Janina B.

2018 is not over just yet, but so far it has been a year full of heartache, challenges, growth, and blessings. The heartache came from the passing of my little brother exactly 1 month ago. It was a surprise and my heart breaks because he is no longer here, but my comfort is in Jesus. I know that he is in heaven happy, smiling, pain free, and worshiping at the feet of Jesus. I still cry and I still miss him, but I know that God is in total control. God knows what He is doing at all times and I am learning to respect His will in this situation. Aside from the pain of losing my brother, God has been growing me up in ways that I am learning to be comfortably uncomfortable with. God can use any situation to position us in Him. Some of those situations involve challenges, but those challenges are meant to evolve us, not destroy us. I am a person who hates conflict, but I have had so much of it as I get closer to reaching the personal goals that I have set for myself. I have had

Sometimes the grace that covers your life is the call that God has placed on it. He has invested too much into you to allow you to die in your sin. We are like a treasure chest to God. Some people may look at us and think that we are worthless, but the value of who God says we are is locked up on the inside of us awaiting the season to be revealed. None of us know who we are until God speaks. We don’t  know our purpose or even why we look the way that we do. God is strategic and protective. He can’t reveal the totality of the plan that he has for your life because you may try to either abort your mission or go on a voyage that He has not called you to go on. The grace of God is that he can turn our mistakes into blessings and He can use our season of disobedience as teachable points to warn others about what not to do. God specializes in fools, the forgotten, and outcasts. He gives His wisdom to those who people deem unworthy to have it and He transforms lives through brokenness. Free

A believer, in the body of Christ, is someone who believes in Jesus and that He exist. They believe that He is the son of God and they believe that He died   for their sins and rose again. A Christian is someone who not only believes that Jesus is the son of God and rose again, but they are a person who is identifying and trying to emulate the life and actions of Jesus daily. It is easy to be a believer, but it is hard to be a Christian. It is hard dying to yourself and humbling yourself to apologize when you are wrong. It is hard to give up the pleasures of the flesh and it is hard to live up to the excellence of Christ. Trust me when I say that I know that is hard, but it is so worth it. “God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12 NLT). I sin daily. I mess up and I don’t want to apologize all the time, I don’t want to forgive all the time, but the goal

There are moments and seasons that are not defined by man or their opinions. In those moments “their” opinions don’t matter, your background does not matter, and your last name does not matter. Those moments are the ones that define your destiny and triumph over your past. Those seasons are the ones that you are born to walk in and nothing can steal them away from you. That moment and that season is specified as being your kairos moment. Your life, your destiny, your ministry, and your purpose are all in your kairos moment. Everything that you are and ever will be, boils down to that moment. Your kairos moment cannot be defined, manipulated, or determined by man because it is a moment that is determined by God alone.   King David was the underdog. He was the youngest and most different when compared to his brothers. Even the prophet Samuel could not identify God’s chosen vessel in the flesh because God had to reveal to him who the next king would be. Being alone and being the under

“But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers” (1 Kings:19;4 KJV). The wilderness is a different place to different people. Some people consider the wilderness to be a dry place full of nothing. Other people may consider the wilderness to be a situation. Whatever you consider your wilderness to be, know that you are not alone. The devil uses the wilderness to isolate you, but God uses the wilderness to teach you, advance you, equip you, and then eventually release you out (or back) into your purpose. God can also use the wilderness to refresh you. Elijah was an awesome man of God. He literally prayed down fire and he went against kings in the name of the Lord. Elijah was bold, but he was also human. On one particular occasion, Elijah went into the wilderness after an encounter he had wi

“The Spirit then compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness” (Mark 1:2 NLT). You have to go through the wilderness so that you can identify with the wilderness that other people are in. There are more people searching for themselves in the wilderness than there are on the mountain top of victory because they have no one that is willing to lead them from of a place of being lost and then found. You don’t go through situations in life to stay there. You go through in order to come out better than you were before. There are instances in which the spirit of God will cause you to go into a dry place, but that place is meant to be used as a teaching point not a living quarters. We cry and complain in dry places. We misunderstand God’s intentions and we ask Him” Why me?” Some of us never get the lesson that God wants to teach us, and we end up making our tent in a place that God never intended for us to call home. You are not the first person to go through a wilderness and you will not

I think that we all know what it’s like to miss an important call, right? We move our schedules around and we keep our phones glued to us; but unfortunately, there are still times when we end up missing that call that means so much to us. How about times when we miss a call that was important, and we were not expecting it? We may recognize the number on the caller id, but the person on the other end has already hung up or they do not answer their phone by time we are able to call them back. To make a long story short, it’s not good to miss an important call. When we do, we become inconvenienced and have to wait for that phone call to come again. We all know what it’s like to miss an important call from a person, but what about the times that we have missed a call from the Lord? We all have so much to do and think about that we miss a special call from Jesus daily. We get so caught up in tradition and prayer times, that we miss the call to be the church at all times. Church is not

