This morning is one where sleep wasn’t to continue past 4:00 am. It wasn’t as though I’d gone to bed at 8 pm. God just needed to talk with me and have me do some listening. Yesterday, when I got home from the school district about 4:00 pm, I picked 5 gals of blackberries and called my niece who was taking them. They don’t live very far from me so they were here in about 15 minutes. Her husband was with her. Her husband is the one battling cancer. His body is being treated weekly with IV chemo prepping for a major surgery for the 2nd time. I am going to their place tonight to pray and anoint him for healing. After his first surgery (stem-cell transplant) the cancer went into remission. It’s back.

As I was having my devotions this morning I was reading in Matthew 16 & 17. These are powerful chapters where Christ is preparing His disciples for his crucifixion and resurrection. He wanted them to know that He came to die, but to not just die, but to die so that He could rise again and in so doing–overcome the permanence of sin in death once and for all, for all of us. There is more to living that this fleshly living, there is eternal living to follow which Christ Jesus made possible for everyone of us.

What was standing out to me in reading these chapters was that we aren’t to just live to be alive in our flesh, we are to be alive to live for Jesus in our flesh. Until my own recovery I have lived to die. I was of the belief that only in death could I be free of my past’s bondage. In these most recent years where freedom is alive have I found the truth of being alive to live. I don’t know the outcome of my nephew’s life, but I do know God is wanting him healed to be alive each and every day living for Him! God has a time for all of us. But, until that time He wants us to be fully alive for Him. This is my own awakening and I want the Light of Jesus to awaken this truth for all of us.