Laura Diehl, Author at GPS Hope Page

December 2, 2015 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

When Fear and Faith Collide

Do you really know and believe that God is for you? If you don’t, you are going to live in a lot of fear.

Most of us are very familiar with 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

How can we come against that spirit of fear? One thing is to saturate ourselves in the truth of God’s Word. Not just say it in our heads, but take the time to let it settle into our hearts, so that we believe it in a way that changes our thoughts, which changes our actions, and the way we live our lives.

Take a moment and think about what the result of these three scriptures would look like, if the truth of them were fully at work in your life.

Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (NJV)
Ps. 37:8, “Don’t fret and worry—it only leads to harm.” (TLB)
Phil. 4:6,7 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (NKJV)

Here is that last scripture in the Message version.

“Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”

Now that is something to spend some time thinking about!

I am sure we can all agree with the scripture in 1 Timothy that fear can cause torment. Especially fear about the future (and even more so when it comes to the future of our children). Once again, the Word of God has something to say about that.

1 Jn. 4:18 “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” (NKJV)

In other words, if you are living from a place of fear in your life, it shows you are not convinced of God’s unfailing extravagant love for you.

And that means you are going to make decisions in your life based on fear. Here is an acronym for the meaning of fear…F-E-A-R…

False Evidence Appearing Real

The enemy is good at doing that in our lives. He causes false things to look so real…things that God can step into and make change in an instant. I often have to remind myself (out loud, making it easier to believe) that I walk by faith, not by sight. I make my decisions based on what I know God has said, and is therefore true, and not based on what I see with my physical eyes or hear with my physical ears (and especially think with my run-away mind).

When I say God can step in and make things change in an instant, I also want to add that what He can change in an instant might not be the circumstance, but often it is my heart within the circumstance. He changes my perspective, showing me what He sees, and that can instantly move me from the torment of fear into the truth of faith.

Have you ever realized that both faith and fear are how we feel about the unknown? We either live in fear, and make our decisions out of that fear of the unknown, OR we live in faith in God, and make our decisions about the unknown future based on our faith in Him to take care of whatever it is we cannot see.

Here are two more acronyms, describing what I just said.

Forget Everything And Run

Face Everything And Rise

Which one are you going to choose?

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.

November 29, 2015 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

Presents and Gifts

There are two holidays that get most of us more excited than any others – Christmas and our birthday. What do those two holidays have in common? PRESENTS! It makes sense to give presents to someone to celebrate the day they were born. But have you ever wondered why we exchange presents at Christmas time?

Shortly after Jesus was born, some very important men (called Magi) from a faraway country traveled to give baby King Jesus some very special and extremely expensive gifts (Matthew 2:1-2, 9-11). They were acknowledging what an incredible gift God was giving to us, by sending Jesus here on earth to be a human, living a perfect life, able to die to pay the for the price for our sins. We don’t really know exactly what day Jesus was born, but for all kinds of reasons I won’t go into, December 25^th was picked on our calendar to be the day we remember and celebrate it.

So, the purpose of Christmas isn’t to get (or give) presents. The purpose of Christmas is to celebrate the birthday of Jesus. And since we can’t wrap up and give a present to Jesus like the Magi did, we give them to those we love and are special to us.

Christmas is a birthday celebration of the most important person ever born on this earth! In our family, every year we even have a cake that says, “Happy Birthday Jesus”. I hope you and your family will find ways to remember the greatest gift ever given at Christmas time. It’s not a Christmas gift, but a birthday gift – a gift from the birthday boy to every one of us!

November 25, 2015 by Laura Diehl 4 Comments

When Is It Wrong To Judge Others?

“I have misjudged you.” Have you ever heard that? How about from another Christian? My question is this: Why is there judgment going on among the Body of Christ? I thought Jesus was the judge?

I feel like I have lived almost my entire life under the judgment of Christians. There are so many things Christians have strong opinions on, causing them to judge each other.

True Christians don’t smoke because they know their body is the temple of the Holy Spirit
Good Christians go to church every Sunday; if you don’t, you aren’t serious about your faith
True Christians don’t put their children in “government” (public) schools
Serious Christians don’t do something “good” for Halloween (trying to call evil good) because they know they would be participating in the highest holy day for witches and Satanists
Good Christians don’t drink alcohol so they won’t be a stumbling block to others
We all know when a Christian gets involved in politics it will just corrupt them
You can’t be a homosexual and be saved…
You should not wear flip flops to church. They are too casual, and we need to dress our very best for God when we go to church. (Yes, I have heard someone say that.)

The list is endless. Why do we do this to each other? And then we wonder why the rest of the world would rather be in the bars than in our churches? And we judge them for that (along with their many other sins. SMH (Shake my head….)

