From the Heart by B.Demaere

  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

  Thought Infestation (Jeremiah 4:14) Are we taking God seriously?   Could there be any bad or evil thoughts in us even though we are saved?   Are we immune?   Are we clean?   We need forgiveness, oh but we are forgiven.   What about confession and repentance?   Could God be looking at us and see maybe even a little bit of fault in us?   Are we too proud to admit that we need his help? When I read this verse out of the Amplified version of the English Bible, it is very close to the French translation that I read. “O Jerusalem, wash your heart From wickedness, That you may be saved. How long will your wicked and Immoral thoughts Lodge within you?   I know some of you like me are saved, but why do we let evil thoughts lodge within us (Ouch!)   In fact, in the first part of the verse in French, it says: “Jerusalem, if you want to be delivered wash or clean your heart of its wickedness. How long will you be indwelled by evil thoughts?” And verse 15, does not leave

  Help Me God! (Psalm 43) As I meditated on this Psalm, I did not realize that today would be Thursday and that the post had to be published today which I am doing right now. The psalmist is experiencing adversity.   Does that ever happen to you?   Life can be chaotic. Most of my chaos happens because of my attitude to situations I find myself in.   They are all reactions filled with a lot of up-and-down emotions. Most of my situations and feelings through them can be dealt with the Light and Truth of God. Verse 3 (French Bible transliteration) “Make me see your Light and Truth, May they guide me to your holy mountain, (Light) May they drive me to your dwelling!” (Truth)   Light guides us Truth leads us.   Verse 4- Don’t you feel his desire to be with God and where he really is? He, then, realizes his mistake and notes that God is indeed his greatest JOY. Folks, there is nothing else that will bring you JOY like God.   Money is futile and does not last and s

  Move On You might be wondering what I have been up to during the last month and a half.   Hello everyone! How have you all been doing? My wife and I have made a huge move of over 1000 km south of where we were.   Over here it is not as cold as up North. A lot of us like our comfort zone maybe a bit too much.   So much so that when its time to move we say: “No way! I like it here”.   We might like our comfort zone so much that we might miss entirely what God has in store for us. Our comfort zone could become our danger zone very quickly. Well, all this to tell you our move was far from being easy.   We had to push through and when we had gone through one obstacle.   Boom! There came up another one unrelated.   That we are exhausted.   We are no longer spring chicken; my wife and I are in our 60s and we feel it. Along with my mental illness, we had many challenges. For my encouragement and yours perhaps! I have Psalms 42 and 43 to share and more precisely verse 5 and 11 in

 Just a note that a new post is coming up on November 7 It will be the story of my « holiday » this past month and what I learned in the process. Thank you for your continued support  Bernard Demaere 

  Times might be a bit tougher in our world, but I want to encourage you with this verse in 2 Timothy 4:7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Here Paul is giving us a message, a teaching.  He is giving us a vision, a goal. What if I put that verse in a goal mode starting with: My life-goal is to fight the good fight It is to finish the race, and to keep the faith. The good fight is fought by faith The race is being run by faith and through it all we keep the faith. Well, how do we keep our eyes on the goal.  We just keep our eyes on Jesus!(Hebrews 12:2) who is the Author and Finisher of our faith. Note to you all: I will take a bit of rest from this blog for the month of October and hopefully blog again in early November for you all. I appreciate you all and hope you will all be back in November. God bless you all and he loves you. Your friend Bernard

  Plug into Love At first, when I thought of plugging in John 15:4 that speaks about “abiding in Jesus”.   The Holy Spirit turned my thoughts to Love in 1 John 4:16-18. We have known and have believed the love God has for us.   God is love, and those who remain in love remain in God and God remain in them.   This is how love has been perfected in us, so that we can have confidence on the Judgment Day, because we are exactly the same as God is in this world.   There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear expects punishment.   The person who is afraid has not been made perfect in love. Usually, unfortunately we interpret this verse on Love vs Fear as meaning to “not to be afraid of anything”, but as I thought more about these verses, I realized it might mean something entirely different such as our distancing from projects of services around the house or around our community or even church.   Is it not interesting that fear in the context of being hesitant