Laura Diehl, Author at GPS Hope Page

August 9, 2016 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

God Really is Everywhere!

Psalm 139:7-12 talks about how God is everywhere; that there is not a single place we can go to get away from Him.

How do we know this is true? We can’t see God, so how do we know God really is everywhere? Let’s think about some things you know are there, even though you can’t see it. There is electricity. You can see a light turn on because of electricity, but you can’t actually see the electricity. How about air? You might see a balloon filled with air, or feel the wind, but you can’t actually see the air. Have you ever smelled something horrible, like a skunk, but not actually seen what was causing the bad smell?

That is similar to how we know God is everywhere. We can see the result of Him being around us. People, plants, animals, the ocean, the sun, moon and stars are all things God created. We are completely surrounded by what we CAN see, what God continues to create and holds together. Are you breathing? That breath comes from God giving it to you.

God really is everywhere! Some people don’t like that, but it is actually a very good thing, because that means whenever we need Him to help us, to be with us, to fight for us, He is always right there. That isn’t just a good thing; it is totally and completely awesome!

August 3, 2016 by Laura Diehl 2 Comments

Is Faith Our Golden Ticket to a Good Life?

Some believers in Christ are taught that being a Christian is like having a golden ticket to a good life. They are told when we trust God and “stand on His Word” nothing bad will happen to us or our family (based on Scripture verses), that we will receive an instant miraculous healing in our bodies (based on lots of healing verses in the Bible), that our finances will be overflowing with abundance (once again, based on Bible verses) and…well, you get the idea.

Some of us have been told if these positive things don’t happen, it is because we either don’t have enough faith, or we are not using our authority in Christ. Now let me stop and say before I go any further that I believe God’s Word is absolute truth! Every Word of it! And I also believe we have been given the authority of Christ on this earth, no doubt about it! And I also don’t have full understanding of God and His Word, just like everyone else!

Back in 1985, our three year old daughter was diagnosed with cancer, facing having her tiny left leg amputated and going through chemotherapy. I was convinced if I had enough faith, she would be healed. I told anybody and everybody she was going to be healed and not need the amputation. My thought process was the more I spoke it out in faith, and the more people I told, the more God would have to honor His Word and heal her. Our church also did forty days of prayer and fasting for her healing (along with two other women who had also been diagnosed with cancer).

The morning the amputation was scheduled, x-rays were taken, to make sure they knew exactly where to make the cut on her leg. I was sure someone would come back shocked, saying the tumor was gone, and therefore no need for the amputation or any further chemo.

That didn’t happen, and I can still picture her looking over the shoulder of the big male nurse who had taken her out of my arms to carry her back for the procedure, as she waved slowly to us. That memory still grips my heart and can bring tears to my eyes.

For a long time, I questioned what I did wrong that left my daughter still needing this horrible procedure which would affect her for the rest of her life. We also had some Christians telling us we must not have had enough faith, or that we needed to learn how to walk in more of our God-given authority. People were giving us books on these subjects to “help” us. (I look back at it now and think how awful a response that was from some in the Body of Christ!)

Guess what I have learned over the years? Faith is almost exactly the same thing as trust. As a matter of fact, in the Complete Jewish Bible, you will never see the word faith. It is always translated as trust. For example, Hebrews 1:1 says, “Trusting is being confident of what we hope for, convinced about things we do not see.”

This has given me a whole new revelation which has answered so many questions in the arena of my “faith walk”, including when my daughter died.

I have always felt like faith is something I have to figure out how to have enough of, based on what I do. Things like, “Faith comes by hearing the Word of God” (Romans 10:17). I have to either be speaking out the Word or listening to someone preaching a lot throughout my day to build up my faith big enough to have no more problems. But I can never quite seem to get to the point where I do it enough to have that perfect life some Christians say the Bible tells us we are supposed to have. Anyone else ever feel that way?

When I realized the truth, that trust can be equated as having faith, it changed everything! I no longer had to figure out how to conjure up enough faith. I just needed to learn how to trust God more. I can do that so much easier!

