Raised to Walk Podcast Carla Alvarez

Early voting has ended in the midterm elections and Election Day is Tuesday.  Many in America see it as a turning point, there is much at stake.  Locally, we have a big fight brewing.   Ted Cruz is defending his senate seat from challenger Beto O'Rourke.  You might have heard of him.

I already decided almost a year ago that I would not again give my vote to Cruz (I wrote about that here), but right up until the day before early voting started, I was still conflicted about how I would handle my vote if I was not going to vote for Cruz.  Should I vote for O'Rourke?  Should I write in a candidate or should I leave it blank and not vote for that race at all?

And what about the other races?  Greg Abbott is the Number One enemy of public education in Texas and has made it his mission for the past couple of years to do all he can to dismantle it, turning it over to private companies and following the path of failure down which Devos led Michigan schools.  My first thought was to write in Joe Straus as a protest against the brownshirt-like[1] actions  of[2] Republicans following[3] Abbott's lead who censured Straus on his way out.  (This happened to Sam Houston as well.)

What to do?  It was not an easy decision because I have been a diehard Republican my entire life.  It is completely engrained in me to always support Republican candidates.

But what do you do when the people you have always supported have acted in a way that you can no longer support?

Breaking Free of Party

This is going to be a long, sort of rambling post, but I promise it will come together in the end.  Part of the reason I am sharing this here is that a large percentage of this site's visitors coming looking for information on the discerning of spirits.  Yes, elections and voting are related.  I will tell you my story to explain and it begins with a personal confession.

I did not vote for Obama and I did not support him as president.  I was not happy when he was elected.  One day, I was driving home and a car had their Obama bumper sticker displayed and I had this overwhelming urge to ram the car.  I am not making this up.  The feeling was so strong that it shocked me and I thought, "What is wrong with me, this is not right."

I had just come out of a very hard season and a situation where I believed I had been very wronged.  I understood the importance of forgiveness . . . And I had forgiven the people involved.  I had prayed to God to forgive me of my bitterness, that I chose to forgive them, and asked God to forgive them as well.  This was totally out of obedience and, in the beginning, a completely intellectual exercise because I did not feel forgiving and didn't even for a long time afterward.

Jesus talked about not letting those who wrong you enslave you emotionally.  If we receive an unjust judgement, we are to go the extra mile.  We are to pray for those who persecute us (and Christians were actually being physically persecuted when this was written), and we are to bless those who curse us.

In order to get beyond the bitterness and turmoil of the situation, I had to go further than simply praying to forgive.  I began praying for the people involved asking God to bless them . . . Every day . . . For a very long time.  A long time because that is how long it took for God to change my heart and release the bitterness (I'm stubborn, what can I say.  He has to work hard on me.)

When the car incident happened, it got me thinking.  Why would I ever feel this way towards someone that I don't even know who has done nothing to me other than vote in a different way than I had.  It was ridiculous, there was no reason to feel that way at all . . . And I knew the problem was with me.

So I began doing the same thing that the Holy Spirit had used to get my heart right before in the other personal situation . . . I began pray for Democrats.

If I saw I bumper sticker, I would pray, "God, bless their hearts."

As I drove by a yard

Sometimes our fears hold us back from experiencing God’s blessings.  Sometimes we need to be brave enough to step out of our comfort zones. ~ By Faith, Nancy Gavilanes, pg. 93

Before ascending to Heaven, Jesus told his disciples, “and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth. “ (Acts 1:8)  From the beginning, personal testimony has been a key component of Jesus’s “marketing strategy” in spreading the message of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Paul gave as validation for his message references to others who had seen the resurrected Jesus, including 500 at one time. (1 Corinthians 15:38)  Peter, as well as John, assures the church that he was sharing what he himself had witnessed. (2 Peter 1:16, 1 John 1:3)  He was not telling a story he had heard, but one he knew to be true because he had witnessed it first hand.

As apologist Lee Strobel taught our class on Evangelism at Houston Baptist University, everyone has a testimony.  If you are a believer in Christ, you have a story of how you came to faith. [1]   A personal testimony where you share, “This is how I was before Christ. This is how I met Christ, and this is what he has done for me since then.”  As Nicole Howe points out in her essay on Augustine’s Confessions in An Unexpected Journal, “Spiritual autobiographies give back to others what God has given to us by inspiring them with the truth of what God has done and can do through our example."[2]

However, often when we think of sharing our personal testimony, we focus solely on our conversion and the time before, almost as if that is the end of the story . . . and that is not the case at all.  By Faith by Nancy Gavilanes is her personal testimony of how she came to know Christ as Savior; however, it does not fall into the trap that so many personal testimonies do.  The main focus of the account is one that is in Christ, one of walking it out and following where God leads even when the destinations are completely unexpected.



