Christian Chat

@ENKELI Thanks for tagging me! 🤗 I'm sorry you had that experience with your ex-friend! That must have been heartbreaking! I'm on the north coast of NSW. I lived in WA for a couple of years. I stayed at Fremantle back packers and travelled around. I went down to Albany in the winter and up to Darwin in the summer. Definitely the wrong way around! I loved it over there but missed family and friends on the east coast. My car was on the east coast, so I came back to get it to drive back to WA. When I got to the original town I left, I wrote the car off (not my fault) God was telling me where He wanted me. I've been in the area ever since. I too ask God that He may use my pain/traumas to help others. Isn't it great how God can turn our life into something good and use us to help others! 🙃

@ENKELI Yeah. I don't think they like real names of anything on here. After I left the abusive church, I went to the local soup kitchen church. I used to teach Sunday school there. I like both light-hearted and deep and meaningful conversations. I like being tagged as I feel a sense of belonging when I am. I'm happy in the church I'm in now! 🙃

@ENKELI @avant-garde @DownMoreThanUp @REDLINEZ750 @Moose123 @PeppyPatti

Relationships are complex things. I know there's plenty of men who want a woman with a tender heart as well. I wrote this in 1995 when I found myself in a DV relationship.

A Womans Need

A womans need is very simple

It needed cost a cent

Men, take heed, I have a challenge

That may lead you to repent

A tender heart is what they want

Hard to find these days

Pretence will always fade in time

God will light your way

A tender heart, cry out today

A woman's dream fulfilled

Not a man in this worlds eye

This heart I know God wills

Look at Jesus, Isaiah says

Not beautiful to the eye

But how those women followed Him

Have you ever wondered why?

A tender heart, the man he had

Your aim to be like Him

Does your love flow freely

Or emerge as a whim?

A gentle smile, a tender touch

A kind word here and there

What's the message that she gets?

Does it tell her that you care?

She needs to feel wanted, desired by you

Tell her, you still do it for me

Your look, your smile and the words that you give

Are you beginning to see?

She needs to feel needed, important to you

Allow her expression of heart

Her feelings, her thoughts, who she is as a whole

Aren't really worlds apart

Please listen to her with patience

Do your best to understand

Pray if you will, do what you must

But please don't shout demands

Tell you need her as a friend and wife

A life without her would hurt

Your spoken words and unspoken looks

Can build her or crush her like dirt

Most of all, she needs to feel loved

Her self-worth affected by you

Your gentle smile, your tender touch

And kind words affect her too

You love her by your actions and words

And by the way that you lead

God will help and guide your way

A tender heart is what she needs!

@avant-garde why they banging on about the commandments any way, God knew that as humans we are flawed and would all fail the mosaic commandments so we are bound now by the new covenant through the crucification and blood Christ Jesus.

The old testament is important for theological reasons of course and to show why the new testament was necessary for mankind to have the hope of salvation.

i find old testament is used for scaremongering or making good christians question themselves in gods eyes when new testament states clearly we are loved as we are.

@heartathome I like your poem. It is gentle about complicated things. Thank you

🙏🍎

@REDLINEZ750

I can't say I disagree with you on the point of banging on about them and the focus passage for the sermon wasn't the ten commandments, rather Ephesians 5:1-17.

However when it comes to the ten commandments I do think they're relevant as a further explanation of Matthew 22:36-40

@heartathome Thanks for your poem. So well said. And all things i had to learn to be happily married.

For as a boy i had been taught to be very different than your poem show man ought to be. So at times it was a challenge to look at my wife (and anyone for that matter,) through the lens of love, caring and sharing, rather than through the lens of self interest, demand and want. (Which are all ways of being which will never make anyone happy long term the truth taught me to understand.)

So many things i had to (re) learn heeding the voice of truthful love. For love has been my best teacher, far more reasonable and productive than cold hard logic will ever be.

Thanks @DownMoreThanUp Men were definitely brought up to be hard and emotionless, unless it was anger. Men have had to change a whole belief system! Thankfully, things are changing! I remember my mother expecting me to get married and have kids instead of getting a job. That's how she saw a woman's role. :face_with_rolling_eyes: I didn't satisfy her then, as I went off on many adventures instead. How are you doing today?

@heartathome Much better than yesterday, though stil somewhat nauseated i managed to keep it down. Mood wise i have been lowish, but not depressed as been, apart of a few dips when feeling sick earlier on in the day, hopefully it will stay that way.

@avant-garde @Appleblossom @REDLINEZ750 @ENKELI

One of our grand sons, whom we have not seen for a few months, is back in Town, and is coming around this afternoon as well as for Dinner tonight. (Will serving him our delicious home made pies, chips and salad.) Be good catching up.

Have a lovely day.

Difficult parants have to be put at ease, so we grannies can the grandkids please!

@Appleblossom @heartathome @ENKELI @REDLINEZ750 @avant-garde @Moose123

i tried much of my early adult life to obey God's Word, as taught to me by religion, but found this to be extremely oppressive and unproductive fighting my carnal mind educated by the religion, and a the world, i had been born into to, and like so understanding God's word.

To me the greatest revelation in my life a mentally ill person was understanding that the Word of God is God's Spirit writing to the human spirit. And that the Spirit of God ALWAYS uses spiritual words which do not make sense to carnal minds, ( 1 Cor 2:13-16,) and that therefore any religious dogma, teachings or traditions are not to be trusted to tell me rightly what The Spirit has to say. Yet that those who have faith in God's love because of Jesus' sacrifice, can learn to heed what The Word tells them - time and again - for, as Jesus told us - The Truth shall set you free - and loving Jesus fro salvation is that very truth that sets me free.

For i learned to understand loving Jesus, that the law of love does not have any other commandment apart of to love true. Loving God because He sets us free to be ourselves because Christ's sacrifice, is the VERY Truth that sets me free to grow in His love, for anyone who loves God, refuses to believe the Word of God carnal minds have told us to understand it, (Psalm 116:11,) for loving God learns to listen what The Spirit says, (Rev 3:22,) as love for Jesus always heeds His commandment, and doing so receives love for all, having The Father dwell in us. (John 14:23-27)

A poem i once wrote in response to seeing that love for Jesus had me living Isaiah 54 spiritually.

My Lord, My Husband.

My Lord with bowed head i stand before you,
i'm not worthy to be called your wife.
For i have been very unfaithful
and deserted you for many years.

i'm so sorry Lord that I've been untrue
been unkind, rebellious and temperamental
In The End betraying You for the other one
that cruel liar and deceiver, that Beast.

Yet You rescued me from that tyrant
Hid me in the desert until i grew free
Taught me tenderly what true love was
and gave me back my dignity.

i wanted to thank You dear husband
from the bottom of my thankful heart.
You adopted me and all my offspring,
those not conceived from Your seed.

i'm so grateful You sorted them out for me.
For a rebellious kindred they've surely been!
Yet Your awesome loving truth won them all,
freeing me from having to make them behave.

And now my Lord, my husband so very dear,
i almost feel embarrassed asking this from you.
My Lord, if truly i have found favour in Your sight,
then please, please let me know You intimately.

Jesus a wonderful husband You will always be!
Please let me be Your ever faithfully loving wife.
The seeds of your Love fill me time and again,
Your offspring to me having me enlarge my tent.