"I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life.
No one comes to the Father except through Me.
If you really knew Me,
you would know My Father as well.
From now on, you know Him and have seen Him."
John  14: 6-7
The Way Of The Lord Ministries
Reverend Noreen T. Kevern
520-665-2345
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Running and Hiding From The Lord

“As surely as I live,” declares the Lord, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn
from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?”
Ezekiel 33:11

Things have been busy and hectic here are usual. We are still struggling but we are certainly giving praise to our Lord for the blessings that He gives us. Our
house is noisy and there is always the patter of little feet running around. My 4-year-old grandson loves to come into my room in the morning and hug and kiss
me as I am getting up. His brother usually follows him.

It's coming up to a year since Henry had his strokes, 10 months since he was laid off. This past year has been one of trials and many blessings. It's amazing
how God is. Even in the midst of such trials, we have been given such blessings. And even with all Henry's health problems, disability said no, his age and the
fact he can still walk, they don't consider him disabled. So be it. God will provide. I have several friends who are mad at disability and want us to fight it, but we
will not. If he had been taking his pain meds every day, they would have considered him for disability. But because he does not want to be addicted to vicodin,
and lives in pain, he proves to them that he can continue to do so. Well, we trust in the Lord. Man never has God's will on their mind anyway. We are still trying
to sell my van so that we can pay the IRS but it looks as if we will have to pay them monthly. This is God's answer that we wait and trust in Him.

Our son in law is still looking for a job, we are short on the mortgage, and we are trying to pay as we can for our bills. We are getting calls for the medical from
Henry's stroke. We had insurance but after he was laid off, the insurance put a lot towards the deductible and we now owe more than $7000 for various
medical. Summer electric killed us, but we were blessed by some people who helped us out.

I think about how the Lord listens to our prayers and the responses that He gives us. I may not understand why He answers prayer the way He does, but I trust
in Him and know that His will is what I want in my life and so that's all I need to know. I firmly believe in the power of prayer, and I spend much time praying and
talking with our Lord. His Word gives me what I need for each day and fills me with such hope. I was thinking back about our son, whom I had put a prayer
request in for so long ago it seems. I figured that the Lord would take him out of that situation and that he would see what I saw. But God did not answer my
prayer the way I expected. When my son and his girlfriend came to us and told us that they were having a baby, I was very quiet. I heard my answer to my
prayer, and from that moment on, have accepted. The 4 of us talked, they are going to get married. I placed it as I do all things, in the Lord's hands.

It's difficult to accept something like this, but I know that all babies are gifts from God and that no child is a mistake. God doesn't make mistakes. People make
mistakes. And I know that from my son's and his girlfriend's mistake, God will make something good out of this. My love for my son has never changed. And
now, I will have another daughter in the family, and her son, my grandson. I believe that God will bring them into His way and I trust that God will bring
circumstances to bring His will about. We each tend to make our own problems in our lives and normally we will not admit that we are our own worst enemy. In
the past, when our children have moved in with us with their children, not all went well. I didn't have the proper attitude and neither did they. So God engineered
the circumstances so that we can learn our lesson and to bring about in our lives the proper attitudes that reflect our God. My husband and I strive to still teach
our children and in the process we are also teaching our grandchildren. Patience is not something that I ever had, nor has my husband. But it is becoming for
us very normal. The kids are pulling together and working together, I speak to them separately, together and strive to speak God's Word to them, so as to
guide them in His way. So much in their adult life, those who do not know the Lord have influenced them. I watched as they wandered away from all the things I
taught them growing up, but I am now beginning to see things resurface. Their spouses are learning as well. When our daughters married, I accepted their
husbands as my sons and love them as I do my own. And when my son marries, I will accept his wife as my daughter.

