Father's Day

June is full of special days. There are weddings, recitals, and graduations…and then there is Father’s Day. Oh, how I hated Father’s Day. It almost made me dread the whole month of June.

I didn’t have a dad anymore.  I felt cheated. I hated that others had a dad to celebrate. It didn’t seem fair. I didn’t want to be gracious or magnanimous about it at all. I was jealous and angry. I felt like I had to be a phony all that day and try to pretend the gaping hole in my heart didn’t exist. Sometimes I felt like a self-pitying, whining, ungrateful brat. I hated that too. I wanted to just stay in bed. But my husband had a father and my children did too. I knew we needed to celebrate. It was hard to survive the day, but I worked at it…for years.

When I was in my 30’s, I attended a huge conference at the Civic Center in Philadelphia. In the overload of teaching that long week, a verse sprang off the pages of my Bible, one I had seen before, but this time it felt like David, thousands of years earlier, had penned the words specifically for me.

Psalm 68:5 says that God is “Father of the fatherless…” I know it sounds impossible, but I had never thought of myself in those terms before. I knew I didn’t have a dad, but that awful label, fatherless? Yes, I was! And God cared so much about me (and those like me) and because He knew the sadness, insecurity and loneliness I (and others like me) felt without a dad, He addressed the situation directly in His Word. I was astonished! Here was a Truth, a promise, I needed to grasp. I wasn’t abandoned at all. I still had a Father, The Father. And I was His child!

Believe me, no matter how old you get, you never outgrow the longing for a father. Even when biological fathers leave, wound, betray, or fail us, something in us craves that one-of-a-kind relationship. The very word father conjures up sentimental and emotional responses in my heart even today, and I’m a 64-year-old grandmother. For me, it still conveys the notion of protection, security, leadership, vision, affection, understanding, wisdom, safety, authority, belonging, and love. No, you don’t outgrow that desire to have all these, to have someone who cares enough for you to provide them for you. I think it’s because God puts it there.

I was blessed to have an earthly dad who tried his best to represent the character and beauty of my Heavenly Father and to care for his children as the Father would. I think he was, without knowing he would soon have a massive heart attack, making it easy for me to transition my hope, loyalty, and affection to my Heavenly Father. A good father reflects the love of the Heavenly Father and helps us to know Him. I think that’s every father’s job, isn’t it?  

I have since found many promises and words of comfort and encouragement in Scripture that reference my being a beloved child of the Father. Another favorite one comes from Romans 8:15. “The Spirit you received brought about your adoption…”  Adopted! Paul then adds the Aramaic word for father, a word young children might use, and continues his address. “By him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” What intimacy I am privileged to have with the Heavenly Father, King of the universe, my Daddy.

So Father’s Day has changed for me. The one in June doesn’t bother me—too much. No, I have come to think of every day as Father’s Day. I celebrate my loving Heavenly Father Who blessed me with a good dad for a short time on this earth and has adopted me now as His very own child. I am humbled and grateful.

And I’m sure my Father can beat yours anytime, anywhere…unless, of course, we have the same Father. I hope so.

Then we can celebrate Him every day together.

Don't Run Into The Cross, Come Under It

I am having one of those moments when one looks back on a given experience, and my own response is to smile. Life has a way of teaching us significant things through our day to day experiences - if we stop to reflect on it. I want to take this further and say, God has a way of using all of life to increase our awareness of who we are, who others are or who He really is.

