From the Heart by B.Demaere

According to 1 Corinthians 1 and 2... The message of the Cross is foolishness to the lost, but wisdom and power to the people of God.  We are saved against any humanly impossible condition.  Humanly speaking God’s love for us cannot be reasoned since the wisdom of man cannot bring us to God (1 Corinthians 1:21).  Human wisdom is too weak to even comprehend God’s ways.  We who are born-again believers have cause to rejoice in this, that Christ did not die in vain but saved us beyond our understanding.     It does not make sense that I who has a mental illness should be given the privilege to give the message I have been given .  Come on God there must be someone better than me among 8 billion ?  But it is his delight to entrust his message to the weak because that is given in power .  Obviously, God must be looking at other aspect to qualify someone because to the world I was a nobody.   No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thou

For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen.  These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth.  And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that god made with hands are not gods.  And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing…. (Acts 19:24-27) The goddess Artemis was a Greek goddess of wild animals, the hunt, and vegetation.   Yet one silversmith in Ephesus was becoming wealthy as well as providing jobs for others in the community.   Because of such profit it is very understandable that the whole town became upset at Paul’s preaching about a God that could replace all of their gods.   We hold on to worthless things in our

Walking in the light involves honesty to God and our fellow brothers and sisters.   This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, That God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we are in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, We have fellowship with one another, And the blood of Jesus, his Son cleanses us from all sins. (1John 1:5-7)   Where there is Light there is harmony, if we live in the Light as God is the Light we will be pure like he is.   We stay in the Light through the forgiveness of our sins.   Confession to him is essential and we cannot hide anything from God.   If you are not confessing, you are wasting your time and fellowship with him and other believers.   A relationship will not be free from difficulties, but it must be free of sins and hidden issues in all levels.   It is called ‘open relationship’. Our words and actions

When I struggle, there is a scripture that I go back regularly and read.   It is Psalm 37:1-4 Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! For they will soon fade like the grass And wither like the green herb.   Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, And he will give you the desires Of your heart.   No matter in what kind of situation we might find ourselves in among people, our vertical relationship with God should take the precedent over our horizontal relationships.   We cannot change people anyway and we must trust God for them and with them.   We cannot be jealous of them because they are getting away with so many things.   We must find our comfort in the fact that we in the end have the better end of the stick.   The end with the honey.   Our hope is that sweet compared to the pleasures of sin.   Even people around let themselves slide into complacency I

  Many in this world claim that Jesus was only human, but like in the following passage,   He is not just a carpenter.   He looks like one but maybe looks are not everything and again faith does not walk by sight.   It walks by believe. Mark 6:1-6 v.3-6 Then they scoffed. “He’s just a carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon.   And his sisters live right here among us.”   They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him.   Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.” And because of their unbelief, he could not do any miracles among them except to place his hands on a few sick people and heal them.   And he was amazed at their unbelief. I often wonder about the state of the world at present time.   For us to have any faith we must have a balanced view of who Jesus Christ is.   Is he just human or just fully spiritually divine?   Either of these beliefs are

  Heart Mining It has been about 2 weeks now since we moved into my parents’ old home.   The primary purpose was obvious.   To move there to reorganize the place.   But the secondary or subsequent purposes are not as obvious.   We have been through almost everything in the kitchen, not without a struggle, and almost everything has a memory.   Everything has a discovery of characters attached to it. For example, my Mom’s old deep fryer was left with memories of fresh homemade fries cooked twice and crispy just as only a Belgian Mom could cook them.   I just want to let you know that we, Belgians at heart, are very proud of our French fries.   No one will take this away from us.   So, with a memory is always linked to a relationship.   I related to my mother most through cooking and even I became a baker/cook.   Now I can make fries the way my mother used to.   With memories come possibilities.   You can see that following a primary purpose is a secondary purpose and that purpose dee

Email Me Please don’t but only if you want!    I am reading a book that inspires me very much.   It is called, “Out of The Comfort Zone” by George Verwer. Who was the international director of Operation Mobilization.   I met George in 1984, when I was with OM in Belgium on a summer mission trip from here Canada.   He was a good example to me. He went to be with the Lord just recently. In this book, he writes about a book of Charles Swindoll, “Grace Awakening”.   In that book, I paraphrase that if we understood vertical Grace, we would be able to live the horizontal Grace. We have been saved by Grace, let us give that Grace to others with them present or not.   If we were to ask any Christian of any church, if his or her church lives in unity, he or she probably would give an affirmative answer.   Yet in our spirit, we can judge silently and not offend anyone right?   I do it, we all do it and it offends God.   He knows our every thought (1 Chronicles 28:9)     We have lowered our