What about gossip or jealousy? What about gluttony? What about preferring others above yourself? News flash: We are ALL sinners, working out our salvation, dying to ourselves and crucifying our flesh!

“Well, Laura, I’m not judging them. I am just looking at the fruit in their lives…” Yes, I agree, there is a difference between judgment and testing the fruit (or testing the spirits). To check out the fruit is to make a decision whether something is good or bad, which allows me to make a decision if I want it or not. But even then, I can only see what is on the outside, not on the inside. Only God can see the heart and the motive.

Which brings me to the fact that there is also a difference between judgment, and having discernment. Discernment is the ability to decide between truth and error, right and wrong. Discernment is “the process of making careful distinctions in our thinking about truth. It is perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtain spiritual direction and understanding,” John MacArthur.

Judgment is making a verdict of condemnation that demands a sentence or a punishment; true testing of the fruit, or having discernment, does not. And too often, we pass a personal verdict of another Christian’s actions, passing a sentence of some kind on those who aren’t doing what we think they should be doing in various ways. Sometimes we are aware of what we are doing, and sometimes we aren’t.

Judgment brings heaviness. Have you ever noticed that? As Christians, way too often we try to get people to change by heaping on guilt, manipulating, and declaring God’s judgment on someone to get them to live a “cleaned up” life. Most people cannot hold up under the weight of others heaping on judgment and the list of “good” Christians do’s and don’ts, and many end up leaving our churches, because they just can’t measure up.

Surrender brings freedom. God’s way is love that covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). His love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8) and His mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13). It is God’s goodness and kindness that brings a person to true repentance (Romans 2:4). His ways are so much more effective in truly changed lives.

Judgment changes the actions; surrender changes the heart!

When we see a large person at a buffet, our mind will almost immediately start thinking things like, “That person has no business being here. If they would stop eating like that, they would lose weight.” But we don’t have the full story. What if that person has already lost 100 pounds, and one day a month they treat themselves, and this is that once-a-month day? They are excited about their progress, and rightly so. But in our minds, we are heaping judgment and condemnation on them, based only on the “fruit” of what we see, not on the truth of what we cannot see.

In John 12:47-48 we read, “If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.” He is the judge, through His Word, when we have finished living our lives on this earth.

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells about a man who planted a crop of wheat. An enemy came along and tossed in some seeds to make weeds grow. When it was discovered, the servants asked the owner if they should pull out the weeds. His answer? No, because it will also uproot the wheat. Leave it alone, and it will be taken care of and separated during the harvest time.

Most of us are familiar with Jesus telling us not to judge others, in Matthew 7. He also says we will be judged with the same judgment we use to judge others. Yikes!

And then there is Paul. “Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls” Romans 14:4. That sounds pretty black-and-white to me.

Friendships and families have been destroyed by Christians trying to “clean up” each other’s lives, casting a verdict of guilty, when that person does not comply.

I recently met a woman who was the first one in her family to receive Jesus. Eventually, the entire family of both parents and all seven children were saved. They used to be a very close family, but when they all came to know the Lord, they started to constantly argue and bicker with each other, over what churches they were going to, what they believed the Bible says, and fighting about the things they thought others should or shouldn’t be doing. How sad is that?

We have got to realize only God has the right to judge. Judgment brings division, and we know that does not come from God.

If you find yourself in a place of judgment by others, I want to release you, so that you can find freedom in surrendering to God’s best for you. Yes, God will use Christians in your life to give you direction, and instruction. But if it comes with judgment, they have crossed a line. The Holy Spirit should be the one to convict, not Christians to condemn.

If you realize you are someone who judges others (which was the case with me, as God revealed to me that I was very heavy into judgment of others for most of my life) what can you do? Get as close to God’s love as you possibly can! The more you realize how much He loves you unconditionally, the easier it is to release your judgment of others, because you want them to experience that same incredible love.

“One of the things I’ve learned in my spiritual journey is that the closer someone gets to Jesus Christ, the less judgmental, self-righteous, harsh-toward-others, and selfish he or she will be.” Frank Viola in blog Legalism, License, Lordship and Liberty http://frankviola.org/2011/04/05/legalism-license-lordship-and-liberty/

The last thing I want to say is that we have to be careful that in our hurt of being “misjudged,” we do not judge others for judging us. I did not write this so we point our finger at someone and say, “See! You shouldn’t be judging me!”

To our own master we stand or fall. We are to hold the mirror up to ourselves, and judge our own heart. What are my motives? Are my actions pleasing to God? Am I walking in love, and manifesting the fruit of the Spirit?

Let’s have a whole lot less judging of one another, and a whole lot more loving. Not the kind of love that looks the other way from someone’s sin, but God’s kind of love that changes the heart.

