Unshackle Moments ~ December 14 ~ Unspeakable Joy

Joy, unspeakable joy

And overflowing where no tongue can tell

Joy, unspeakable joy

Rises in my soul, never lets me go

- Chris Tomlin

How do you write about a joy that you can't speak about? Written or spoken, words are words, and for something to be indescribable with the tongue it is equally elusive of definition and description with a pen or keyboard. Joy is the Advent theme that I have the most trouble with in all honesty, because it's the one that I count on most, the one I feel the ghosts of the most, and the one that I can't quite seem to catch when I need to. All too often, my circumstances rob me of my joy because I haven''t gotten down the ability to tap into the joy of the Lord with the consistency needed to guide my life.

I know that it's more than pleasure or happiness and that it isn't produced by, or defined by, our circumstances or emotions. In fact, it can have more effect on them they they can have on it. I have seen it. Well, I say I have seen it the way that I say that I've seen the wind. I've seen the effects of the wind.

I've seen the effects of the joy. I've seen the light remain in the eyes of a man dying of cancer. He had so much pain he could barely move, and yet there was a spark in his eye and a tone to his voice that could only be described as joy. I've seen it in the lives of others, such as my Ma Woody and my father. I've seen a true but lesser version in the lives of those who love each other well. I've even experienced this breeze of love that brings joy even in the midst of hardships. My wife has made this possible, but I still can't describe the breeze, much less the gale force winds of joy the love of God creates.

I have a hard time having faith in something that I can't even speak about or describe sometimes. And yet, while I don't feel the wind as often as I know I could, I do feel it from time to time. I know it's there. It's not a matter of seeking it out or proving it exists as much as it is a matter of learning to adjust my sails to catch it. Joy has come through the Son, ministered to us by the Spirit because of the great love of the Father. This Advent season and beyond let us ask God for the grace to adjust our sails so that we can catch the winds of His joy in every circumstance, during the roughest of storms and the calmest seas. We may never be able to describe that joy that gives us strength and doesn't depend on things feeling or being a certain way, our way, a comfortable way, but we can feel it.  And when we fill our sails with it, it can take us across any and every sea, and keep us safely moving to the shores of the kingdom of God.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

The Grinch's Joy ~ Third Sunday Of Advent

Dalyn Woodard shares an Advent message on the third Sunday of Advent.Using the story of the Grinch, he shares on the joy that doesn't depend on our circumstances or situation. It isn't based on feelings or emotion and can't be quenched by what we go through. The message, "The Grinch's Joy" is about 13 minutes long and was recorded at Nacogdoches Christian Fellowship on Sunday, December 13, 2015. It's our prayer that you are blessed and ministered to as you listen. May God bless and keep you.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 12 ~ Can't Buy Me Peace

They say that money can't buy love, but people still try. Love isn't the only thing that we try to buy but can't. Another is tied together with love, and that is peace. I say it's tied together, because you can't have one without the other. True love casts out fear, and where there is no fear there is peace. Still, we try to obtain it in ways that don't work.

There's an insurance company that claims to be selling peace of mind. But while insurance might take some anxiety away, it's never enough to give true peace come what may. My wife and I have a friend whose family resources were decimated last year when he faced death for a few months hospitalized and unable to work. He lived praise God, but even with the best insurance available their savings were taken out. Saving for a rainy day is a good idea, but what do you do after the storm has passed and there's nothing left and no time or way to get it? Money can replace houses and vehicles, but not people, not homes and not the tokens of a lifetime.

My wife and I just taped our washing machine together in order to try to get it working long enough to get a few loads of much needed laundry done. I didn't think it would work, but we tried. So far so good, although I really think I need to go in there and see how much water is on the floor at the moment. Tape can hold the machine together for a while, but it won't hold forever. And the things we do and use to try to hold our lives together won't work forever either. That's why under all our savings, health insurance, safe vehicles, and everything else we do to try to feel secure there is still fear. What if what happens is too much for the measures I've been able to make? What if what I've done fails or stops working? What if....

