Jesus Calls Women, Too

John 4:27-30,39-42 NASB1995: At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why do You speak with her?” So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” They went out of the city, and were coming to Him…

From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. Many more believed because of His word; and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.” 

I just love this passage of Scripture! First, I love how Jesus spent time talking with this woman who he knew to be a Samaritan, who Jews usually did not associate with, who he knew to be a woman, and who he knew had had several husbands and the one she was presently living with was not her husband. He took time with her to gently explain to her the truth of who he was, and the truth of the gospel of our salvation, and what the future held for all who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ to be Lord of their lives.

Not only that, but he intentionally asked her to call for her husband, knowing that she did not have a husband, but in order to open a further conversation with her with regard to what was coming next, after Jesus’ death and resurrection (although he did not specifically mention that). He let her know that the worship of God would no longer be in any specific physical location, but that we would worship God “in spirit and in truth,” in our inner beings, via biblical faith in Jesus Christ. And he let her know he was the Messiah.

But Jesus’ intention went beyond just sharing with her the gospel and to let her know that he was the Messiah, the Christ who was to come. For he who knew all about her knew that she would then go and tell the people of her town, including the men (or primarily or only the men), all about her conversation with Jesus, and that she would invite them to come and see the one who is the Christ. And he knew that, because of the woman’s testimony, that many people would believe in Jesus as the Savior of the world.

So, Jesus didn’t ignore her because she was a woman, or because she was a sinful woman, but he spoke with her gently, and he taught her the truth of the gospel, and then he used her to bring many more people to faith in Jesus Christ, because he knew that she would believe him, and that she would spread the good news to the people, including to men, and that because of her testimony many more people would trust in Jesus Christ to be Lord and Savior of their lives. And that is awesome!! She was willing!

And that truly ministers to me because I am a woman, and I did have a time in my life when I was out of the will of God, but God didn’t give up on me, and he brought me back, and then he sent me to the internet to share with the world the truth of the Scriptures and the gospel of our salvation, in truth, in the manner in which Jesus and his New Testament apostles taught it, and not how it is so commonly being taught today in a very twisted way which does not represent the true gospel of our salvation from sin.

And this ministers to me, too: For all the times in my life where I was walking by faith, and I was obeying God, which was the majority of my life, I kept getting mistreated by men, many of them serving as pastors, who had no regard for me, for I was a woman and I didn’t have credentials that made me important in their sight. And so some of them misjudged me because of my sincerity of faith in the Lord and my seriousness of purpose in speaking the word of the Lord, and many of them just cast me aside as a nobody.

But Jesus did not! He loved me! And he had a plan and a purpose for my life, just as he did for the woman at the well. And it was to use me to share the truths of God’s word with the people of the world, which includes men, via writing down what he is teaching me each day during my times spent with him in his word, and placing these writings on the internet for anyone to read who will read what the Lord gives me to write. So, although I was mostly rejected by men, God called me, and he is using me for his glory.

[Matthew 26:6-13; Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 5:25-34; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 2:36-38; Luke 7:36-50; Luke 10:38-42; Luke 24:1-12; John 2:1-11; John 4:1-42; John 8:1-11; John 20:1-18; Acts 2:17-18; Acts 21:9; 1 Corinthians 11:5]

Jesus Calls Women, Too

An Original Work / January 28, 2026

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

In Spirit and In Truth

John 4:21-26 NASB1995: Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”

If you have not read this story before, I encourage you to read it in its full context (John 4:1-42), but I will try to summarize it for you here:

Jesus was on his way to Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria. Now, traditionally Jews had no dealings with Samaritans who were a mixed race of Jews and Gentiles. The Jews traditionally despised the Samaritans, and often they would go around Samaria rather than to walk through it, from what I understand. So for Jesus to walk through Samaria, and then to have a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well was highly unusual. But he asked her for a drink of water, and then they talked for a little while.

And Jesus used this opportunity to share with her the message of the gospel, essentially. And he used the subject of water as a catalyst to speak to her of living water which has to do with our salvation from sin and our eternal life with God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives via biblical faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of our lives, in death to sin and in walks of obedience to our Lord’s commands, all in the power of God. This water refreshes us spiritually and it makes us new in Christ Jesus.

