joyancejames

Category: faith

  • The rapids!

    Here comes life lessons inspired by the rafting along the Ganges river in Rishikesh. The decision to go for the approximately 14 km long rafting in the Ganges had to brave lot of apprehension and fear from my best-half Shalom Philip, before her final half-hearted approval. We started on the calm waters, before proceeding to the rapids. The rapids with their increasing grades of severity along with their equally creative names are at first a horrifying experience for the newbies.

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    Brave-hearts: Smile before the scream!
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    In action: not so calm waters

    After a couple of rapids we realized that it required all of us in the raft to keep the raft afloat in the rapids and we needed to balance the weight. Panicking and freezing we realized were the most counter productive things one could do in a rapid, when we need to row all the more harder. Once we got the hang of it, we began to enjoy the rapids and much to my surprise, Shalom not only craved for rapids more than me but also scoffed at the less severe ones which could barely rock the raft at their best. Next we knew, we were eagerly waiting to get over with the calmer intervening waters and for the rapids to give us the adrenaline rush.

    Life is so much like the raft on the river: rapids interspersed with calmer waters in between. The calm waters allow us to catch our breath, enjoy the scenic beauty around, socialize with co-rafters and wait for the on coming rapids with anticipation. The rapids give us a much needed jolt to break our reverie, break the monotony of the life and bring a new perspective. Once used to the calm-rapid-calm-rapid routine, nothing can exchange the experience the rapid offers.

    God feeds the birds but He doesn’t put it in their nests, they need to exercise their wings for it. All birds are born with wings but they need to be thrown out of their nests in order to fly, sometimes we too need to be thrown out of our comfort zones to discover our full potentials. In a similar vein we need to exercise and flex our muscles in the much needed rapids of our lives to thrive and live a much fuller life.

    It is not during the day that the light-house shines the brightest to guide the ships, sometimes darkness is essential to shine the brightest and fulfill the purpose. But for Goliath, David would have never known what he was capable of. We too need challenges bigger than our fears, rapids fiercer than our imaginations to push us beyond the limits we have placed on ourselves, to realize and unearth our truest selves, to become what God created us to be.

    Brace yourself for the adventure, embrace your challenges, love the rapids, don’t just live, you were meant to thrive!

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    On the beach- much needed break!

     

  • Prayers that move God

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    “It’s been said that faith may move mountains, but prayer moves God”- Joni Eareckson Tada

    Desperate prayers

    We live in desperate times and desperate times need desperate prayers. One classical example of heights defying desperation to see God move is seen in the gospels in the story of 4 friends who lower a crippled man from a hole-in-the-roof in front of Jesus in a room flooded with people that they couldn’t enter. Sure enough this desperate attempt to reach him moved Jesus who honored their faith. He still honors spiritual desperadoes. Matthew 5 says that blessed are we when we are at the end of our rope, with less of us there is more for God and His rule.

    Bold prayers

    Impossibility and scarcity don’t figure in God’s dictionary, abundance and omnipotence define Him. He specializes in the impossible, especially when we feel out of our league, that’s His league and the field is set for Him to move. Bold prayers honor God because they honor His omnipotence and highlight our dependence on Him.

    “When logic is screaming ‘no’, faith is silently whispering ‘yes’. Nothing honors God more than a big dream that is way beyond our ability to accomplish. Why? Because there’s no way we can take credit for it. And nothing is better for our spiritual development than a big dream because it keeps us on our knees in raw dependence on God.” – Mark Batterson The Circle Maker  

     United prayers

    Quoting Jesus in Matthew 18, “When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action.”

    Few things bring more joy to a father’s heart than to see his children play and grow together in harmony. Father in heaven is moved when His children pray together, couples kneel together, and unity in prayer is an image of the unity in the trinity. United, harmonized prayers make way for the supernatural move of God. When we are united in prayer, we are in essence fulfilling the prayer of Jesus in John 17, “I pray for them all to be joined together as one even as you and I, Father, are joined together as one. I pray for them to become one with us so that the world will recognize that you sent me.”

    Persistent prayers

    Jesus shared the story of a persistent widow in the gospel of Luke. This lady was fighting her battle for justice and because of her persistent knocking on the unjust judge’s doors; he relented and granted her justice. Her determination and relentlessness make her the epitome of persistence. Perseverance and persistence quotient (PQ) was what Paul meant when he encouraged us to pray without ceasing. Hallmark of a persistent pray-er is to refuse to be quite or to quit.

     

    Desperate, bold, united and persistent prayers move you to move the God who honors your prayers.

  • What is love?

    Type “love” in the Google search and it comes up with more than 200 million results in less than a second. Ironically, while being surrounded by this ocean of love definitions most of our hearts’ search engines are still seeking and searching.

