan, and when she gives advice, you can tell it’s from her heart. She doesn’t think that most of what she says makes sense or gets through to people, but I for one have heard the Holy Spirit speaking through this woman! She is so strong, so persevering! Even after she got married, had to [WONDERFUL] kids, and worked fulltime, she continued college. It took a decade and a half or so, but that increases my respect for her persistence all the more! Her heart. Ohhhh her heart! No one has a heart like my mom’s. No one has a purer, more beautiful heart than my mom. She loves as a child loves, gives as the widow gave, and hugs with the hugs of life. It literally brings tears to my eyes to think of how much my mom has loved and done for me, how much she has supported me and encouraged me. No words could ever suffice. No words could ever do justice to the amount of love and appreciation I have for this beautiful person. She truly is the person that God set her out to be. She is the perfect helpmate, not just for her husband, but for her children. She is the epitome of a true, Godly woman.
I love you, Mommy Salami! I could never have asked for a better mom. I am so grateful, so thankful for you. Every day I thank God for putting such an amazing role model in my life, such an incredible friend. Who but a friend will stay up (or sleep through 
) to talk about boys, about God, about life with me? Who but a friend cracks jokes and goes out with me? Who but a friend is always waiting to hear about the next page in my life? I love you so very much! God bless you as He blessed me with you! Happy __th Birthday!
Love,
Noonie Magnoonie
Lessons from Make Believe (by Lauren St.Martin)
This post shot straight to my heart! Highly recommended!
“I’m not a hoodlum…”
This post really spoke to me, a) because there are definitely some thimgs in my past that I’m not proud of, and moreso b) I have had close — and actually notsoclose — friends tell me about their pasts that they aren’t proud of. I hear about guilt, shame, feelings of fear that I may not see them the same, or others not seeing them the same. Cory Copeland touches on this topic in the following post.
God bless!
Marina
GUEST SPEAKER — No Eye Has Seen…How Many Hearts Have Loved?
Hey guys! One of my close friends, who wished to remain anonymous, agreed to be a guest speaker (or poster?) on my blog. This is TOTALLY worth reading, and it’s really good at making you think…definitely some Food For Thought! Hope you Enjoy it!
God bless!
Marina
As I’m developing my final project in my drawing class, which is based on the idea of an eternal heavenly paradise from the Christian perspective, I have noticed that the Bible, and only the Bible, contains the best descriptions of the glory of the afterlife. This small paper is written to gather my thoughts of heaven and how one might attain it. Being brought up in the Orthodox Church, salvation does not come by faith alone, but by faith, good works, and church sacraments. However, I do not intend of discussing theological disputes between western and eastern perspectives of salvation. Mainly the reason for this is that it would require many years of research into early church traditions, teachings, and Biblical interpretation. Nevertheless, I do intend on sharing a simple perspective of mine that shows the simplicity of attaining salvation and how one might gain the treasures that are in Heaven. Please don’t misunderstand me when I say attaining salvation is simple, I’m not trying to spread any heresies against my beloved Orthodox Church, but I do believe that sometimes we can complicate things, when in reality the Gospel should be simple. After all, Christ did say enter through the narrow gate (Matthew 7:13), which means that it’s a hard and difficult road. In spite of this, there is one important ingredient that is essential for salvation and heavenly treasures; this, with my limited knowledge, I will try to describe. This is a simple answer from a simple man.
The theme of my project is from a verse from St. Paul, which to me is one of the most beautiful verses in the entire Bible, which is found in 1 Corinthians 2:9; “ Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” One might ask one’s self, how do I see the things which no eye has seen, or hear the things which no ear has heard? Simple, it is stated at the end of the verse, you love God. Love God you say? That’s all? Ha! Surely I do love God! But with all honesty, do we really Love God?