Then Jesus told the woman to go call her husband, fully knowing that she had no husband, that she had had five husbands, and the man she was living with presently was not her husband. And after she confessed to him that she had no husband, Jesus declared to her what he knew of her history. So she perceived that he must be a prophet. And following that she stated that her people’s fathers worshipped in the mountain where she was located, but the Jews claimed that only in Jerusalem was the place of worship of God.

What Jesus said to her next is very relevant to our lives today and to the church today. For, when Jesus Christ died on that cross, and he rose from the dead, and he ascended back to his Father in heaven, and he sent his Holy Spirit to indwell his followers, the physical Jewish temple of God was no longer the holy temple of God. Now God, by his Spirit, lives within all who believe in Jesus Christ, and we now are the temple of God. Absolutely no physical building is “the church,” but we who believe in Jesus are the church.

So, we do not have to go to any specific location to worship God. We now worship him in spirit and in truth in any location or day of the week or time of day. For he dwells within us, his body. So no building called “church” is “the house of God.” We who believe in Jesus Christ are the house of God. No room in those physical buildings called “church” is the sanctuary of God, and we are not standing on holy ground when we enter into a physical building or into a particular room in that building, which is not of God, but of man.

So please understand that the church is not a place you go to and then you leave until you go back the next week. The church is the body of Christ who by faith in Jesus Christ were crucified with Christ in death to sin, and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but as servants of righteousness in walks of obedience to our Lord, by his grace and in his power. And we can meet together anywhere, even on the internet, or via a phone call, or via a video chat. Meeting is what matters.

But not just the fact that we meet together, but with what purpose we gather together, whether or not our purpose is biblical. For the Scriptures teach that we are all ministers, and that we all are to minister to one another, and we all are to be teaching, counseling, exhorting, and encouraging one another in our walks of faith in obedience to our Lord and away from all that is worldly and fleshly and sinful. And we are to be warning each other against all that is false so we can follow after the truth.

[Acts 2:14-18,42-47; Romans 12:1-8; 1 Corinthians 12:1-31; 1 Corinthians 14:1-5; Galatians 6:1; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:1-16; Ephesians 5:15-21; Ephesians 6:10-20; Philippians 2:1-8; Colossians 3:12-16; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:13; Hebrews 10:23-25; James 5:19-20]

As the Deer 

By Martin J. Nystrom

Based off Psalm 42:1

As the deer panteth for the water

So my soul longeth after You

You alone are my heart's desire

And I long to worship You

You alone are my strength, my shield

To You alone may my spirit yield

You alone are my heart's desire

And I long to worship You

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZv3jzOTE70

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In Spirit and In Truth

An Original Work / January 28, 2026

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Pray At All Times

“With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” (Ephesians 6:18-20 NASB1995)

What is prayer? It is talking to God, yes, but it is also listening to God. Prayer is not a one-way but a two-way conversation with our Lord. And the Scriptures teach that we are to pray without ceasing, not only meaning being regular and consistent in our prayers with God, but in having open communication with our Lord 24/7 to where he can speak to us at any time of day or night, and we can speak to him at any time of day or night, no matter what else is going on around us. For prayer is communion with God.

And what does it mean to pray in the Spirit? It means if we are praying for our fellow believers in Christ, our prayers should be being led of the Spirit. And if we are not certain of God’s will in any given situation, I believe we should pray, along with our requests, “Yet not my will but Thine be done,” as Jesus prayed to God the Father in the garden. The Scriptures teach us the will of God, so according to the teachings of the Scriptures we can pray in the will of God, but where his will is not defined we may not know his will. 

Now who are the saints? They are not all those designated as such by a particular religious organization, according to their criteria. But they are all who by God-persuaded and God-gifted faith in Jesus Christ have been crucified with Christ in death to sin, and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but now as servants of our Lord in walks of obedience to his commands. They are all who are now walking according to the Spirit and no longer according to the flesh.

So, if we are to be praying for the saints, we are to be praying for our fellow believers in Jesus Christ who in God’s power have denied self, died to sin, and who are walking in obedience to his commands. And this doesn’t necessitate that they are all presently walking with the Lord as they ought. So, for some of them we may be praying that God will increase their faith and bless their ministry, while others we may pray for them to come to their senses and to forsake their sins and to return to fellowship with Jesus Christ.

And if we are praying for those we know who are sharing the message of the gospel with the people of the world (and this is not limited to just pastors and missionaries, but to all believers in Jesus Christ who are sharing the gospel), first we should make certain that “the gospel” message they are sharing is the same as what Jesus and his New Testament apostles taught, and not these watered down “gospel” messages so many are teaching which are leading people to hell on the promise of heaven, because they teach lies.