    Love began in the Garden of Eden, when God made man in His own image and He still chose to love mankind after they broke His heart. Then He gave us Jesus and set a universal standard of love. His agape love (from ancient Greek, the unselfish, unconditional love of God) is set for all eternity as the highest form of love towards which all men must endeavor and which we must emulate.

    “You hold the weight of the world
    Still I don’t slip through your hands
    Your love is bigger
    Than just an ocean built by man

    I fall again and again
    But You whisper, “You’re still mine”
    You feel the pain of the world
    But You never push mine aside”

    Reach by Peter Furler

    Love finds the way when everyone else gives excuses; it sees the gold in the garbage.

    “Nothing can separate
    Even if I run away
    Your love never fails
    I know I still make mistakes
    You have new mercy for me everyday
    Cause your love never fails

    You stay the same through the ages
    Your love never changes
    There may be pain in the night
    But joy comes in the morning”

    Your Love never fails by Newsboys

    CQ: cuteness quotient overloaded!

    As for me my heart is overwhelmed by love, the love from God poured out into my heart. He gave Jesus to save me for eternity; he gave me Shalom Philip, my best half to give me a taste of heaven on this side of eternity.

    Every man & woman is a lover, in the sense we love somebody or something. May we strive to achieve the excellence of love demonstrated by God. May we see the best in our loves, as the One who first loved us. May we be so sold out and passionate, cause there remains: faith [abiding trust in God and His promises], hope [confident expectation of eternal salvation], love [unselfish love for others growing out of God’s love for me], these three [the choicest graces]; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13 AMP).

    When hemmed in by things bigger and taller than me, I’ll cling on to the one I love.

  • Life in the 2nd gear!

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    Up-hill!

    Slow and unhurried, life in the 2nd gear is best described by the word, “despacito” (people understand more easily, courtesy Luis Fonsi), Spanish for slowly. This writing came out of my first hill driving experience, a drive with my beautiful best-half, Shalom to Morni hills, an hour drive into the hills from Panchkula in Haryana.

    The hills are where you realize the 4th or the 5th gear are not gonna take you anywhere.

    Hills are where cruise control doesn’t work.

    Hills can’t afford slacking off, demand alertness and dexterity and hard-work not to forget the motion-sickness for the sensitive. The constant paranoia of a land-slide on seeing huge rocks and the fear of going off the road into the valley is unsettling, adding to the misery. Life on the hill terrain is a constant pendulum change of gears from 1st-2nd to 3rd and never beyond that. The feet engage in tap dancing with the accelerator, clutch and the brake (unless you’re driving on hill assist on an automatic transmission vehicle).

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    Contrast it with a 4/6 lane highway drive, life is cruising  at speeds faster than the fastest cheetah all the while allowing luxuries of popping a pop-corn, taking a blink-small nap, tapping or grooving into the latest single or even stealing a kiss if you’re flanked by somebody as beautiful as my best-half! Cruise control is the ultimate luxury on a high speed highway. Life is easy, life is fast and life is good.

    But this is for all who’ve experienced the hilly terrain and for those who drive geared vehicle or at least have driven one, life on the hilly territory is hard-work offering little or no opportunity for the drive to admire or appreciate the beautiful landscape. But there’s good-news for all of us on the upward journey, beautiful, breathtaking sights await us at the top and it’s just a matter of time and distance. The top-of-the-world view and the feeling make us forget the arduous and nauseous journey (if at all it was one in the first place). Not to forget the down-hill drive this doesn’t require accelerator, thank God for gravity!

    At times the 2nd gear gives us the power and the control which the 5th gear can’t offer. Enjoy the way on the way, all through the way. Remember He is sovereign period.

    Ain’t no mountain high, no valley too low, when you’ve the grace and the favor of the Lord and a beautiful company beside you!  

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    Wanna join me for the next hill drive?

    Wait, gotta ask my wife!

    Joyance Shalom James

  • Beauty in the scars

    You’d judge me a sadist to associate beauty with scars, but hear me out first before you strike the mallet of judgment. Scars have been underrated and mostly looked down upon with repulsion, hidden away like an unwanted (mis)fortune. We hate scars because they arouse painful, loathsome memories. Scars are aching reminders of a past that cuts down our pride in the present, but they are meant for so much more than that.

    June of 2016 was such a defining moment in the history of our lives, mummy was diagnosed to have a meningioma and was taken up for a craniotomy for which she had to go bald. As Nick Vujicic said, “If you can’t get a miracle then become one”, what was meant to break us only made us stronger. She recuperated astonishingly fast after the surgery and within a month joined her rigorous routine as the Principal of K.V CRPF Gandhinagar.

