Tag: heard

The Cheerful Giver

Jennifred Jones

It’s been said true giving is a sacrifice, it should be hard, something you don’t want to do… give something you don’t want to… or aren’t really able to give….to prove you are a sacrificial giver.

Yet — giving is really a heart thing!

You can’t make someone love another person. You can’t make yourself love someone you don’t.

You can’t make yourself want to want to give.

If we give something and we don’t really want to is it a good thing? Is it an acceptable ‘sacrifice’? Does it make it worthy and acceptable because we gave against our will?

I think God is more interested in our heart than he is in our gift—to him or anybody else!

It’s a pliability of our heart where God will give us a thought to do something for someone, send a care package to a friend, bake a dish for a neighbor, buy the meal for the car behind you at McDonalds….and you have almost an ecstatic feeling to do it.

That’s the cheerful heart I’m talking about.

That removes us from the ‘works’ category… doing it ‘because I have to’, or ‘it’s my duty’ … a drudgery type ‘giving’.

This cheerful heart and willing-giving will come as we change how we see the world, other people, even ourselves.

Oh God, help me see the good instead of the other…

Voices in the Wilderness

Jennifred Jones

Have you ever had something you thought was important to say, that needed to be said, that no one else was saying, but needed to be heard?

It would help people if they could hear it, it could change the direction of their life, but they were nowhere near you, you didn’t even know who they were, you couldn’t summon them to hear your words, and frankly, they probably wouldn’t even recognize what you had to say was for them.

Just a voice…a voice out in the wilderness -being absorbed only by the mossy bark on the trees and getting soaked up by the fallen leaves and tramped on.

We live in a big wilderness it seems, yet there are many voices calling out to us.

Many of the voices are loud, clamoring, demanding for attention. They hackle, yell, demean, shame, put-down, confuse, conflict, and torment, and cause us to worry and fear. They even try to make us think bad thoughts about and hate other people-including ourselves!

But, if we keep walking, keep listening and get where it is quiet again, and really listen, we can hear a still small voice saying, ‘this is the way, walk in it’. It will be unassuming, patient, kind, gentle, leading, guiding, encouraging, hopeful, filled with wisdom; it might even be a gentle warning, but it will cause us to be at peace and rest– not filled with turmoil when we hear it. It will inspire us to do good and think good about other people.

I have heard all of these voices. I have heard the voice of fear and worry and shame and hate, but I have also heard the voice of kindness, grace, hope and peace. I hear them every day in my walk through the wilderness of life.

I know what each of them feels like and what it does to me when I pay heed.

The choice is mine, which voices I choose to listen to.

Some are so tempting and convincing — to entice me to worry and fret about something I have no control over—which is about everything.

I am choosing to listen to the quiet voice. I choose to listen for the voice that wants to give me hope and cause me to do good and noble things.  I choose that, although it is harder to hear and follow, that is what I choose. Sometimes I get off the path and start listening to the louder voices, but my quest is to listen for the still small voice in the wilderness…the one that will lead me through to the clearing on the other side.

Who knows, maybe someone else that I cannot see is behind me – lost in the wilderness – and cannot hear the still small voice — but will follow my footsteps and make it through.