For just because someone claims they are a “Christian” or that they “believe in Jesus,” or that what they are sharing is “the gospel of Christ,” it does not mean necessarily that they are that or that they are doing that, in truth. For it is very popular these days to say, “I believe in Jesus,” and then to expect forgiveness of sins and a guarantee of heaven, and then for those who “believe” to never surrender their lives to Christ, to never make God the Lord of their lives, to never depart from theirs sins, and to never obey God.

So when you pray for others, test the spirits to make certain that they are truly of God. Test them against the Scriptures taught in their correct biblical context. For many liars and deceivers are pulling Scriptures out of context and are teaching them in ways which are antibiblical and anti-God. And people by the masses are listening to these liars and they are following the lies, and many have convinced themselves that they are secured for entry into heaven even if they continue living like hell and never obey God. 

But Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:1-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Acts 26:18] 

An Original Work / January 27, 2026

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

The Full Armor of God

“Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:13-17 NASB1995)

So, what is the armor of God? And how do we take up the full armor of God? Well, it isn’t some kind of religious ritual we go through. And it isn’t just in the words that we speak. And it isn’t reciting the written words in some kind of ritualistic religious exercise. But it is done in every day practical living, i.e. in putting the word of the Lord into practice in our daily lives. So, it is all that God has provided for us to live holy lives, pleasing to the Lord, in service to our Lord, and in spiritual warfare against our enemy, the devil.

For what are the devil’s schemes against us? His main goal is to get us to distrust God and his word and to believe the lies being spoken in the name of Christ and in the name of the gospel. He wants us to believe that faith in Jesus Christ requires nothing of us other than a verbal profession of faith in Christ and an acknowledgement of belief in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. He wants us believing that we are not required of God to die with Christ to sin and to walk with God in obedience to his commands, by the Spirit.

But Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

For by God-gifted faith in Jesus Christ, which is not of our own doing, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but as slaves to righteousness in walks of obedience to God’s commands. We are no longer to permit sin to reign in our mortal bodies to make us obey its desires. For if sin is what we obey, it results in death. But if obedience to God is what we obey, it results in sanctification, and its end is eternal life with God (see Romans 6:1-23).

So, we must cling to the truth of God’s word, and we must refute the lies of the enemy coming from the mouths of some pastors and book authors and famous people and evangelists and actors and government heads. For so many people today are teaching a half-truth (false) gospel created in the minds of human flesh via removing Scriptures from their appropriate context and twisting them to say what they do not say if taught in the correct biblical context. And many people are following the lies all the way to hell.

So, if we are putting on the armor of God daily so that we can fight against the schemes of the devil, then we need to be students of the Scriptures, taught in the correct biblical context, who are putting them into practice in our every day lives. We must be those who have, by faith in Jesus, died to sin and who are now walking in obedience to our Lord’s commands, all in the power of God, and not in human flesh. And we must be those who are sharing the truth of the gospel with others for their salvation from sin.

And we must be living righteously, in surrender of our will to the will of God for our lives, no longer living as slaves to sin but as servants of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our faith in Jesus Christ must be biblical faith which is of God and which convinces us of our sinfulness and of our need to die to sin and to obey our Lord and his commands. And we must stand strong in our faith and on what the Word of God teaches, in context, so that we can refute the lies of the enemy and share with the people the truth from God’s holy word.

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:1-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Acts 26:18] 

To My Beloved  

Based off I Peter 5:6-9; Ephesians 6:10-20; James. 4:4-10

An Original Work / November 14, 2011

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Be strong in the grace of Christ, and

Put on His full armor in your fight

Against the enemy of your souls,

And resist him with all your might.

Take up the shield of your faith within you.

Salvation’s helmet – you put it on.

Put on the belt of truth, 

And walk in the Spirit,

And you’ll not be ashamed.

Love your Lord Jesus; call His Name. 

Call on your Lord and Savior, Jesus, and

Make Him Lord and King of your hearts.

Obey all of His teachings He has given

To you to follow in all His ways. 

Repent of your sins. Return to your God.

Follow Him where’er He leads you now.

Humble yourselves in full

Surrender to His will

For your lives today.

Bow before Him, and humbly pray. 