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.

November 18, 2015 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

Do You Know a Pareavor?

“Comparing the pain of our grief does no one any good. However, I think it is important to validate the fact that parents who have lost a child through death, have a weight that is extremely heavy…heavier than most will experience in this life.”

That is a quote from my newly released book Come Grieve Through Our Eyes: How to Give Comfort and Support to Bereaved Parents by Taking a Glimpse Into Our Hidden Dark World of Grief. I would like to use this blog to share with you a few short portions from this book.

The subject of death itself can be heavy, and the death of one’s child, no matter the age, is considered by most experts to be one of, if not the heaviest and darkest grief to be faced. I am not calling attention to this information to diminish the grief of other forms of loss. This is an area that probably causes the most tension with those who have not lost a child, but have experienced a significant loss in their lives.

As a parent who has experienced this horrific event, I found myself trying to think of a word to describe what I felt, and the only thing that came to me is death—the pain of my own death. A part of us dies along with our child.

This got me thinking. A widow or widower is someone who has lost their spouse; an orphan is someone who has lost their parents. Since it is acknowledged that losing a child is the worst event a person can go through in life, then why isn’t there a word for us?

I have thought and prayed long and hard on this. One day I sat down and listed all the words possible for parents, grief, bereaved, children, etc. to see what I could put together as a word for a grieving or bereaved parent.

That is how I made the word being introduced in this book: PAREAVOR. A pareavor is a parent who has lost a child through death. How did I come up with this?

“Pa” comes from the word parent: a person who is a father or mother; a person who has a child (Merriam-Webster)

“Reave” comes from the word bereave. The meaning of the actual word “reave” (which the word bereave comes from) is: to plunder or rob, to deprive one of, to seize, to carry or tear away (Merriam-Webster).

“Or”: indicating a person who does something (Wiktionary)

This sounds like a pretty good description of what happens when a child dies, no matter the age of the child. So a “pareavor” is a parent who has been deprived of their child who was seized and torn away from them through death.

You will find pareavor being used throughout the book. It might feel a bit awkward at first, but I believe it won’t take long for it to become a natural word that makes sense and you will understand its usefulness and need. (It is definitely easier than constantly saying, “a person who has lost their child”, or “a grieving parent”, or “a bereaved parent.” Pareavors. That is who we are.

How Does it Feel to Lose a Child?

Some people (myself included) describe the death of a child like an amputation. The daughter we lost at age 29 lived 26 of those years with only one leg. It was amputated when she was only three years old, due to bone cancer. So we have experience with what living with an amputation is like.

You have to learn how to live and function with a part of you missing. It can be done. But unless you have had to learn how to live day-to-day with an amputation, you don’t realize or understand the many things in life it affects.

For example, there was the issue of our daughter’s shoes. She had a prosthesis, which helped her live a more normal life growing up. Her right foot would grow, but the left foot stayed the same size until she outgrew the actual leg and a new one had to be made. What size shoe do you buy when your child literally has two different size feet, since one grows and the other does not? How badly will it make her stumble, having one shoe a size too big on one foot?

To go swimming, she would have to take off her fake leg and hop on her one real leg to get into the pool as quickly as possible, in order to keep from being stared at so much. Her towel would be used to cover up her fake leg lying on the ground or lounge chair. And when she was done, she would hop quickly on her one leg from the pool back to her fake leg (which was scary to watch, knowing how slippery those surfaces could be) dry off her stump, and put her leg on without calling too much attention to herself.

These are just a couple of examples of how different our lives were, raising a child with an amputation.

Yes, an amputation is a good description to help people understand what it is like to lose a child through death. But there is another one that actually seems even better to me.

It is like a hole in the heart that cannot heal. This is the closest true description of child loss that I have heard. It affects everything you do in the very core of your being. I don’t even know how to elaborate on this. Just take whatever that means to you, and then intensify it about 100 times.

So how does it feel to lose a child? All of us who have been hurled into a life-long membership in this unwanted club hope and pray you never have to find out.

Does Time Heal Our Pain?

“Time does not heal the pain of child loss. Time simply puts distance between our initial shock and pain, and where we are now. Time adds fear to the bereaved parent’s life; fear that we will forget our child’s voice, forget our child’s smell, forget the details of our child’s face, forget what it felt like to hold our child. No, time does not heal the pain of child loss. Our healing will come when we see our child again in heaven, and so we cling tightly to that hope as we pass through the long, dark valley of time.” – Anonymous

Time alone does not heal our shattered hearts. It’s not time that heals, but what you do in that time. In the cemetery where Becca is buried, there is a section of babies and infants that were born in the 70’s and 80’s. Almost half of those graves continue to have fresh decorations, 40 years later.