    “It is not during the day that the light-house shines the brightest to guide the ships, sometimes darkness is essential to shine the brightest and fulfill the purpose.”

    The scar on her scalp is a reminder of the season of darkness in which His light shined forth and reflected through her life, making her a reluctant lighthouse when all she probably wanted to be was a candle on the table. Her scar is a reminder of the strength she drew from God and that she’d have never know the boundaries of her strength till her limits were tested and she was pushed into the unknown waters. Unknown waters scare the best of us because they are like a rude awakening call to remind us that we are not in control and beckon us to rely in the sovereignty of God. Every scar is a flag to His faithfulness and His grace. It’s a reminder that we thrive today because we survived then because His grace was sufficient.

    But for Goliath, David would have never known or realized the seeds of greatness within him and his destiny of being the giant slayer. The stones inside your palm may be small but your giants will fall because it’s not by might or by power but by His Spirit and greater is the One living inside of you than he who is in the world. He sees the beauty in our scars because He has seen the transformation on the potter’s wheel. The scars summon us to step out in faith to step beyond the confines of our logical reasoning.

    PS: It’s been just over a year since mummy’s surgery and she has bounced back stronger than before into what has been a very happening year for us and her life & testimony continue to be an inspiration.19400522_1295306623851251_8468535778258550639_o

  • Good Friday- Yahweh’s valentine gift to humanity!

    Good Friday- Yahweh’s valentine gift to humanity!

    The Darling of heaven traded the adoration of angles for the scorn of mortals, His throne for the crown of thorns, His comfort for the curse of the cross, paying an expensive price so that we might be bypassed from the road He traveled, Good Friday is the culmination of this most extreme form of love.

    Good Friday is God’s intervention by means of personally taking on the man’s perpetual losing battle against sin and death. And when His only begotten cried out, “It is finished”, it indeed was over, finished and done for good.

    Jesus, God’s very own felt abandonment at the cross so that we who have been adopted into His family will never be abandoned.

    Because of the cross now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and walk not according to their whims and fancies but according to the Holy Spirit. Just like His birth (Christmas) divided our time/calendar into two, His death (Good Friday) divides our lives into two halves 1. Under the law.  2. Under grace

    John 19:30, when He cried out, “it is finished” is where the reach of the law ended as it was nailed to the cross completed and fulfilled for us in our place by God’s propitiation.

    I’m reminded of the lyrics of a beautiful song, here it goes:

    “No matter the bumps No matter the bruises
    No matter the scars still the truth is
    The cross has made The cross has made you flawless
    No matter the hurt Or how deep the wound is
    No matter the pain Still the truth is
    The cross has made The cross has made you flawless

    No matter what they say or what you think you are
    The day you called His name He made you flawless” -Flawless by MercyMe

    In Good Friday, Yahweh offers a (I should say “the”) solution for the malady that ails mankind: Jesus. He did not come to start off a religion (as if there was dearth of any), but He came to restore a relationship. He did not fit the “Messiah” mould of the Jews and they overlooked Him, salvation through grace was too easy an idea for the sophisticated minds of the Greeks and they missed Him too. Empires have risen and fallen, kings and kingdoms have disappeared without a trace, but there has only been One King who gave up His only Son to restore the relation with His people. And His offer/solution to mankind still holds true: “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23b.

    God bless.

  • Handiwork

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    He clothes the lilies of the field, cares to feed the sparrows, calls the stars by name, owns the cattle on a thousand hills, but all these came forth with just a command. He spoke and they were. He spoke and nothingness gave way to creation. Yet all this awe inspiring beauty surrounding us came into being with just a verbal command without flexing any divine muscle. They came about as a part of mass production, He spoke and the oceans teemed with life, birds decorated the skyline and the millions of species of living things came about.
    But you and I are not a part of the verbal command and production factory. We are custom made, we’re His handiwork, we bear His fingerprints. He designed us in the womb and supervised the development of our formless embryo. From the 2 celled being to the 100 trillion being reading this, He has monitored the entire process of growth. Why so much interest in one isolated thing of this vast creation?
    Because you and I were made in His image to reflect His glory, no wonder we bear His fingerprints. After 5 days of intense creative activity the Father finally said, “Let us (summoning the other members of the trinity) make man in Our image, according to our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).  What is man? Dust of the earth + Divine breath; fashioned in the image of Yahweh, yet made a little lower than the angels but crowned with glory and honor (Psalms 8:5), His workmanship (Handiwork), created in Christ Jesus for good works (Ephesians 2:10).

