Council Fire

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise.” Psalm 51:17 (NKJV) Whether you were saved at age 12, or accepted Christ as your Savior as an adult, you may have sinned many times since then. Your sins may be so terrible that they lead you to despair and cause you to believe that there is no way God will ever forgive you. You may wonder...

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4:6 (NIV) Did you ever wake up at night and couldn’t go back to sleep? You tossed and turned, but sleep wouldn’t come. Sometimes when that happens, I realize that I can make good use of that time, so I start to pray. Usually, the first ones that come to m...

“For you were formerly darkness, but now you are a light in the Lord; walk as children of light.” Ephesians 5:7 (NASB) Just because I am a born-again Christian does not mean I don’t have struggles. One that I remember clearly was when a young teenage boy had beaten up one of our sons in school with a hard object. He hurt him pretty bad. As a mother this was hard to take, but God gave me grace to f...

“If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:6,7 (NASB) As a young Christian, I attended a seminar given by Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ. I learned about a pr...

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1 (NIV) Just before we left on a tour to Alaska, I bought some cheap bass guitar strings. Figuring that they’d do for the trip, I saved a few bucks and wound them onto my Fender Precision. We were only three days in when the first one broke! I didn’t thin...

“You have turned my mourning into dancing.” Psalm 30:11 (KJV) We all want to go to Heaven. But not yet ... not now. Last year I had a minor heart attack. I went to a doctor and I asked him, “Am I going to die?” He laughed and said, “We’re all going to die!” That wasn’t the answer I wanted or expected, and I resented his laughter. Okay, it’s true that everyone dies, and everything dies, but we all...

“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.” 1 Peter 5:7 (NLT) God blessed me with the opportunity to attend Briercrest Bible College, which I am very thankful for. During my time at Briercrest, I was part of the College Singers and loved every minute of it. Each Christmas, Briercrest put on a huge production and had multiple presentations, which we started practicing for week...

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And God said, ‘Let there be light: and there was light.’” Genesis 1:1-3 (KJV) I am not sure how much I can grasp the power of God’s Word as in the above Scripture. With one word Almighty God created the heaven and earth to existence. With one word, there was light. Let that sink in a bit. We serve a powerful and amazing God! Throughout the Bi...

“Canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?” Job 38:32b (KJV) I felt like I had missed something. I needed to go back to the library and find the astronomy book again. I had researched the star groupings of Pleiades and Orion that God had pointed out to Job (in Job 38:31), but I had no idea what I had missed. I thumbed through pages, searching chapter headings. Then I saw it: Arcturus. We can find A...

“Children are a gift from the Lord, they are a reward from him.” Psalm 127:3 (NLT) As a child, I remember going for a ride with my parents and siblings one day after sundown. My dad was trying to convince my mom to send us to residential school, since our family was growing so fast, and he wanted to save mom from having too much work. I remember Mom saying, “No, I will never send my kids there. Th...

“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” John 14:6 (NIV) Cain was the first one who tried it. Multitudes have emulated him over the years, and it’s become a popular theme in today’s post- Christian North American spiritual quagmire. Simply put, it is the concept that a person can come to God via some other way/bridge/ road/belief or...

“So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” 2 Kings 5:14 (ESV) Yesterday I mentioned how the Word of God, prayer, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit empower us with spiritual endurance and strength to hang on with all steadfastness. Faithfully maintaining our...

“So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God.” 2 Kings 5:14a (ESV) As a follower of Christ, I have found that life can be difficult and unexpected events can challenge our resolve in our pilgrimage. The unexpected storm of grief, death, pain, trauma, or abandonment in life can lead to a long, difficult, dry and discouraging wilderness seaso...

“Choose you this day whom ye will serve . . .” Joshua 24:15a (KJV) This scripture was forever ingrained in my mind as a young child. Growing up in our home a plaque hung on our living room wall with the above Bible scripture. “Choose ye this day whom you will serve,” it said. I was blessed with Christian parents who modeled the verse for us. Our late mother was the first to accept the Lord in her...

“A friend loveth at all times.” Proverbs 17:17a (KJV) I ate a bug . . . not just any bug, I ate a roach. My friend, Francis, was sweet and painfully shy. She worked as a bank teller 20 years and she lived with her parents until she was in her forties. At last Francis got the courage to leave home and get her own apartment. Francis decided to have her first party in her new apartment and invited he...

“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” . . . “But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rej...

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3 (NKJV) In 2017 God was calling me to leave my husband, family, and home for three weeks to do security work nine hours away. Also, it was time to do some personal work on myself with God. I called it a “paid retreat”—where I learned to trust God and listen to His loving voice. In the past I experienced mental, emotional, physical,...

“For the Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Luke 19:10 (NASB) I never thought my life was worth much while growing up in the community where I lived. It seemed that I was the only one who would never amount to anything. Those days were lonely and frustrating, as many of the other kids would make fun of me. “Why are they doing it?” I wondered. To this day, I don’t know wh...

“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15 (NKJV) “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear—I fear greatly—the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, even more loudly,...

“My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NLT) The apostle Paul was given a “thorn in the flesh.” Some scholars believe it had to do with his eyesight. Whatever the case, Paul prayed that God would take it away. However, God did not take it away. Why? God had allow...

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Genesis 8:22 (NIV) It was early September and as the first green tree morphed to yellow, the thought came to me, “Here we go again. Pretty soon the snow’ll be flying!” In Cree we’d say, “Kiiyipa wii mispoon.” No matter how you say it, there’s no getting around the changing season...

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8 (NIV) The Bible says that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. How can you know Him? By getting into His Word. It talks about Him forgiving our sins as far as the east is from the west. They are gone forever! We sin because of our human nature. I’m not saying it’s okay, but when we sin we need to go quickly to the Lo...

“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf.” Hebrews 6:19-20 (NIV) The human soul . . . my soul, your soul . . . is most precious to God Almighty in all His creation. He created the human soul in His likeness and image to live forever and ever, eternally! Jesus said, “What g...

“And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of his disciples? He denied it, and said, I am not.” John 18:25 (KJV) “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9 (KJV) Peter had just done the unthinkable! He had denied Jesus and, with a lot of swear words, insisted tha...

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart; but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” Proverbs 19:21 (NIV) In the past few years, much has been said regarding reconciliation between residential school survivors and the government. I held all that rhetoric at arm’s length until last year. Two incidents opened up feelings that were hidden away under years of denial and suspicion. The first incident...