  Don’t be so hard on yourself. Don’t be so hard on yourself.  I used to hear that often in my downcast state of depression.  Maybe people who are often depressed are too hard on themselves.  There seems to be a commonality. Have you heard that also? Maybe too often? What it meant in my life was that I would be anxious about what my accomplishment be or be worried about other people’s opinion were.   Beat myself regularly because of my past mistakes. Look at me, my past still matters to me more than my present.   Consequently, living in the past was poor thought management because while our children were growing up, I forgot some of the history.   I was editing out the filming of my own life.   So, living in the past cheats you out of quality of your life.   I recommend living in the present and looking forward to the future.   Living in the past can leave the person filled with regrets.   My comfort is in God, and I can trust him that he will use my own troubles and use them

  Embrace Yourself Embracing yourself, we hear a lot about it these days.  What does it mean? Well, personally, I think relating to my mental illness it means that I had to pass from hating it to welcoming it as part of my life.   Make the most of every opportunity.   Use this weakness as a strength to push myself and motivate myself to be better in my life.   My mental illness is no longer a motivation to do wrong but to do right.   My mental illness is not a sin but a weakness that I can use as a stepping stool instead of a crutch.   This is my success story.   What is yours? Please leave a comment below. Embracing yourself is like giving yourself a big bear hug.   Not for what you have accomplished but for who you are.   You are a special person. I was watching a descriptive educational video at my church of the birth process inside the womb.   It was so interesting!   The conclusion I came up with is that anyone who makes it through the birth canal is in my eyes, A WINNER!

                             The Mirror This reflects who I am.  My past is my mirror and out of this mirror we can both learn from.  Whatever I share in these blogs I had to experience it myself. Here it is… I ran from God in my past but no matter how far I ran away from him .   I find that in the end I could not hide. I had to acknowledge my problems before him, even though he knows everything. For my own good I had to confess my faults to go forward.  Something similar is  taught everywhere in self-improvement books?   Well, it comes from the Bible. Whenever, someone runs and hide from God they run into problems, severe problems like all kinds of addictions and other sins.   The only answer is to run toward him and be loved by him. You, who have never been loved.    Like the Beatles’ song: “All you need is Love”.   It is true to a point, but sex is not love.   In a marriage setting, it is an expression of love.    Sex was created by God for marriage as a blessing.   It is not

  A Splash of Coffee, Perhaps?   Some things happen to you that are weird and close to be classified as miracles.   Since I do not believe in luck, what happened to me was a miracle.   Now that both my wife and I are retired we do not have to go anywhere past noon.   The Life.   On top of that we both can enjoy breakfast in bed.   I prepare the breakfast (toasts) and coffee.   Keep it simple! This morning I poured the coffee from the machine to a carafe to carry it upstairs.   For that, I needed my portable stereo, the cups, and the carafe…. In the whole process, I did not realize that the carafe was tipped toward my feet and that coffee was pouring out onto the floor (5 cm or 2 inches from my bare feet).   As I realized what was happening and lost all that coffee on the ground.   It was a bit later I became fully aware of the miracle.   I could have been burned with hot liquid and not be able to wear shoes or drive.   As it happened, I did not even get splashed. My question to y

  The Seed must die first   I got so excited about the deep subject of death that here I am again bringing it to you with renewed vision.   Most people out there are excited (maybe a bit) about life.   They ‘want a better life’. In John 12:24 Jesus seems to present it from a different angle: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel Of wheat falls to the ground and dies, It remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”   To me, it simply means that to experience the true life you and I need to figuratively die (Be careful here I did not mean literally).   It just means that your self-desired life must die first before you can live a life where you will be truly satisfied.   Not seeking self, but God’s desires for your life.   The seed must die in the ground before there is an explosion of life producing a plant and fruits.   Just think of what will become of you when figuratively you will die, and life eternal will come to you in its fullness.   In life’s princ