Ark of Faith Foundation Inc.

Serving those in need in greater Muskogee OK

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Monthly Messages from The Ark of Faith. These messages are featured in our newsletter.

-- by Sally Weiesnbach,  Ark Founder & Director of Operations

 

December Message: Rejoice! And Again, I Say Rejoice!

It is time to rejoice and celebrate the Christ of God our Savior!  The Ark is preparing for our Christmas Dinner, December 23rd.  Many homeless, needy and lonely people spend this day fellowshipping with us.

Will you join us in praying?  “…asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you [and all Ark guests] the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that we may know Him better.”  (Ephesians 1:17, addition and emphasis, mine)  I just can’t seem to leave Ephesians, these days!

My desire is that each of us has “the eyes of our hearts enlightened in order that we may know the hope to which He has called us, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints…”  (Ephesians 1:18)  We are not hopeless!  It is time to share all we have (and are) in union with Christ.  It’s not the material things and gifts we must focus on, but Christ Jesus, His word and mighty workings.  It is His gifting to us of love, mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation that we celebrate on December 25th.  (NOTE: This date was chosen by early Christians and is not known for sure to be Jesus’ actual birth day.)

“It is by God’s grace we have been saved.”  (Ephesians 1:4)  “God expressed His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”  (Ephesians1:7)  Don’t focus on gifts and get into debt or stress.  Help us, Holy Spirit, to return to the simple truth: “Christ is the gift of God.”  (Ephesians 1:8)  Is our focus on Christ or on parties and Santa Claus?  “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  (Ephesians 1:10, NIV)

We need quality family time and home activities honoring Father God and His gift of Jesus!  We can share smiles, home cooking, arts and crafts with family, friends and those in need.  We can read of this fabulous birth to children and others.  We can celebrate and show and tell this great GOOD NEWS to restore hope to the hopeless.  We can sing carols, serve dinners where needed and fellowship as we share His love.

May these acts of kindness, mercy, and giving of ourselves continue through all of 2017 and not just this month!  Help and strengthen us, Holy Spirit, with the dynamic outpouring of God’s loving nature to all.  This offering of ourselves can and will bring healing, love and reconciliation.  It is our individual choice to do.

“All things are possible…” (Matthew 19:26) with God and prayer.

November Message: THANKS  GIVING

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it (perfection).  But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind I strain toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   (Philippians. 3:13-14)

Thanksgiving – a time to THANK Christ.  What we say is what we get (Matthew 7:1).  Let our goal this month be to cease negative talking and celebrate the Christ of Father God in all things (Romans 8:28).  Let us forget past suffering, failures, and behaviors.  Learn from the past, forgiving others so we may be forgiven (Luke 11:4).

It is important to understand the past so we can eventually put it behind us and with hope look and move ahead … one day, one hour at a time.  “Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Christ Jesus who by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.”  (Philippians 3:20-21)

Family gatherings can be challenging, with past memories, preparations and planning.  Some remembrances are happy and others are traumatic.  In Philippians 3:1-12 Paul is lamenting the past.  He clearly states in verse 12; “not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect … press on to take hold of that which Christ Jesus took hold of for me.”

 How do we take hold, learn from past, and move on?  As I thought and asked for the Holy Spirit’s help, I turned to my Message Bible, Philippians 3.  “The very credentials people are waving around as something special; I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for.  And why?  Because of Christ.  Yes, all things I once thought were important are gone from my life … insignificant—dog dung.  I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by Him.”

“If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.”  (II Chronicles 7:14)  God has shown me to pray for families to be reconciled in 2016 … also, for the people of our nation to humble themselves and pray and turn from wickedness so He can heal our homes and nation.  It is each person’s choice to “let go and let God.” It is your choice to think of Christ before you speak to others.

My prayer is that, forgetting the past and humbling ourselves, we can celebrate with much thanksgiving!  

October Message: Transition – God’s Revelation

This is the 4th month of a year-long Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) discussion group at the Ark.  It is amazing to me!  God keeps encouraging us.  One example: the ActiveHeroes.org’s 22 Pushups Challenge going worldwide.