An Unexpected Journey

She begins with an overview of growing up with a Christian background, but one which did not have deep roots.  Like many, she put her own goals and ambitions front and center, placing the role of God in her life on a back burner.   She shares the origins of her passion for writing and her strong and  determined desire to write about the premier events of the sports she loved.

All of which she achieved, but, like so many, when she reached her goal she found it empty.

This began her search to find the One who promised not only eternal life, but purpose and true meaning in this life as well.

I have talked to people who have told me that they know they need Jesus, that they know he is who he says he is, but that “they’re not ready.”  They aren’t ready to make a commitment, give up their self will, and submit to him.  They fear that they may miss out on some “fun.”

Gavilanes’s account is one that I have found true as well, it is only when we give our life over to God and say, “I’ll go wherever you want me to go” that we truly start living.

God will take you places that you would not only never expect, but that you would have never thought you wanted to go.  Gavilanes, a New York writer who loved figure skating, finds herself digging post holes to build a church in Brazil, ministering in HIV foster homes in Africa, and seeing the dead brought back to life.

Coming from a culture with push button lives to one where the battle between life and death is a daily event, it gave her new insight into the impact of Jesus's words and actions.

An Ongoing Story

When we make Jesus the Lord of our life, it is a new beginning, a pristine new page.  As we follow him, he takes us on a journey.  He makes us a part of his ongoing story.  By Faith is a testimony of how varied that journey can be and how different can be the circumstances in which we have to le

The 23rd Psalm is familiar  to many.  It is a reminder of God’s faithfulness and evokes beautiful mental imagery.  We can imagine beautiful hillsides, lush pastures, and the peaceful streams.  Even in our Biblically illiterate culture, if people know any passage of Scripture, it is likely to be this one.

It is encouragement in times of trouble, but more than that, it is a declaration of victory.

We have been studying Psalms 23 for the past eight weeks in our third grade Sunday school class, going through it verse by verse.  It talks about God’s love and care for us, who He is and the roles He takes in our lives.  He is our Shepherd, our Provider, Our Protector, and our Guide.  If you’ve read the Psalm once, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

But more than that, this Psalm is a battle cry.  It is a song of warfare.  It is a song of faith where David “calls the things that are not, as though they were.” (Romans 4:17)

David’s Back Story

To understand the full import of the Psalm, we have to look at David’s back story.

He grew up in Bethlehem during the reign of King Saul, the first king of Israel.  He was the youngest of eight brothers, and while they were off taking care of other responsibilities for the family, he had the lowly job of shepherd of his father’s flocks (the same job Rebekah was performing when Abraham’s servant happened across her. Genesis 24 )

Saul had been skating back and forth across the line of God’s commands  (1 Samuel 13:7-14,) and finally he went too far.  He was to completely destroy the Amalekites, but instead, he kept the plunder for himself (1 Samuel 15).[1]  Because of that willful action, the kingship of Israel was removed from  his family.

God sent Samuel the town of Bethlehem[2]  and invited Jesse, David’s father, to come as Samuel made a sacrifice. As each son came out before he, Samuel thought, “He must be the one,” but each time God said no.  Like the Prince searching for Cinderella, Samuel asked, “Is there anyone else?” and so David was sent for.  He didn’t even rank high enough in his family’s mind that they didn’t include him until asked.  ( Samuel 16:1-13 )

When David came before Samuel, God told him, “He is the one”

However, unlike Cinderella who left her pots and pans and rode off with her prince into the sunset, David went back to his sheep.  And there he stayed, we don’t know exactly how long, but time passed until there was trouble at the border with the Philistines.  When David was sent to take supplies to his brothers at the front, he heard the Philistines, led by Goliath, mocking the Israelites. (1 Samuel 17:22-23)

This infuriated David and he asked, “Who is this pagan Philistine anyway, that he is allowed to defy the armies of the living God?” (1 Samuel 17:26)  His brothers, both dismissive and indignant, asked him who he thought he was and what he could possibly do about it. (1 Samuel 17:28)

Goliath had challenged Saul’s army to a one on one combat. He would face their champion and the winner would decide the war.  David volunteered to be this champion, and when again mocked by his brothers, he insisted.

You see, Goliath was not the first big and scary thing that David had faced.  While he was out alone in the fields with his sheep, other predators had come against him.  He said,  “God was with me when I killed a bear and a lion, he will be with me here.” (1 Samuel 17:34-36)

These little things, facing wild animals to protect dumb ones, were preparation, a building of faith . . . the making of a hero . . . for when he faced a giant and where the outcome determined the course of a nation.  No pressure.

You know the story.  He declined the weapons of war that Saul wanted to give him and instead, stuck with his slingshot and five smooth stones.  With that, he felled the giant. (1 Samuel 17:40-50)

The army and the people were ecstatic.  David was the man of the hour

Many people want to find God.   There are many books on the subject which promise to put you on the path to find Him.  Most of religions of the world make the claim to make you one of His own.1  However, there are some people who want to find God without religion.