And so the adventure began of learning how to trust my Abba Father God, which was essentially learning how to rest in my Daddy God’s incredible and extravagant love for me.

As I said earlier, rather abruptly, my daughter died (twenty-six years later from heart damage caused by the chemotherapy). Once again, I felt blindsided, because I truly believed God was going to heal her heart (either miraculously, or through a needed heart transplant). But this time it was different. My faith was not an audacious presumption that God was a genie to grant my wishes, using the Bible as my lamp to rub. This time it was based on a precious trust I had come to have, in knowing my Daddy God in a very deep and personal way.

When I asked Him about the fact that my faith was not met with the healing of my daughter, He gave me the most precious answer I could have had. (And it was not the Christian cliché answer, “He did answer your prayer because she is healed now in heaven.”) He reminded me of Hebrews 11:6, that without faith it is impossible to please Him. And He told me that my faith – my trust – had brought Him so much pleasure! Wow! I was amazed and in awe that I would bring God pleasure by how much I trusted Him with my daughter’s healing!

So let me summarize all this up for you.

Faith is not equivalent to using God as a magic genie to grant your wishes for a good life, using verses from the Bible as your lamp to rub.
Faith is essentially equivalent to trust.
You can’t trust someone you don’t know. That means in order to be able to trust God, you must get to know Him. Deeply and intimately.
The more you get to know God as your loving Abba (Daddy), the more you will know and experience His deep unconditional love for you, which makes it even easier to trust Him more, putting you in a wonderful circle of more love and more trust, aka “faith,” no matter what is happening in your life.

And the bottom line is, whether we like it or not, trust means unanswered questions. If we knew the answers, we would not need to trust Him. We would not have to increase our faith (our trust).

I want to encourage you to give God pleasure, by trusting Him more. Spend time with Him, in His Word, in intimate worship, in conversations with Him. The more you do those things, the easier it will be to believe that He loves you with an extravagant love so incredible, that He would give His own life in exchange for yours. Because that is exactly what He did!

With that kind of proof of His love, I think I can trust Him in this life to do what He knows is best for me. And so can you.

Remember those three young Hebrew men who were thrown into the fire, believing God would save them, “but if He doesn’t…”? What was that all about? Was it just an excuse in case they didn’t have enough faith (like those who tell us asking God for “His will to be done” is a cop-out for our lack of faith)? We will discuss this in the next article Is Faith Our Golden Ticket to a Good Life Part 2.

Gems from the Crown is a weekly blog from Crown of Glory Ministries to strengthen and encourage believers in Christ in their walk with God, especially in the areas of vision, authority, and identity. If you would like to have Gems from the Crown delivered directly to you, please click here.

July 7, 2016 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

Don’t be a Fake

Do you like people who are fake? They say one thing, but then act a totally completely different way? I know many Christian kids who are good at being fake. They give all the “right” Christian answers to the adults around them, but act totally different when they are with their friends. The word for that is “hypocrite”.

It isn’t what you know that matters, but what you do with what you know that counts. You can know the rules for spelling, but it is the actual spelling of the word that counts. You can know a math formula, but it is working out the problem correctly that counts. You can tell a friend you know how to change a flat tire because you’ve watched your dad do it, but it’s actually changing the tire that counts.

It is the same with God. You can tell someone that you are a Christian because you have been taught about God, but it is spending time with Him and getting to really know Him for yourself that counts. And that is way too important to fake!

July 6, 2016 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

How Good Are You at Hiding Your Messes?

A while back we were having up to 50 people over at our house downstairs in the family room for a time of fellowship and ministry. Of course, I was working really hard to have a clean house.

I had the men in my family help me take a bunch of little used work-out equipment out of the basement and carry it up to our three season porch, and move the pool table to a different spot. We also rearranged the sectional couch to accommodate all the chairs we would need to set up.

At the time, we were also in the process of replacing our kitchen/dining room carpet (it was there from when we bought the house well over 10 years ago) to hardwood floors. Before putting in the new floors, we took out some cupboards that separated the kitchen area from the dining area and moved them against the dining room wall. So this meant all the “stuff” in the cupboards had to come out, and when it went back in, everything had to be rearranged to make it functional for the new set-up.