Statistics show that 22 veterans commit suicide each day. The challenge is for people to do 22 pushups a day for 22 days to honor struggling soldiers.  Recovery from PTSD first requires awareness.  Second, it requires love and trust to encourage the wounded to ask for help and support.  This reminds me of how Jesus left the 90 and 9 to find just one lost sheep.  One is worth it all!  I always knew this, but the PTSD group is bringing new awareness.  Our group is based purely on faith and availability, and our veterans voted to open the group to others suffering from PTSD.  They are still serving.  Do keep this mission in earnest prayer.

Our Deaf Signing classes have started again.  At the Coffeehouse on September 30, beginning signers and people who are deaf came together and learned by sharing and fellowship.

Enrollment is huge for this Anger Management Resolution and Domestic Violence Prevention Class .  My husband, Garry, reminded me to put Resolution back into Anger Management classes.  We don’t just want to manage anger; we want the skills to resolve anger.  We all know violence comes out of anger (which may be hidden or suppressed) until it erupts in rage and violence.  Proverbs 29:20 states, “Do you see a man who is hasty in his words?  There is more hope for a fool than for him.”

Have you ever said, “I wish I hadn’t said that”?  Over and over scripture warns and tells us to wait before the Lord.  One way to resolve anger is to ASK the Holy Spirit to help, lead, and show each of us correct responses.  If we don’t ask, we won’t receive.  At 83, I am still learning to wait and ask for Holy Spirit help.  Romans 8:26 says, “In the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”

The Recovery Devotional Bible reminds us: “Fortunately, God is aware of the problem and offers His own Spirit to pray with us and for us.”  No matter our ages, we must continue to seek God’s will.  He knows the way through the wilderness and walks with us “through the valley of the shadow of death.”  (Psalms 23:4)  “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of sound mind, peace, joy, and love and self-control”. (II Timothy 1:7)

Satan tempts children, even adult children with fear of rejection, abuse, anger, lack, and abandonment.  Traumatic experiences triggered by Satan (often called “flashbacks”) may be activated by a harsh tone of voice, a certain scent or reminder of a past bad decision. Those hinder forward motion in today’s life journey.  Unrealistic self-expectations can weaken today’s self-respect.  The Holy Spirit’s gentleness and touch can show us that He protects us in our daily lives.  I am circling the words “show and tell” in my Bible.  As a teacher, Jesus used show and tell, as does Father God.

Toxic or incorrect thinking causes 87% of today’s illnesses according to scientific studies. As Jack Hawkins’ teaching on “Possessing the Mind of Christ” encourages: we must adapt and adjust our thinking and so manage responses to current events.  Yes, we do “have the mind of Christ.”  Please read: I Corinthians 2:14-16.

September Message: The Revelation of His Perfect Love Drives Out Fear

eternal-securityGod is not the author of fear.  The devil–the tormentor–is the author of fear.  Fear and security cannot co-exist.  We shall know the truth and the truth brings freedom.  God doesn’t want us to fear Him but to receive His perfect love, abounding grace and acceptance.

Fear can strike through a manipulating thought and evil imaginations. If fear is allowed to grip your heart, the pressure can become an obsession which causes debilitating anxiety.

We must renew our minds daily by spending “alone time” in God’s Word.  We need to keep our focus on the Word and not life’s problems.  We must choose to turn from dark thoughts and torments and allow the light of Jesus’ words to enter our situations.  God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit cannot lie; so choose to allow His light to break through Satan’s darkness.  Keep meditating on His word.  “The Lord IS my Helper; I will not fear.”  (Hebrews 13:6) or “I will never leave you or forsake you.”  (Hebrews 13:5)

Thoughts of defeat and despair or flashbacks must be replaced with thoughts from the mind of Jesus.  We do “love the mind of Christ…”  (I Corinthians 2:14-16)  “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right and pure and lovely, and admirable.  Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”  (Philippians 4:8, NLT)  Willpower alone will not blot out bad thoughts.  We must replace the wrong thoughts and beliefs with God’s truth.  We must replace destructive, hateful and even angry thoughts by speaking the Word and thinking on a pleasant, happy activity or fun time with family or friends.  We must pull away from too much hustle and bustle and simply meditate on God’s promises.