There are times when people abandon you so that you can see that God never will. It may sound strange, but people hurt you so that you can be advanced. A bad situation, no matter how traumatic or painful it is, can do things for you that your loved ones never could if you just allow God to navigate you through the process. Pain is a unique opportunity for you to see 2 Corinthians 12:10 manifested in your life. It is one thing to hear about the scriptures, but it is totally different to have those scriptures come to life for your personally. Can you imagine loving God, but still becoming a slave? Joseph, Nehemiah, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego know that feeling all to well. These men loved God, but they had to go through some things to see that God loved them also, despite their situations. In today’s society, we may not be slaves that have to do what the people in the bible had to do, but we are still slaves in some way. God is having to sift through the love of money

Goliath walked out toward David with his shield bearer ahead of him, sneering in contempt at this ruddy-faced boy.   “Am I a dog,” he roared at David, “that you come at me with a stick?” And he cursed David by the names of his gods. “Come over here, and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and wild animals!” Goliath yelled. David replied to the Philistine, “You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies—the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. Today the Lord will conquer you, and I will kill you and cut off your head. And then I will give the dead bodies of your men to the birds and wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel! (1 Samuel 17:41-46 NLT) We all know how the story of David and Goliath ends. We know that David killed Goliath with a smooth rock and a slingshot and we know that the Israelites defeated the philistines. It is easy for us to celebrate other people’s

“Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace; he declared, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here!” Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire. And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king's counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them ” (Daniel 3: 26-28 KJV). The enemy starts a fire with the intent to keep you there, consume you, make you lose focus, and eventually take you out completely. God allows you to go through a fire with the intent of showing others His glory. Although the fire that you are dealing with in your life may be hot and although you may be faint and feel as if you are about to die; trust God and refuse to allow your enemies to make you perish. There is a blessing when you wait on Go

We are called to win a battle that some of us are scared to fight. We show up to the battle ready to go at it with the enemy but decide to hide once we see his face. No matter how big or small your enemy is. No matter how beautiful or ugly it or they may appear, God has already given you everything that you need to defeat him, but you must come out of hiding and change your mindset concerning how you will win the war. Israel had soldiers and weapons, but the size and wolf tickets that a giant was selling, scared them. This giant came out faithfully to taint them and their God, but fear caused them to refuse to take his head off. The giant’s tactics was working until David showed up. Sometimes we have been in a situation so long that it takes someone else to come into our situations to help us see that our problems can be defeated. David didn’t see what the other soldiers saw every day, so his mindset was different. He was not gripped by fear and the insecurity that the giant had bu

  “And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. ” (Luke 15:20-24 KJV) Would it be fair to take a look at the notion that perhaps the prodigal son’s mistakes made him a little wiser than the son that stayed with his father? The son who did what he was supposed to do seemed pretty perfect for the most part. He seemed like a guy who did what his dad said and learned all that he was supposed to learn in order to manage what his father woul

" And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split” (Matthew 27:51 NASB). We all know what it’s like to go to a doctor’s office, right? We know what it’s like to arrive at the office, sign in, and take our seats. We know what it’s like to arrive with our issues that need attention and we know what it’s like to wait. Some of us even know what it’s like to be nervous about what will be revealed to us in the appointment. We read the magazines, watch television, search social media, get our paper work together, and wait for the nurse to say, “You can come back now, the doctor will see you”. In that moment when our name is called, we gather our things and scurry off to get our medical needs meant. When Jesus died, something happened in the temple. There was a time when only the priests were allowed to go into the holy of holies, but Jesus was the nurse that came to the door, called our name and said, “You can come

This morning as I was thinking about the fact that God gives us a new start each year, the word reset came to mind. I tried to figure out why that word came to mind, and I began to look up its meaning. I have listed the meaning in the noun, verb, and adjective forms. Reset- set again differently, cause to enter the state representing the number 0, a plant that is planted again, to restore, a plant that has been recently transplanted, adjust again after a failure, set anew. Once I found the meaning of the word reset, I began to look for synonyms associated with it. Words like order, switch, replace, shift, changed, corrected, reformed, prepare, recondition, make ready, modify, do over, reappraise , and rework came up. At this point, I got a little excited and began to wonder how the Lord reset His people in the bible and what that word means concerning me. One of the first thoughts that crossed my mind pertained to the prophet Isaiah and the time that hot coal was placed over hi