Love, it is the language of the soul, it is the essence of our being. It is the reason why we live. We all have the desire to love and be loved. This is no mere instinct, because we were programmed this way. How many relationships have we had when we said those magic words, “I Love You”! You would be considered a liar if upon hearing this, you didn’t float on cloud nine for weeks on end. You must have been the happiest person living on God’s green Earth. You would call this person nonstop; you would talk to them all night long, and all day despite of the big bill you might receive from your cell phone company. You would want to spend all your time with them, and spend all your energy making them happy. You would listen to their problems and they listen to yours. You would eat, sleep (if your married of course), and weep with this person. You would know them inside out and know exactly how to handle them properly. Yet we claim to know God but really have not known Him. We go to church each Sunday, and He is still a stranger to us. He offers His body and blood with us, and yet we refuse it. He knocks on the door of our hearts to dine with us (Revelation 3:20), and we ignore Him. Worst of all, we say we are busy, please come back again Jesus! Or we tell Him ok and thus we praise Him with our lips but not our hearts (Matthew 15:8). We Say I love You but never mean it. But most disgusting of all, we say I love You with our lips but never with our hearts. What kind of Love is this? This is a one-way relationship, which can never work out. It is not true love, but a love that we all know too well here on Earth. It is worldly love that is bound to fail. We love the materialistic, but not the heavenly. We love the temporal, but not the eternal. We love ourselves, more than we do Him. We are guilty of the same pride and arrogance that made our father Adam fall. And then when someone asks us if we think we are good, we proudly proclaim, “ I think I’m a good person, I don’t steal, I didn’t kill anyone”! My, how humanity can be so blind! In the age of Atheism, Naturalism, and philosophical/ logical reasoning, we are being taught that there are no such things as evil or good, angels or demons, that truth is relative and everything is purely subjective, that there is no objective moral giver. Worst of all we are being taught that our ancestors were monkeys. Well I guess monkey see, monkey do. We rather imitate others who have have attained success on Earth, but not Christ-like people who have attained spiritual glory through Christ. St. Paul said imitate me as I imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). But we rather imitate our favorite rapper, sports star, politician or anything that we see on T.V. We want to have everything for ourselves. We want to further our agenda, more than His kingdom. We want to do our will rather than His will. And we ask ourselves, where is God?! And then we dare to proclaim that there is no God! But only the fools say that in their hearts (Psalm 53:1). But the greatest of these crimes is that all these things come about because we refuse to do the thing that God wanted us to do, which is give Him our hearts. We, who have little faith, give our hearts freely to those who will break it instead of giving it to the One who belongs in our hearts. We claim to be wise, but only in our own eyes, we have failed at understanding because we do not fear the Lord (Proverbs 1:7). Thus we are foolish because we leaned on our own understanding and did not trust God with all of our hearts (Proverbs 3:5). And what kind of deep hearting relationship does not have trust?
Loving God entails giving Him our hearts. Throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments, God reiterates the need to give Him our hearts. He says “you will find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). In addition to our hearts, He wants us to love Him with all our strength, soul, and mind (Mark 12:30). This encompasses all of what we are as human beings. All of these are intertwined to the heart. When was the last time we loved God with all of our hearts? Do we talk about Him all the time to strangers? Do we daydream of Him as Pope Shenouda says? Do we talk to Him, not just in prayers, but also in everything that we do? Do we sing a new song for the Lord? Do we use every ounce of our hearts to make Him happy? Do we thank Him in good and bad times? Or do we just live for ourselves? If we fail to love God with our hearts, then we don’t really love Him at all, but only exercise lip service and routines that we have been taught since childhood.
Christ said “I am the alpha and omega, beginning and end” (Revelation 21:6). But in between, as Father Anthony said, Christ states that He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). So one can come to the conclusion that Christ is the Beginning, and in the middle, He is the way that will eventually lead to the end. He is everything, so if He is everything, then why do we focus on the earthly? Why do we never focus on Him, since all things start with Him, stay with Him, and end with Him? He didn’t hesitate to give us everything, then why should we hesitate to do likewise? He laid down His life for all and came to save us, not to condemn us (John3:16-17) He that told us “ greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” We who are unworthy to be even His slaves, are called His friends (John 15:13.) But in order to be His friends, He commands us to obey Him (John 15:14).