What if we put our trust in the only One that we can trust without having to fear failure. God never fails. He is able to hold, to protect and to provide. When our love is to Him and from Him our peace comes from Him too. And that is a peace that the rest of world doesn't understand. It might nit make sense. But in the midst of the storms it remains. Peace has come, peace with the Father and peace from the Father. The peace that Jesus left with us, God's peace What a cause for great joy.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 11 ~ No Time

Sometimes in the midst of all the chaos and stress and uncertainty of life it can feel like nothing we do can really make much difference. Actually it can feel like what we know about achieving and maintaining peace can be the opposite of what we need to do. More and more needs to be done. There's so much to do that we'll never get it all done. We're overwhelmed with the weight of it all. The idea that to make it better we should take time to stop, get quiet and spend time with God just doesn't make sense to us. But God's ways are not our ways, and while it makes no sense to us it is the exact thing that we need to do. The chaos and stress and weight of it all simply build until we can not function at all unless we take the time to access the peace in the midst of the storm that is available to us through the Holy Spirit. Taking the time that we don't feel like we have really gives us what we need to keep going longer than we ever could without stopping. Much like stopping for fuel on a road trip may feel like a deficit time wise, but without those stops the journey can never be completed.

So, as the more we feel like we don't have time to stop, the more important it is that we do just that. Take a break, make the time and give and get our spiritual hugs from Daddy. We simply can not go on without it. It's in that time spent with God that we can find the peace that gets us through the storms that keep coming.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 9 ~ Negative Space

I admit that I am not feeling the peace all that much at the moment. No, I don't feel peace. I feel, well, I feel sick. I've been sick for almost two days now. It's hard to feel peace when you feel queasy. Tied in with that is the understanding that I am supposed to preach this evening. Right now, every time that I start moving around I get sick again. I want to preach tonight, but I also know that I need to give a replacement as much notice and time to prepare as possible. So, I need to decide soon if I will try it or not.  I have also missed two days of work that I can't really afford to miss and may have given this bug to my wife. She wasn't feeling well when she left this morning.

Logically, what I should feel is panic, anxiety and worry. I can't afford to miss work. My boss quite literally has to shut down the majority of his operation without help, and I'm his help. So if I don't work there's a lot he can't get done. If I miss too much will he replace me? I don't get paid when I don't work. The type of work I do doesn't have sick days and the benefits mainly consist of a cup of coffee from time to tie.  It took me months to find this job, and I have little reason to believe that finding another would be quick or easy. Any time that I am not in the process of making my boss happy with my work I should worry about making him dissatisfied. I don't want to fail to step up and do what God has called me to do, but I should be afraid of getting to the church and being too sick to preach and not have given anyone time to prepare. I don't want to make the wife I love so much sick or make her life more difficult. My stomach muscles already hurt from what they've been through over the last two days of being sick, and it makes perfect sense to be worried about and fear the pain that will come should I get sick to my stomach again.

But though it would be logical and make sense to feel anxiety and worry, I don't. I don't feel good, and I don't feel what I would classify as peaceful, but I am not anxious. I will work on tonight and trust that I will be able to get through it, and at the same time I will let someone know there's a possibility that I may need someone to step in. I know it will be OK either way. I do feel a tad better today than I did yesterday, and I am confident that I will be able to return to work tomorrow, but if not it will be OK. My future is in God's hands, not mine and not my boss's. God will provide and care for our needs. And I am not in a state of worry about Leah being sick to her stomach any more than I am worried about her Lupus. I spent some time praying for her and gave it to God. He will either give her healing or give her grace.

When I looked at it, I realized that I do have peace. I am not afraid or anxious. I learned something through this experience. I have said before something that a friend of mine often says, not everything I think and not everything I feel is real. But I never really thought through the corollary, that a lack of feeling also does not define truth. Just because I don't feel an emotion that I would describe as peace doesn't mean that I don't have peace. Sometimes in photography and painting, the negative space, what isn't there, is as important or more important than the rest of the image. Negative space is important in our lives as well. It may be more important to realize the absence of fretting, of worry of fear than it is to feel some emotion that we would call peace.