They might say (and many do), “I’m spiritual, not religious.” They might not want to follow anyone’s guidance or rules.  Or, as happens frequently, they have been hurt by a faith community in the past and want to now avoid it entirely.

So is it possible?  Can you find God without religion?  In order to answer this question, let’s first look at who God is as well as the definition of religion.

Who Is God?

We have always believed in something other: a Creator God, a pantheon, even the desired end of “nothingness” in Buddhism is logically something beyond what we know.  We have a sense of right, a belief that there is an absolute truth and order . . . a law . . . and by extension a Lawgiver.  In order for there to be an absolute rightness and absolute justice, there must be One who is absolutely righteous, absolutely just, a perfect Being.

Those Thomas Aquinas referred to as “virtuous pagans,” such as Plato’s Socrates and Aristotle, explored this concept long before the Christian church.  Plato’s perfect forms were beyond matter and beyond space, the ultimate reality, and Aristotle believed in a perfect self-consciousness with a separate essence from the created world.  But it was Anselm in the Middle Ages who set about to clarify and distinguish the God Christians worshiped from the pantheons surrounding them through the nature and quality of His Being.

Anslem’s reasoning, which became known as the “ontological argument,” is that God is the maximally great being.  He is the greatest thing that we can conceive of, beyond all other things.  The second part of his argument for God is that as actual things are greater than our ideas of the thing, that if we can conceive of a maximally great being then there must be such a being because if He was not actual . . . then we would be able to conceive of something greater.

This is a simplified form of his argument, and as an argument for the existence of God, I know this sounds a little circular . . . Philosophers love to debate it.

However, for the purpose of this discussion, I just want to point out what we mean by God: He is the Greatest Thing, being absolutely perfect, all knowing, all powerful, absolutely just, and outside of space and time.  That is God.

If the thing you are searching for is something other than that . . . that isn’t God.

How Should We Respond to God?

Now that we have defined who God is, the Maximally Great Being, let’s think about what our interaction with Him should be.  In our egalitarian Western culture, we have, for the most part, lost the concept of showing respect and honoring someone.  As we are all equal, no one is deserving of more honor than another and, let’s be honest, pride factors into that as well.

However, we do still honor what we perceive as “greatness,” it’s just usually not an authority figure and our perception is often shaped by very shallow reasons such as money or fame. But shallow or not, let’s use that as an example.

Take an activity that you are involved in or follow and think of the absolute greatest person in that field, the all-time absolute best.  So if you are into swimming, maybe Michael Phelps comes into your mind, basketball might be Michael Jordan, or painting might be Michelangelo.  Imagine yourself having the opportunity to talk to them.

How would you approach them?  Would you barge into their room without knocking in your ratted out t-shirt and flip flops, with hair that hasn’t been brushed in days, smacking on gum and talking on the phone while standing in front of them?  If they tried to critique your technique and give you guidance, would you bristle and begin to criticize and tell th

My daughter started an Instagram account for our dog recently, @fernandothepup. I thought it was a sweet idea, a way to give her sister who just went to college her Fernando fix.

I didn’t realize that dog accounts are actually a big thing on Instagram. Did you know this? She’s had a brand contact her already.

This is a dog God did actually send us because I definitely did not seek him out.

When God Sends You a Dog

One day my youngest said, “Mom, a dog followed me home.”

I was more focused on a strange stray dog, I told her, “You’re fine.”

Then my tenderhearted middle daughter had to go and check on this stray dog. This was the beginning of the end. She and her friend found him laying on the sidewalk panting in the September Houston heat.

She said, “Mom, can we take him to a shelter?”

I looked at this black dog that could be any sort of a mix between a boxer, pitbull, and a hound and I thought, “he will be put to sleep if we take him there.” Houston is notorious for abandoned animals and shelters and fosters are overflowing. It is very difficult to get a dog into a no-kill shelter and most of the rest will put them to sleep after three days.

If I knew a little more about dogs, I probably would have been able to tell right away that this wasn’t a “lost” dog. I am now fairly certain he was dumped because even in his excursions made during the occasional times he has escaped, he has always stayed close to home. He is not dumb; he knows who feeds him.

According to the vet, he was about a year and a half when we took him in. Once he got his energy back, he was very rambunctious, as the vet said, he had “puppy brain.” He would jump on people in excitement, chewed everything up, and was so strong he could pull my girls off their feet when they took him for a walk. I think he got past the point of cute little puppy stage, was too much for someone to handle and so they dumped him, because when we took him in he had scratches all over him, was losing hair in places, and had callouses on his legs where it looked like he had been laying on concrete.

