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Topic: Smiling Outside, Lost Within ..
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Found in Him
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posted
yes Grace is sooooo AMAZING! mmm mmm Lovin You Jesus this mornin! ![[clap2]](graemlins/clap2.gif)
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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Eden
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Personally it is my experience that when people are smiling on the outside, then they are also usually fairly happy within. I'm not saying that they are necessarily happy within "because of Jesus", since it is probably possible to be happy "without having Jesus".
So yes, they could be smiling on the outside and if they do not have Jesus, then in the long term they are "lost inside".
But if the title of this Topic means to imply that people can be "smiling on the outside, but lost within", generally it is my experience that if people are smiling on the outside, that they are also reasonably happy within. The two kinda go together, I think.
love, Eden
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Found in Him
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A-M-E-N!!! What a great video to start your Monday off!
![[thumbsup2]](graemlins/thumbsup2.gif) Carol!
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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Found in Him
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I love it Carol!..I can relate to this woman...I was DESPERATE for Him! I will never be the same since He responded to me either!!!
Do you know that when I knelt at the alter I didn't even have a clue what to say or ask of Him???? All I knew is that my feet barley even touched the floor on my trip to that alter!
Desperation can be an AWESOME thing!!!
Bless you Sis Carol!
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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Carol Swenson
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AMEN Found in Him!
The woman had a hemorrhage that was apparently incurable and was slowly destroying her. One can only imagine the pain and emotional pressure that sapped her strength day after day. When you consider her many disappointments with the doctors and the poverty it brought her, you wonder how she endured as long as she did.
But there was one added burden: according to the Law, she was ceremonially unclean, which greatly restricted both her religious and her social life (Lev. 15:19ff). What a burden she carried!
However, she let nothing stand in her way as she pushed through the crowd and came to Jesus. She could have used any number of excuses to convince herself to stay away from Him. She might have said: “I’m not important enough to ask Jesus for help!” or “Look, He’s going with Jairus, so I won’t bother Him now.” She could have argued that nothing else had helped her, so why try again? Or she might have concluded that it was not right to come to Jesus as a last resort, after visiting all those physicians. However, she laid aside all arguments and excuses and came by faith to Jesus.
What kind of faith did she have? It was weak, timid, and perhaps somewhat superstitious. She kept saying to herself that she had to touch His clothes in order to be healed (see Mark 3:10; 6:56). She had heard reports of others being healed by Jesus (Mark 5:27), so she made this one great attempt to get through to the Saviour. She was not disappointed: Jesus honored her faith, weak as it was, and healed her body.
There is a good lesson here for all of us. Not everybody has the same degree of faith, but Jesus responds to faith no matter how feeble it might be. When we believe, He shares His power with us and something happens in our lives. There were many others in that crowd who were close to Jesus and even pressing against Him, but they experienced no miracles. Why? Because they did not have faith. It is one thing to throng Him and quite something else to trust Him.
The woman planned to slip away and get lost in the crowd, but Jesus turned and stopped her. Tenderly, He elicited from her a wonderful testimony of what the Lord had done for her. Why did Jesus deal with her publicly? Why did He not simply permit her to remain anonymous and go her way?
For one thing, He did it for her own sake. He wanted to be to her something more than a healer: He wanted to be her Saviour and Friend as well. He wanted her to look into His face, feel His tenderness, and hear His loving words of assurance. By the time He finished speaking to her, she experienced something more than physical healing. He called her “daughter” and sent her on her way with a benediction of peace (Mark 5:34). To “be made whole” meant much more than receiving mere physical healing. Jesus had given her spiritual healing as well! (Wiersbe)
She is the only one Jesus called "Daughter".
Posts: 6787 | From: Colorado | Registered: Dec 2007
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Found in Him
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On the streets of town one day, Jesus was mobbed by people bumping, jostling, elbowing one another in an attempt to get close to this famous teacher and miracle-worker. In the crowd was a middle-aged woman who suffered from chronic bleeding. Over the last dozen years she had gone to doctor after doctor, hoping that one of them could heal her. She'd spent all her savings, and in the end was no better, but getting worse. In our day she would have had a hysterectomy and been done with it, but in those days no one could help.
On the outside she was a respectable woman. Inside she felt ashamed, alone, desperate. Why me? What's the use? Is there any hope? But even still she hoped and yearned.
Of course, each of the people who crowded around Jesus that day had a need. For some it was family strife, for others a son or daughter who had gone astray. Some were struggling with debt, others had physical ailments. Outside they looked normal, but inside -- when they took time to think about it -- many of them were hurting, drifting, struggling, lost. Jesus spoke of them as "sheep without a shepherd."
But on this particular day, the hemorrhaging woman, weak though she was, wouldn't let others get between her and Jesus. She pushed and slid and shouldered her way until she was within reach. "If only I can touch the hem of his robe," she thought, "I'll be healed." And so she reached out, and suddenly, what she had longed for these many years happened. The bleeding stopped. Inside she felt an unmistakable healing.
Abruptly, the crowd which had surged along with Jesus halted, because the Master himself had paused. He was looking around. As the murmuring hushed, you could hear him say, "Who touched me?"
"Everyone's been touching you, Master," answered one of his disciples. "With this many people, they can't help but touch you."
"Someone touched me," Jesus repeated. "I felt power flow out of me." He turned around, looking, searching, until his eyes met the healed woman's, and she was suddenly very afraid. She fell down in front of him and poured out the whole painful story. Every hurt, every sorrow, every doubt. And then she looked up and said through tears of joy, "But now I'm healed!"
I can see Jesus looking tenderly at her saying, "Daughter, your faith in me has made you whole. When you go from this place, you will go in God's peace and be healed from your disease."
Her eyes weren't the only ones shedding tears that day. Because in this woman -- this fellow villager, this fellow sojourner -- the townspeople saw their own struggles and inner loneliness, and heard those words for themselves: "Your faith in me has made you whole. Go in peace and be healed."
If you feel desperation akin to that woman's struggle, why don't you reach out to Jesus in a simple prayer:
"Jesus, to be honest, sometimes I feel very lost inside. Very empty, very lonely. Please come to me and make me a whole person again. Show me the path, and I'll walk it with you. Please, Jesus.. because I believe that you don't just love that woman only, but you love me, too. Amen."
This story can be found in Mark 5:25-34 and Luke 8:43-48.
Ralph F. Wilson
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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