The question became just how much work do I put into cleaning and making the house “presentable”? My plan included making time to clear out the back basement area that some people might see if they use the downstairs bathroom.

Then I had to ask myself why? Do I really not want people to see that we actually live in our house and that we use our basement to pile up stuff we are storing until we decide to find a place for it or to get rid of it?

I can’t help but think of the parallel when it comes to what we try to hide in our lives. As Christians, we have a hard time letting those in the body of Christ see the real us, so we clean things up on the outside, and hide what is really going on in our lives, especially if we think it shows we don’t have things all together like a “good” Christian should.

Why do we seem to believe that if we have Christ in our lives, everything is supposed to be great, and if it isn’t, it must be our fault? Jesus, Himself, told us we would have tribulation. He said He would never leave us or forsake us. We are told to come to His throne boldly to obtain grace in the time of trouble. Paul, himself, went through a long list of trials and tribulations (such as being shipwrecked and being beaten (and left for dead) more than once.

Life is messy. We live in a fallen sinful world, and there are plenty of times we get caught in the fall-out. Why do we try so hard to hide it from each other? How can we share our burdens with each other and weep with those who weep, if we don’t take off the masks and let anyone around us know we are hurting because of… well, life?

We need each other. Let’s stop trying to pretend like everything is in perfect order in our lives, if it isn’t. I am not encouraging complaining and gossip. But what I am encouraging is not hiding behind a false pretense thinking you can’t let anyone know you are being affected by the “stuff” life throws at us.

Satan wants us isolated. If he can’t do it to us physically, he will try to do it to us emotionally. If we live our lives pretending to be someone we aren’t, or live in a way that causes people to believe we have no real problems in our lives, it is like my trying to clean up my house to hide the fact that we actually live in our house, and if you come over, you might see some messes.

Let’s stop hiding our messes and come clean with the fact we all have “stuff” we are dealing with. We are all working out our salvation, and in the process of becoming who God wants us to be. And that’s okay.

Gems from the Crown is a weekly blog from Crown of Glory Ministries to strengthen and encourage believers in Christ in their walk with God, especially in the areas of vision, authority, and identity. If you would like to have Gems from the Crown delivered directly to you, please click here.

June 22, 2016 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

Has a Tragedy Caused Your Faith to be Shaken?

We live in a fallen sinful world, and often get caught in the fall-out of that fact, while living here on this earth.

There are times something hits us, and it is fairly easy to give it over to God and let Him take care of it. Other times, we get hit hard, and the wounds run deep. It can cause us to question the goodness of God and be outright angry at Him for allowing something horrible to happen. After all, He is God, and we know He could have stopped it from happening.

Being a Christian does not give us a “golden ticket” immune to tragedy and heartache in our lives. Yes, Jesus told us to pray “Your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). I, myself, teach how prayer is taking those things in heaven (like healing), grabbing ahold of them, and pulling them down here to earth. We are told that “you have not because you ask not” (James 4:2,3) and there are several scriptures that tell us whatever we desire when we ask for something in the name of Jesus we have what we ask for.

So is God a liar? Have you prayed with faith, expecting God to move in the miraculous, and seen it go the opposite way? Have you been walking along joyfully, hand-in-hand with God, and suddenly been confronted with an unexpected tragedy that sucks the life right out of you?

I have, unfortunately, many times. Allow me to share something with you from the book When Tragedy Strikes.

I don’t remember exactly what it was, but many years ago I was asking God to change or fix something in my life. He asked me which prayer I wanted answered. I wasn’t sure what He meant. He reminded me of my consistent prayer for Him to do whatever He needed to get me where He wanted me to be. He then let me know that whatever this was I was praying against was something He wanted to use to get me where He wanted me to be.

So at that point I needed to make a decision. Did I want God to answer this immediate prayer and take me out of my misery, or did I want Him to answer the other prayer by allowing the situation to do a work in my life—getting me to where He wanted me to be? As I said, I don’t remember what that situation was, but I do remember I took the “fix it” prayer off the table and stayed with my prayer of “do whatever You want to get me where You want me to be.”