But being unaware at the time, we tried to find his owner. As you can tell, no luck. We tried a local foster organization and had very limited interest. Partly due to the fact that during this time I was trying to keep up with graduate school as well as the activities of three girls and I didn’t have the time to spare to spend afternoons sitting at adoption days.

Two years later, we still have this dog and now my girls are attached.

A Picture of Redemption

My youngest named him “Fernando” and my girls play his theme song for him all the time. I gave him the middle name “Sylvester” and I think it suits him. Fernando means “redeemed” and Sylvester means “strong in spirit.” He is a redeemed puppy, brought in from the wilderness.

This unwanted dog that most people are afraid of on sight has become an object of love for the entire family.

My youngest always says, “Fernando is the best dog, we are so lucky we found him.”

I’ll be honest, “lucky” wasn’t how I was feeling when he was chewing up remotes, ripping and detaching couch cushions from the frame from sitting on them, and when I was spending an hour chasing him through the neighborhood after he escaped while we were trying to load up Girl Scout cookies for a booth.

But sometimes, God sends us what He knows we need . . . Not what we think we want.

Somehow, this dog is part of the plan God has for us.

His story is an illustration of redemption. He was lost and now he is found. He was unwanted and now he is loved. He was alone and now he is part of a family.

Experiencing the Love of God

God illustrates His love and plan for us in many ways: through history, through the cosmos, and, yes, through dogs.

As humans, we were made to be in fellowship, with God and with others. But so often we close ourselves off. It may be because we have been hurt, betrayed, or let do

It is written, "The Lord loves a cheerful giver." (2 Cor 9:6-7) It's one of those things even those who are a stranger to Scripture are familiar. It resonates with us because no one wants a “gift” that is grudgingly given.

When the first Tabernacle for the Lord was built in the wilderness, the Israelites were instructed to bring as they felt led. (Exodus 35:4-6, 21, Exodus 36:2-5) Again, when the Davidic Temple was built, the gifts were voluntary and David, while he was not allowed to build the temple himself, he did stock the supplies for his son, Solomon, to use in the construction. (2 Chronicles 29:1-9) He gave the most of all. Ezra's reconstruction was also voluntary. (Ezra 1:1-6)

There are offering amounts proscribed in the Old Testament; however, it is clear when building His house, the special place where the Spirit of God would dwell, that it was important to God that all gifts be given without compulsion.

He wants a willing heart.

It is a picture of the transaction of salvation. We give of ourselves willingly, we choose to come to God, and in exchange, Christ sacrificed himself for us so that he could redeem us from the consequences of the wrongs we have done.

But it must be willing, we choose.

The Sacrifice of Generosity

Before Christ, the relationship between God and man was one of sacrificial offerings. This was true not only of the Jews and their God, Yahweh, but also with the Gentile nations and their gods.

Offerings had to be made for the gods to be appeased and hear their prayers.

The picture painted by the Levitical offerings is one of construction. The offerings of sacrifices of animal blood covered the sin of the person, and on Yom Kippur the nation, creating a holy space for the Spirit of God to dwell. There are accounts in the Jerusalem Talmud of the appearance of the Ruach Kodesh, the Holy Spirit, which left the Temple in Jerusalem permanently in 30 A.D.

But beyond the offerings before the priests, there are references to other sorts of offerings that spoke before the presence of God. Giving to the poor and defending the weak, the embodiment of justice and mercy also witnessed on behalf of the giver in the court of God.

Job was known as a generous man, one who gave to those in need. The Israelites were instructed strongly that there should never be a person in need even though there would always be those who had needs among them. They were to fill those needs without begrudging the gift. The Jews who asked Jesus to heal the servant of the Roman official used the Roman’s generous gifts to the poor as a justification for raising him to Jesus’ notice.

Gifts speak. Offerings brought as tithe are an acknowledgement of the true Giver and Provider of those resources. It is thanking God for his blessings. It also keeps wealth and the occupation of making money from claiming an unholy place in our minds. Those who are truly free from the love of money are those who freely give.

Short Circuiting Your Blessings

Sometimes we give and we understand the purpose. We know where that gift is going and how God uses it to his purpose. But many times we do not. It may seem as if the time, resources, and talents that we have given, believing it to be the will of God, seem to accomplish nothing but rather are thrown into a bottomless pit.

God gives us a few instructions about giving. First he tells us to give willingly. The second he tells us to give as if we are giving to God alone. It is written, “When you give, do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.”

If you give for acclaim, the acclaim is your reward.

If you give to put another under obligation, that is manipulating control and is actually witchcraft.

If you are giving for God, He will bless you.

Need is an Opportunity for Blessing

In your eyes, your gift may seem like a waste . . . As if it make no change. But what if God brought the need before you in order to create an opportunity for Him to bless you?