I share this today to encourage us all to not get hung up on not having an emotion or feelings that we sometimes associate with being where we are supposed to be spiritually. Sometimes it's more about the negative space. Sometimes we can rejoice and take strength from the truth that we are not in the state that we would be in if we were not spiritually well. Have faith, give glory to Him, and just keep going, even when the emotions are lacking.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 8 ~ Mery Christmas, War Is Over

The search for peace takes on many different forms. There are so varied approaches to to the hunt, and it somewhat depends on what you're hunting for, how you are at the moment of the search defining peace. For some it's an end to fighting, whether that be between nations or spouses or children or strangers at Wal-Mart. For some it's more about not being anxious or stressed or worried. For some it's all about not being afraid of the future. So depending on what variation of peace is desired the way we look often changes.

But what if we want them all? Every variation and category, if it's peace it's wanted. Then it gets so much easier, because it becomes so obviously impossible that we know we have to look to the miraculous for it to happen. We know absolute peace of every kind and in every situation can only come from God. We could never pull that off. So what do we need to do to access that peace of God that passes all our understanding and ability to attain?

Surrender. Surrender is the key to peace. We were at war with God, determined to run a successful rebellion against the Master of All in order to be the ruler of our own life. Once we surrender to Him we not only become His children but citizens of His kingdom. The war is over. But how over depends on how much we surrender. When Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant, the U. S. Civil War officially came to an end. But for some of the individuals involved it didn't end until a later date. Some because they did not receive the good news that the war had ended, and for others because they themselves refused to surrender and held onto their anger and hate. If you are a Christian, then you have surrendered enough to have the war declared over. But we lived as rebels for so long, we have to adjust our lives and attitudes to being in a state of surrender rather than rebellion. Sometimes that means our actions are too much like the old rebellion than the new surrendered and pardoned citizen.

The more completely, and unconditionally we are able to surrender to the King who came and made a way for us to make peace with our Creator and His will for our lives, the more peace we will have. The less fighting we'll have to endure, whether that be fighting with others, fighting and struggling with and within ourselves, or fighting for security. If we simply lay down our arms and stop fighting, if we surrender, we can have peace. But there can be no lasting or true peace as long as we maintain our right to rise up and fight. For the spirit of peace to reign in our hearts, the spirit of rebellion must be dethroned so that a baby born in a barn, killed on a cross and raised from the dead can have His rightful place as King in our hearts and lives.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 7 ~ Christmas Cheer

The people who walked in darkness Have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, Upon them a light has shined.

- Isaiah 9:2

There's a lot of talk around this time each year of Christmas cheer. The idea seems to be that we're supposed to be happy and carefre, and if we're not, if we're hurting or tired or frightened or lonely that we're just Scrooges and need to get with the program. Some of us are happy. Some do have joy and peace and actual goodwill toward their fellows, but all the manufactured jolly chipperness is enough to make some want to hide from the season. It isn't fun to feel broken and hurting and like you're dying inside. Living in the shadow of death is miserable, and it only gets worse when it seems like we're supposed to just get over it and be happy already.

The good news is that holiday cheer is not a commandment of God. You don't have to put on a smile and pretend everything is OK to please God. In fact, that is the last thing He wants. Jesus didn't come to cheer us up. He came to shine a light on our darkest shadows. Light doesn't make shadows feel better. Light destroys shadows. The greater the light the less shadow there are, and if you have enough light coming from every direction no shadows remain. He didn't come to teach us how to mask our sorrow or give us rehab so that we can function in our brokenness. He came to heal our brokenness and comfort us.

If anxiety increases for you this time of year because it feels like you have to perform, to act the part on some stage fulll of Christmas cheer, be encouraged and be at peace. You don't have to be anxious. You don't have to fret. You don't have to act. Just cry out to Jesus and seek His light. Let Him have access to your shadows.. He loves us as we are, not as we should be. So much of our fear and worry and stress can be replaced by peace that doesn't depend on circumstances when we simply follow the light to Him and bask in the warmth of His love rather than try to manufacture cheer.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.