So many times in life, we don't see what God is trying to teach us, because if we do, we might get our feelings hurt. But we each do need correction from the
Lord. The trials that are put in front of us are to teach us. Henry and I haven't been paying too much attention to our health and we are fat. But now we are
working on changing ourselves and losing weight. It will be a long process, but we can't afford not to. We are learning discipline for our eating choices. It will
take time to lose the weight, but we will. And our money problems, well truthfully, we haven't been the best stewards of our money, we have in the past spent it
on things frivolously, and giving into whims. We had it and we spent it, but now we are learning to be better. It's easy, because we don't have the money to
spend. We are now down to the basics, okay, I would love to get rid of the cable. But I admit that I do enjoy watching the Christian channels. There are so many
good programs on there. There are of course, certain things we don't watch, because even though there is some truth in the teachings, there are dangerous
untruths as well. We don’t watch a lot of regular shows because is not anything out there that doesn’t reflect something of the devil. Greed, adultery, sexual
perversion, anger, lust, hate, idol worship, murder, is all over the TV and we do not like to let things become so normal that we don’t see it as wrong. We watch
for a bit of a show, but if it crossed the line, we don’t watch. We are blessed that the Lord guides us to discern these things and not to allow us to pollute our
minds with things that go beyond God's truth.

And worry, wow, it's unbelievable great to live without it. I was the worrier. I worried about everything and anything. I worried myself to the way health problems I
have. High blood pressure, stomach ulcers, depression, and for a time, I almost became an alcoholic, but the Lord God never let me go and kept on whispering
to me until I opened my ears to His voice. And because He never gave up on me, I have overcome depression though sometimes it tries to creep back in, but
God is always there and brings me closer to Him. As God's children, we have for too long, allowed ourselves to blame others for our problems and not
ourselves. God always gives us a way out of things, we just have to tune ourselves into the quiet and hear the whispering of God.

Today as I was reading in 1 Kings, it came home to my soul again, how far we have gotten from God. We keep on looking for God and expecting to find Him
where we want Him to be, instead of realizing that God's Spirit speaks to us, quietly.

And the word of the Lord came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
He replied, "I have been very zealous for the Lord god Almighty. The Israelites have rejected Your covenant, broken down Your altars, and put Your prophets
to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."
The Lord said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an
earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
He replied, "I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected Your covenant, broken down Your altars, and put Your prophets
to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."
The Lord said to him, "Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel,
and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and
Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel--all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and
all whose mouths have not kissed him."
1 Kings 19:9b - 18

Have you been listening for God's voice? When have you spent quiet time with Him, away from the TV, the radio, the computer, away from people and phones,
and gone into your room and closed the door and prayed to the Father, Who is unseen? When you spend time with His Word, do you close your eyes and let
the Word flow over you and listen to what the Lord is quietly saying to you? Is your prayer time full of interruptions, or so you do not give your whole attention to
the prayer you wish to put before God? Do you surround yourself with things that remind you of God, i.e., Christian music, His Word, or is your home full of
things more precious to you than the Lord?

God asks Elijah twice what he was doing there. Elijah was running away from those who wanted to kill him. Are you running away? Are you running away
thinking that if you don’t face your problems they will disappear? Do you think that you can blame others and not yourself for the way things are? Elijah was
running away because people were seeking to kill him because he prophesied God’s word to him. Today, when someone prophesies that God is punishing us
because we have done wrong, people jump up and say that God doesn’t punish us. Why would God do that if He loves us? It is exactly because God loves us,
that we rightly are rebuked for the things that we do. God is our parent and if a parent does not discipline their child, they end up doing evil.

It’s time to take our lives back to God and ask God to forgive us for all the stupid things we do and to begin our lives again, learning to put God first in our lives
above all things. We need to stop running and go where God leads us, hearing Him in the quiet. Be honest with yourself and be honest with God. Go into your
room and close the door, putting away all the things of the world, and you will be able to hear God. It may take a while for the noise of the world to go away, but
just keep on trying. God told Elijah to go back and do what He wanted him to do. Will you go back to God and accept what God places before you and learn?