Be strong in the grace of Christ, and

Obey your Lord in ev’rything, always

Keeping His teachings in your hearts near you.

Walk with Christ in ev’ry way.

Resist the devil. He will flee from you.

Draw near to God, and He’ll be near you.

Wash your hands you sinners

And double minded.

Weep and wail o’er sin.

With Christ, your new lives begin.

https://vimeo.com/125863190

The Full Armor of God

An Original Work / January 27, 2026

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Be Strong in The Lord

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:10-12 NASB1995)

What should it look like if we are “strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might”? It doesn’t mean being purposefully obnoxious with the full intent to hurt others. It doesn’t mean we go around yelling and screaming at everyone in a rant. Strength is not about being a bully. For when I am weak, then am I strong in the strength of the Lord. It does mean being determined to hold to the truth of the Scriptures, and to not compromise with the world, and to speak the truth as Jesus spoke it, and to live what we say we believe.

It means we do not give the devil a foothold in our lives, and we are not chameleons who blend in with our environment in order to be liked by other humans. We are not double-minded people who sway back and forth, as on a teeter-totter, who go with the crowd so that others will not think that we are weird. And it has nothing to do with how many Scripture verses we have memorized or how scholarly we are in biblical Greek or how good we are at public speaking. It has everything to do with being led of the Holy Spirit.

For if we are strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, it has everything to do with the Lord and not with us or our opinions. We can only be strong, as this talks about, as our lives are surrendered to the Lord to do his will, in submission to his Lordship over our lives, in walks of obedience to his commands, as empowered by God and not by human flesh. But it does have to do with us being consistent and trustworthy and steadfast and immovable with regard to holding to the truths of God’s word, by his grace.

For we can only stand against the schemes of the devil if we are following the ways of our Lord and we are doing as our Lord commands, in practice. We can only stand against the devil’s schemes if we are willing to be hated, rejected, mocked, slandered, and cast aside as unwanted for standing on the truth of God’s word, even at the hands of the scholarly and the educated who have credentials and thus deem themselves superior to us who are lacking in fleshly credentials. We cannot be intimidated by them at all.

I am certain there are all kinds of scholarly people out there bearing their credentials who have a whole lot of head knowledge but their lives are not surrendered to Jesus Christ to doing his will, but they are busy performing before other humans in order to be accepted by them. And so they are not strong in the strength of the Lord, and they are not able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil, for their trust is in the flesh and not in the Lord. And so many are following marketing schemes instead of God’s plans.

So, just saying that worldly credentials do not necessarily equal godly lives committed to the will of God and to the truth of the Scriptures. So, just because someone goes by a title, it does not mean that person even knows the Lord intimately. What God is looking for is those who will humble themselves before the Lord, in submission to him as Lord, who are willing to forfeit the things of this world in order to serve the Lord with their lives in being his witnesses and in sharing the gospel truth without compromise.

For Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:1-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Acts 26:18] 

For Our Nation  

An Original Work / September 11, 2012

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Recording Via Gerry Peters, music producer and arranger

Bombs are bursting. Night is falling.

Jesus Christ is gently calling

You to follow Him in all ways.

Trust Him with your life today.

Make Him your Lord and your Savior.

Turn from your sin. Follow Jesus.

He will forgive you of your sin;

Cleanse your heart, made new within.

Men betraying: Our trust fraying.

On our knees to God we’re praying,

Seeking God to give us answers

That are only found in Him.

God is sovereign over all things.

Nothing from His mind escaping.

He has all things under His command,

And will work all for good.

Jesus Christ is gently calling

You to follow Him in all ways.

Men deceiving: We’re believing

In our Lord, and interceding

For our nation and its people

To obey their God today.

He is our hope for our future.

For our wounds He offers suture.

He is all we need for this life.

Trust Him with your life today.

https://vimeo.com/379406352

Be Strong in The Lord

An Original Work / January 27, 2026

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Overcoming Obstacles

“But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” (James 4:6 NASB1995)

I was in third grade in elementary school. I was called to a meeting of adults in the basement of the school. They asked me if my parents ever fought. Next thing I recall is that I was sent back to second grade. They said I was not ready for third grade. I didn’t know it then but I had difficulty with reading comprehension, which no one tried to correct. And I did poorly in any school subjects that required reading. And I graduated high school with a 1.4 GPA (D average), and I started college reading on a fourth grade level. 