This is how we love God, by obedience, and obedience comes from the heart. Obedience from the heart stirs humility, which is a virtue, besides Love, that is of the utmost importance. Christ used many parables while He was here on earth so that our puny brains could understand how much the Father loves us. He tells us to love one another, to love the poor, the needy, and the widows, to love and give freely to all, love with no conditions, just as He loved us. Yet we somehow don’t seem to grasp this one bit. We love only ourselves, we curse those who curse us. We eyeball the poor and the homeless and tell them to “get a job you freaking bum”! But if our hearts love, that we shall obey and we shall love all with no conditions. Christ said “be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect”. Perfection by ourselves is an impossible task, but it is Christ who perfects us in his image. The more pieces of my heart that I give to Him, the more I am made like Him. Moreover, Christ came and He spoke of the heart, because He knows the secret of the heart (Psalm 44:21) and He searches and examines it (Jeremiah 17:10). Because one must guard his or her heart, because out of it comes evil though, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander (Matthew 15:19). Christ said “if you look at a woman lustfully, you have committed adultery in your heart” (Matthew 5:28). Furthermore Christ states, that “if you hate your brother that you’re a murder” (1 John 3:15). How many of us have hated a certain person and just couldn’t stand them? And even went as far as to wish evil for them. Where is the love? The heart is the key, the key for salvation or the key to destruction.
We all search for love, but unfortunately we search it in the wrong places, we set ourselves up for heartbreaks. We whine and moan about our relationships, yet we fail to realize that the One who can make us whole has been after us since the day we were born. He wants to hold our hands, keep us in His arms, love us unconditionally and wipe away every tear that we have ever shed. The love that we spend lifetimes looking for, that we exhaust all our energies searching for is only found in Christ our God. But oddly, we only seem to want to satisfy our hearts with things of this world and not the heavenly king who can fill our hearts. What is surprising is that we know how unhappy we are, yet we still don’t move our hearts to God. And we who know the bitterness of our own hearts (Proverbs 14:10) and still dare not give it to its Maker, the only One who can give us true love, joy, and peace.
Why must we persist on saying that we love God when we have yet to give Him all of our hearts? Who can truly sell all of their belongings and give it to the poor and follow Christ? Who can stop looking with lust? Or forgive those that have wronged you? Who can say no to drinking, smoking, or sexual habits? Who can say no to parties, guys or girls? Who can forgive their enemies? Or pray for those who persecute us? Who here can love unconditionally as the Lord also loves unconditionally? You may say all of this is impossible, but Christ said with Him all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).
Lastly Christ said to store up treasures in heaven, and that ”where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34). But what is this treasure? This treasure is Christ himself, because in Him, only then we can be fulfilled, and everything else falls immensely short. Yes Christ established the Church and its holy sacramental mysteries, and commanded us to be obedient to our church fathers with love and humility. But if we don’t give God our hearts, then all is in vain! After all to love Christ is to obey Him, and He commanded us to give Him our hearts and to observe His ways (Proverbs 23:26). You see if you truly give God your heart, then there should be nothing that stops you from getting the heavenly treasure. Because if you truly do, then everything else will fall into place and you will walk with Christ the correct walk from now throughout eternity. See the answer was simple after all; The Heart is what is needed for salvation.
I wrote this not in judgmental thought but out of my own convections of my condemnation because I fall short of truly Loving God. Also this is not meant to impress anyone, or show of my preaching skills. I’m only sharing this because I believe we all can help each other out with our struggles.
God Bless
The Villain Inside
Will I ever be good enough? Here’s what Cory Copeland has to say:
God bless,
Marina
The Good Girls
This warmed my heart. Your purity and effort will not go unnoticed. DON’T GIVE UP GIRLS!
