Second Stage Ministries

"God, you failed me!” Many of us have probably heard these words, thought these words, or even said these words. We get tired of waiting for God to do something. We feel like God’s inbox is full and our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling and coming right back at us. So, in some cases and with some people, they give up and say “God, you failed me!” I feel these words in certain areas of the Bible: Peter, Paul, Moses, Joseph, the disciples and the people that followed and believed in Jesus just to watch Him get crucified. The one that is probably the most obvious is David as he writes in the Psalms about feeling abandoned by God. For this post, I was directed to a familiar story in the Gospel of John. In this story, we are going to see this happen as two women he frustrated with Jesus. The women’s names were Mary and Martha and they had a brother named Lazarus. Lazarus has talked ill and the women had sent for Jesus urging him to come quickly saying “the one yo

As I was preparing for small group time at church last night, I came across Psalm 62 and I wanted to share with some of the things that God showed in me. “Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken. Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.  Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. - Psalm 62:1-2, 5, 8 NIV Rest in God (62:1-2, 5) This is not the only time that David encourages his readers to find rest or refuge in God [1]. This is probably because David himself keeps returning to the phrase as he deals with the situations of life. If you read the Psalms, they are a roller coaster ride of emotions. In one part of the Psalm, David is really feeling the pressure of life and even mad at God sometimes. Then the next he’s praising God and turning to God for comfort and rest. God wants us to rest in Him. God wants u

We all have our junk We all have stuff that we would rather stay tucked away Hidden Secret Just for us to know And we fight hard to keep it that way We fight hard to keep it hidden away because we fear how people will respond. If they know that about me then it will change the relationship that I have with them. If they know it will change the image they have of me. If they know they may think that I'm weak. So we constantly fight the battle within. We want people to see us strong. So we hide the cracks. The holes. The spots - the secret spots. But what happens when the cracks start to show through. What happens when the holes become bigger and can't be covered? The junk spots become revealed and we realize that we were never really fooling anyone. They just let us have our walls. But by the time the eventually come - fall – down and it's a bad place to be. This was revealed to me as I started this journey of believing that everyth

Have you ever felt unworthy to be in the presence of Jesus? I think we all have. But none like this man we see in Mark 1 who had leprosy. When you had leprosy you were outcasts. You had to live outside the city or in a secluded place. There were other rules they had to follow as well. We see these in Leviticus   13: “Anyone with such a defiling disease must wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as they have the disease they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp.” - Leviticus 13:45-46 NIV So they were to be away from family and friends and other loved ones while they had this disease of which there wasn't a cure. But this man we leprosy in Mark 1 handles his situation differently. “ A man with leprosy came to him… - Mark 1:40 a NIV Let's look at this verse for second. The first thing that I see is we don't know his name. He is iden

I was asked about Good Friday by my daughter. She told me that it was when Jesus died on the cross. Then she said "Daddy, then why is it called Good Friday if Jesus died? How many agree that was a good question? Then at a Good Friday service at my church a 3rd grade said "Good Friday is when we celebrate Jesus dying on the cross." I liked that she said that because we know that it's something to celebrate. We have the end of the story. We know what happens. We can celebrate! But back then - it was over. Jesus was dead. It was a day of sorrow. How could    Jesus - the Savior of the world - be dead? How was He going to save the world from a tomb? How was He going to become king? I can imagine that a lot of people felt betrayed, abandoned, sad and lied to. The had waited and waited and waited for this promised Jesus - 400+ years to be exact. They had put their hope in Jesus and now their hope was dead on the cross and death was permanent. So Jesus is