    The next time you’re hemmed in by troubles all around and your hope gives way to despair then look out of the window, notice the sparrows and remind yourself of the Father who feeds them, how much more will He not do for someone He created in His own image? As I write this, I’m reminded of the lyrics from the song “Reach” by Peter Furler:

    “You hold the weight of the world
    Still I don’t slip through your hands
    Your love is bigger
    Than just an ocean built by man
    I fall again and again
    But You whisper, “You’re still mine”
    You feel the pain of the world
    But You never push mine aside”

  • Bald & Beautiful

    Hair-fall? Wh-what is that?

    When I first got the news that mummy has a small tumor in her brain which would require a surgery, almost instantly my mind was flooded with images of Neurosurgical patients (thanks to my experience as a house doctor in Neurosurgery ICU) in various states of consciousness with orange adhesives adorning their bare scalps, with pipes and tubes connecting them to monitors, ventilators and their kind. Believe me it is not a very pretty sight, especially when it comes to seeing the people you love in that helpless state.

    As she prepared herself for her new look, she had an assurance that the hair will grow back stronger and longer this time. Something similar happened to my grandma who too underwent a major surgery to remove a brain tumor but God blessed her with healthier hair (waist-length) almost double the pre-operative hair length. It was like Job, his latter end was more blessed than his former and he was blessed with double for his trouble. Mummy was almost thanking God for the waist length hair that would grow back in a few months time. Mummy knew she wasn’t alone.

    “When I walk through deep waters
    I know that You will be with me
    When I’m standing in the fire
    I will not be overcome
    Through the valley of the shadow
    I will not fear

    I am not alone
    I am not alone
    You will go before me
    You will never leave me”- I’m not alone- Kari Jobe

    I love the Amplified Bible’s paraphrase of Philippians 4:13- “I can do all things [which He has called me to do] through Him who strengthens and empowers me [to fulfill His purpose—I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency; I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses me with inner strength and confident peace.]” We also experienced what apostle Paul probably went through when he wrote, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair” 2 Corinthians 4. But one of the most amazing things I noticed was mummy was upbeat all this while ready to take in stride everything that came up.

    And the night before the surgery when she finally got her new look, she told me she is not troubled and disturbed by this surgery as God had given her strength and grace. She recently emerged out of a major depressive episode so she felt that the tumor could not shake her faith and her hope. The depression had only helped to cement her faith in her creator. Her life is now a testament to Abba’s promise that His grace is enough for us and His strength is made perfect in weakness.

    Thank Abba no more hair-fall, split-ends and bad hair days! Phew!

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    Before being wheeled into the operation theater!
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    Bald & beautiful: 2 bald-heads 😉 Day 1 post surgery

  • Through the fire – Unscathed

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    You can’t steal our smiles. On the eve of the surgery.

    It was just another normal summer day with the sweltering heat and the grueling schedule of orthopedic residency both combining forces to take their toll on an equally dazed and starved 1st resident and as if to interject my scurrying around my phone beeped, but this time only to reveal a text from my sister that my mom underwent some scans for headache and they found a tumor in her brain.

    Just a few days before this saddening revelation I was praying for a break, planning for a 2-3 days break from the hospital, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that my break would come in such a manner: I’d have to travel home to be with my mom during her surgery to remove the brain tumor. As the days went by we learned that the tumor is a Meningioma (benign, slow growing tumor of the covering layers of the brain), though small in size now, it warrants a surgical removal as it was causing her headaches. In the days to follow each of us had our moments of doubts and panic but mummy, she was engulfed in a divine peace, a peace that surpasses human logic and understanding and we realized that, “It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.” (Philippians 4: 7 The Message).

    One of the finest responses I heard in this period came from my mummy as she reiterated what Daniel’s friends proclaimed to King Nebuchadnezzar that the God they served was able to save them and even if He didn’t for some reason they won’t compromise on their faith. Mummy’s faith was firmly grounded in Abba’s love that she is safe in His hands, and that He was going to heal her with or without the surgery. Daniel’s friends literally went through the fire (furnace to be precise), God could have prevented the furnace through some divine intervention, but instead He chose to walk with them in the furnace.   “When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up—the flames will not consume you.” Isaiah 43:2 (TLB).

    “There is strength within the sorrow
    There is beauty in our tears
    And You meet us in our mourning
    With a love that casts out fear
    You are working in our waiting
    You’re sanctifying us
    When beyond our understanding
    You’re teaching us to trust”  Sovereign over us – Michael W. Smith

    Another lesson I learnt through this is that there is freedom in surrender; Abba is still sovereign so even in the flood or the furnace I’ll praise Him.

    “So let go my soul and trust in Him
    The waves and wind still know His name” It is well- Bethel Music