In college I did well in my music classes, but anything involving reading I did poorly in, again. I did take a class to help me in my reading, and I did get up to 7th grade level. After about 3 years of college I realized I was not going to be able to graduate, and so I took a typing class, and I got a clerical job. Then I got married, and we started a family, and so now all my work was either at home, or it was volunteer work in the church gatherings (usually clerical work or in music), or in the community, or at my children’s schools.  

My father told me once that he could probably find something to talk about with me, “even though you are not as intelligent as my other children.” And I had pastors who criticized me because of my love for the Lord, and because of my desire to serve the Lord with my life, and because I stood on the truth of God’s word, and I would not compromise truth, and I would not tell lies. One pastor told me he was warned about people like me, i.e. “people with strong convictions,” and he wanted me to let him be God’s voice to me.

Throughout my life I kept getting the “smack down.” Sometimes I felt like a basketball being continually slam dunked into the hoop, or like someone drowning who was pushed down underneath the water with the intention to drown me and to silence me. Satan was fighting very hard against me to destroy my life and to keep me silent and to dishearten and to discourage me so that I would run away and give up. And there were times when I did, in fact, run away and give up. But God didn’t give up on me. He had a plan.

And get this! God took a woman, then of 54 years old, who had poor reading comprehension, who had been rejected over and over, and told that she was a nothing and that she was to shut up and to follow man’s ways of doing things. And he called me to his service. And he had me reading all kinds of news articles and historical and medical and scientific articles which I would never have imagined myself comprehending, for he was showing me my world so that I would have an idea of what is going on in the world today.

And he had me reading the Scriptures from beginning to end, over and over again, and writing about passages of Scripture I would never have comprehended before. And he was making the word of God practical and applicable to our world today. And then he had me start writing songs (never done this before) and poems (not like any I had ever written before) and doing video talks (I’m not a public speaker) and making Christian memes, and giving testimonies, and none of this was possible in my own flesh!!

And all this was God’s grace to me! All of this was God doing in my life all that I would never even have thought of or dreamed of doing ever, and all that I would never have imagined possible. The proud? They put me down. They rejected me. They cast me aside as worthless and not worth their time. And many of them still do. But God humbled me through those experiences, and he taught me to depend on him in all things, and to believe him, that he could do with me and in me what I would never have thought possible EVER! 

So, the Lord is leading me to write this today to encourage anyone reading this that our God is the God of the impossible, and he can do in the lives of those who humble themselves before him what they would never have imagined possible for them to do, because so many people treated them as though they were not worth their time, as though they would never amount to anything. But God chose the despised and the unappreciated and the weak and the rejected to shame the strong.. (see 1 Corinthians 1:26-31) 

An Original Work / January 26, 2026

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

If The Lord Wills

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (James 4:13-17 NASB1995)

Now, there is nothing wrong with making plans. For some things we have to plan in advance so that we are prepared and so that other people who are part of those plans are informed, and so that we can set a date, and put it on our calendars. What is wrong is when we exclude God from our plans, i.e. when we don’t inquire of him first to make certain these are his plans or that they do not contradict with his plans, and/or when we presume that we have the right to chart our own course and to go our own way, absent of God.

And what do I mean by that? Well, God made us, and he has a plan for our lives, and as those who profess faith in Jesus Christ, we are to be those who are following his plan for our lives. We are not to be deciding our own course, going our own way, making all our own decisions, presuming that whatever we have planned is under our control, and that life is going to go the way that we decide, and that God is going to be okay with that. That shows arrogance on our part and that we are not surrendered to God.

We need to pray often, “Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.” We need to learn to inquire of the Lord to make certain that our plans are in line with his plans. And even if we have plans, we must make room in our minds and hearts for the reality that life doesn’t always go the way that we have planned, but life can be unpredictable, and we need to be able to go with that when life as we know it changes directions. And I have learned to say more often, “Lord willing, we will do this or that,” thus resting in my Lord.

When we see our lives as those who are followers of Jesus Christ, and we see that he is our shepherd, and that we are to be following his leading, it helps us to keep in perspective that he should be the one running our lives, and not us. And so we should be inquiring of him as to what direction he would have us go next, and then we should be going wherever he sends us in doing what he has for us to do, and in saying whatever he gives us to say. For this is what it means to be a follower of Christ, with him in the lead.

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:1-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Acts 26:18] 

An Original Work / January 26, 2026

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love