Darkness has a way of reducing our level of awareness. The other night, as I was searching for a piece of sound equipment, I saw the need to walk further into a corner that was very dark. As I held my cell phone to take advantage of the flashlight feature, I took one more step and bam!!! I hit something with the right side of my forehead. I came to realize after a few seconds that I had run into a cross - a human sized cross that was made out of some rugged, hard kind of wood. I reached to feel the spot on my forehead and felt a bit of blood. I could not believe it; I thought to myself, "I just ran into the cross." After a moment of reflection, it was as if God was whispering something softly into my soul. The message was simple: "Diego, it is better to come under the cross than to run into it." I pondered on this thought and realized how living in darkness often causes me and others to run into the cross (or stumble upon it) instead of living under the benefits of the cross. Ultimately speaking, the cross represents the One who is able to both bless (1 Peter2:24) or crush (Luke 20:17-18) anyone depending on that person's relationship to the One represented by the cross. Jesus is the One who is embodied in the cross. He is the One with both authority and power to deal with each human being according to their relationship to Him. If the relationship is characterized by rejection of the cross, the outcome is eternally fatal. On the other hand, if the relationship is a humble posture to come under the benefits of the One who sacrificed it all to reconcile us to God the Father, the gains are glorious and infinitely unending!

Are you running into the cross or are you coming under it? Is your life at present characterized by darkness or are you allowing the light of the cross to bring its transforming light and power over you? 

My little bleeding wound on my forehead accomplished little that night; the blood Jesus shed on the cross is given for our real healing if we come under it: "He himself bore our sins” in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by His wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24).

Diego Cuartas

Letter to Teens Unboxing Their First Smartphone

Here is a link to a helpful article about how to use your smartphone to bring glory to God instead of destruction. This is a helpful article for teens as well as adults.

Yesterday Was Election Day!

“Oh, send out Your light, and Your truth! Let them lead me” Ps. 43:3

Thought I would share a very recent opportunity I was faced with this past week, and it coincided with the message Pastor Nate preached on Sunday about throwing away your VETO stamp.

Interesting, huh?! Here’s the story. For the last several months God has been working on me about making some financial changes to my private counseling practice, Truth and Light Counseling. The way I knew He was working on me is because it became a more frequent topic of conversation for me, I was praying constantly about it, others talked to me about it. Then it is my responsibility to ask God what is my flesh and what is His Spirit in all of this. I certainly do not want to go about it my own way because that won’t end up well.

Anyhow, this past week, the idea of making the change of increasing my fee $15.00 per session was persistent. It was heavy on me, but I was very concerned. I make sure that all decisions for the practice always get filtered through the lens of the original vision God gave me over 20 years ago: provide affordable counseling for people. Everyone cannot pay hundreds of dollars each week for a 50 minute session. I’m one of them!

Fast forward. I was on my way to church last Sunday, driving down the road, and I begged God to really confirm for me that the increase was indeed Him calling me to it, or show me that it was my flesh. I needed to know. I wouldn’t move forward unless I got the confirmation. Immediately these scriptures came to me;

Isaiah 43:19 English Standard Version (ESV)

 19 Behold, I am doing a new thing;

    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

    and rivers in the desert.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (AMP )

 Therefore if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life].

I still cried out and said, “God, are these scriptures confirmation?”

Fast forward. I walk into church, and Pastor Nate starts preaching the Word of God! He talks about what it is like to have everything in our own control, safe, secure, etc. God’s Spirit, or the Holy Spirit, started speaking to me. God showed me how that was exactly what I was doing with Truth and Light Counseling’s fee change. Though it may seem like an insignificant detail to some: what’s $15.00? But it is big. Following Jesus into every area of life is HUGE! Even in our businesses and careers. Truth and Light Counseling BELONGS TO GOD AND IS ON LOAN TO ME TO BE A GOOD STEWARD OF IT. I AM TO CARRY ON THE PRACTICE ACCORDING TO MY BOSS’S DESIRES, AND MY BOSS IS GOD! AMEN

Pastor Nate then went on to talk about the parable of not being able to put “new wine in old wine skins.” It just won’t work. God was definitely calling me to something NEW! There it was! So, you guessed it. I started all my calls to my clients the next day, informing them of the $15 dollar increase, and some actually gave further confirmation as well. It went from a cloudy thought process to a beautiful celebratory event for me.

The verse I named the practice after is found in Psalms 43:3:

“Oh, send out Your light, and Your truth! Let them lead me”

Blessings Friends!

Lois Robinson