Memorize and quote His Word.  “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.”  (Isaiah 26:3)  Then ASK God and his Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus “to keep [me] in perfect peace and lead and guide [me]… not in [my] own strength but the strength of Christ alone.” 

God’s word is sure and unshakable.  Will you choose to receive and believe His grace and open your mind and heart to allow His words to restore and make you whole?  “The Law of Moses appoints men who are imperfect to be high priests; BUT God’s promise made with the vow, which came later than the Law, appoints the Son, who has been made perfect forever.”  (Hebrews 7:28)  “This difference then, also makes Jesus the guarantee of a better covenant.”  (Hebrews 7:22)  So, our Jesus now sits at the right side of our Father ever [always] interceding, “pleading with God” for us.  (Hebrews 7:25)  This far better hope—Jesus–allows us to “come near to God.”  (Hebrews 7:19)

Today, be made whole and continue on this journey realizing you have been chosen to serve Him…  You, by grace, ARE the righteousness of Christ…  He lives in each of us… the Holy Spirit, teaching, guiding and comforting us… as we daily renew our minds in the mind of Christ…  “because God had decided on an even better plan for us.  His plan [is] that only in company with us would we be made perfect.”  (Hebrews 11:40)

August Message: Be Holy

Scripture says, “Be holy because I am holy.”  (I Peter 1:16)  Holy (without fault) means perfect; and with Him, in Him and Him in us, we can be holy.  We must continually renew our minds to the Word.

Consider: I Corinthians 2:14-16: “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.  But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.  For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him?  But we have the mind of Christ.”

Yes, God wants each born-again believer to have that same discernment of Christ.  We are the temples of the Holy Spirit.  My desire is to have Christ functionally-formed and living through each of us here on earth.  Jesus, Himself tells us to go and do the things He did.  Consider this: “For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”  (II Corinthians 4:11)

Do you desire this?  I do.  My mentor in Prison Ministry is still teaching me to think not as a prosecutor whose quest is to condemn, but as the Savior whose heart is to redeem.  We must stop making excuses, taking the comfortable, convenient path of least resistance with little or no effort.  That response often leads to failure.

I Peter 1:19-25 reminds us, when we pray, we call Him “Father”:  “He judges all people by the same standard according to what each one has done… we are to spend the rest of our lives here on earth in reverence for Him… it was the costly sacrifice of Christ, like a lamb without defect or flaw… through Him we have believed in God, who raised Him from death and gave Him glory; and so our faith and hope are fixed on God… by our obedience to the truth we purify ourselves… and come to have a sincere love for other believers, and love one another earnestly with all our heart. For through the living eternal word of God… [we] have been born again as children of a parent who is immortal, not mortal… the word of the Lord remains forever.”

This is the Good News that He wants us to proclaim!  He wants us to “grow up and be saved…”  (I Peter 2:2)  Each believer is “chosen by God as valuable.  Come as living stones and let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple, where you will serve as holy priests… But you are a chosen race, the King’s priests, the holy nation, God’s own people chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God.  He called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”  (I Peter 2:4-9)

One of the important steps is your submission to the words of Father God and the leading of the Holy Spirit to listen, meditate on His word and then, obey.  “For the sake of the Lord, submit yourselves to (every) human authority: to the Emperor, who is supreme authority, and to governors, who have been appointed by him [the Emperor] to punish evildoers and to praise those who do good… God wants you to silence the ignorant talk of foolish people by the good things you do!  Live as free people; do not, however, use your freedom to cover up any evil, but live as God’s slaves.  Respect everyone, love other believers, honor God and respect the Emperor.”  (I Peter 2:15-17)  Only with daily renewal of our mind, Christ’s mind in us, can we duplicate His works and obey His word.Today, be made whole and continue on this journey realizing you have been chosen to serve Him…  You, by grace, ARE the righteousness of Christ…  He lives in each of us… the Holy Spirit, teaching, guiding and comforting us… as we daily renew our minds in the mind of Christ…  “because God had decided on an even better plan for us.  His plan [is] that only in company with us would we be made perfect.”  (Hebrews 11:40)