Over the years I’ve been faced with that same decision over and over again…

What determines God’s goodness? Is He good because He answers my prayers the way I want Him to? Is that what makes a person good? Because they give us what we want to make us happy? Or are they good because they know how to make right decisions for everyone involved? Are they good because they are not willing to compromise in the moment, but hold fast because they see and know the greater good further down the road?

I find it very sad when people walk away from God because He didn’t give them the answer they wanted to a prayer. God is not a vending machine where we put in the prayer, push a button, and the solution we want drops out for us.

We have a two-year-old granddaughter. She is being taught to say please and is learning that just because she says “pleeeeease” doesn’t mean she automatically gets what she wants.

When you ask someone for something, they have a choice to say yes or no. When we ask God for something, He has the choice to say yes or no. Did I want Him to say yes and allow Becca to stay here on this earth? Of course I did, with every fiber of my being! As a matter of fact, I believed He was actually going to heal her heart, either through a miracle or through a heart transplant. As I stated earlier, I was totally blindsided when she died—even though she was very sick. Once again I was forced to face that bottom-line prayer I have prayed almost all my life, of giving God permission to do whatever He wanted to do to get me where He wanted me to be. And this time it cost me an extremely high price.

Do I believe God killed my daughter to use it in some way in my life? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Do I believe that God allowed the natural consequences of a fallen and sinful world to take effect, not stopping it, even though many people were praying for her healing? Yes, I do. Do I still give Him permission to do what He wants to do as God, instead of what I want Him to do, because He can see so much more than I can see? ABSOLUTELY!

I have chosen not to change my thoughts and beliefs on who God is just because I did not get a prayer answered the way I wanted Him to, no matter how painful it may be.

So what can we do when life throws us more than just a curve ball; one that hits us and knocks us down (and can even take us out of the game for a while)?

Make the choice to forgive. It might be one person, or it could be a long list of people who had a part in the traumatic event. This can include yourself, God, and even someone you loved who caused your deep pain (such as someone who caused their own death, either on purpose or through negligence).
Get past the paralyzing question of “Why?”
Give yourself lots and lots of grace. And give that same grace to others in your family who are handling the tragedy (which includes grieving) differently than you.
Connect with other people who have faced a similar situation who are walking in hope and light and life again. They need to be people who won’t try to push you out of your grief, but help you walk through it.

Unfortunately, this article does not have time to dig into the “how” to do these things. Plus, these are only four of several steps you can take to work your way out of the pit of darkness and back into the light of living again.

If you want to dig further into these things, or if you need someone to walk with you, offering the hope you are desperate for, you may want to consider purchasing the book When Tragedy Strikes. It was written after the death of our daughter, specifically for other grieving parents, but I am being told by more and more people how it has helped them in other places of tragedy and darkness as well.

Here is an example of what people are saying about it.

“Reading her book is like having a friend who has been there walk alongside you as you try to make sense out of tragedy.”

“This book has not only helped me in coming closer to God and trusting him more. It has helped restore my faith.”

“Her words inspire you to find your way out of the darkness; then know the hope and healing!”

“So much in these pages really spoke to my heart about my own pain…I believe it can and will help others get through that dark pain of the soul.”

“She gives hope for healing and methods to move further along in the healing process.”

When Tragedy Strikes will be released in stores July 5, 2016. But it can be preordered at almost any book retailer right now (such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell’s Books, etc). And if you preorder the paperback by July 4, 2016, I would love to say thank you by blessing you with 13 other books by 13 different authors for FREE! (These books have a value of over $120.) To find out about this special offer, or more about the book itself, just click here. And please use the social media share buttons provided to let others know about it this limited opportunity to get 14 books for the purchase of one book.

Some people accuse Christians of using God as a crutch. I tell people that isn’t true for me. I use God as my wheelchair! I don’t know how anyone gets through this life without depending on Him.

May God be your wheelchair, and may the seed of Hope be watered in your shattered heart, bringing life from the depths of darkness and death. After all, that is God’s specialty; bringing life from death!