Time…I hated the thought of hitting the 5 year mark, the 10 year mark…and would feel a stabbing pain that could take my breath away at the thought of being 20 years “away” from Becca. How will I be able to live, getting farther and farther away from her? (Something many other bereaved parents say and feel as well.)

God so graciously showed me something about my thought in this area of “time,” to change my perspective. I am not getting farther away from Becca, I am getting closer to her. Each day I remain on this earth is a day I am closer to my own departure, which means I am actually getting closer to her, not farther away!

Perspective can change everything. But it cannot be “forced” on a person. It can only be gently presented as a thought, allowing those in deep grief to take it and make the change in how they see it.

Come Grieve Through Our Eyes has had a strong favorable response, from both those who have lost a child (and now have a tool to put in the hands of those around them) and those who want insight to know how to be there for someone who has lost a child.

Please pass this information along to anyone you know who might also benefit from this book.

To find out more about Come Grieve Through Our Eyes: How to Give Comfort and Support to Bereaved Parents by Taking a Glimpse Into Our Hidden Dark World of Grief, click here.

We also have a ministry for pareavors: GPS Hope (Grieving Parents Sharing Hope) and can be found at www.gpshope.org.

November 11, 2015 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

The Right Word at the Right Time

I am going to really open myself up here. Recently I found myself crying before the Lord as the Holy Spirit showed me areas that out of my own hurts and out of my own weak and fleshly nature, I did things to my children and hurt them, which has caused them to feel rejection from me.

First, let me say as parents, we all make mistakes. There is no such thing as perfect parents. All of our parents did things that “damaged” us. We have all done things that “damage” our children. And when we turn these things over to God, He will bring healing, and help us (and our children) to be overcomers in these exact areas.

I grew up feeling rejected by my mom. I know it was not done intentionally, and I know her heart now as an adult, but as a child I just really struggled with it, as an area the enemy was able to get in and mess me up. Earlier last year, the Lord showed me it was a generational curse that needed to be broken. My mom struggled in this area with her mom, I struggled in this area with my mom, and my youngest daughter struggled in this area with me.

But even after the chain of something like this is broken, there is still the “fall-out” of the results of those actions that we still find ourselves dealing with. And often there are inner wounds that need a healing.

This particular morning, I saw where I had probably created deep wounds, especially in my daughter. I began to really cry out to God for that specifically, and literally, with many tears. I wanted to speak the Word of God over this situation, but was pretty sure there was nothing in the Bible to specifically deal with this. I continued to cry out to God until I felt a release from it.

Right now I am reading through a chronological study Bible, which means it’s not in the normal order that we’re used to. It is put together in the order of how things happened chronologically in the Bible. For instance, when reading about the week leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion, it pulls from all four of the gospels, putting the scriptures in the order of what happened. In the Old Testament when reading about David, it will throw in different parts of the book of Psalms, based on what we know was written at that time, or what might have been written during a particular time in his life.

After my time of prayer, I opened my Bible up to where my bookmark sat, and was totally stunned as I read Psalm 69:5-6, “O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins are not hidden from You. Let not those who wait for You, O Lord GOD of hosts, be ashamed because of me; let not those who seek You be confounded because of me…” (NKJV)

That was exactly, exactly, what my heart had just been literally crying out to the Lord for; that my children will not continue to be deeply affected (ashamed or confounded) because of me and my foolishness and my past sins toward them growing up.

Since this encouraged me so much, I want to use it to encourage you in two specific ways.

Allow the Holy Spirit to put his finger on things in your life; areas of your foolishness and sins that have affected others.

God wants to bring healing, to both you and them.

I have a friend who is dealing with that very thing right now. She began choosing to force herself to forgive people for deeply hurting her, and within a week, God was restoring relationships that she thought were absolutely impossible to be restored.

I want to encourage you to cry out to God for forgiveness in relationships. I believe this is a time of restoration.

2. The other thing is to encourage you to get into the Word, because God’s Word brings freedom. God promises that his Words will not return to us void. His Words will not return to us empty. His Word will do what He sends it out to do.

God’s Word is life. When you speak His Word, and hold His Word up to Him, you are speaking His Life and His Truth.

His Word is power. His word breaks the bondages and the strongholds that are in your life.

So speak the Word. Speak it out loud. Lift it up to God, and watch Him do exactly what He says He will do.

It might not happen immediately like my friend. I know someone that has been in a situation for over three years where there have been wounds, and suffering the effects of those wounds, even though forgiveness has been given.

I know without a doubt that God gave me this Word in Psalm 69, directly related to the cry of my heart. It wasn’t a coincidence. It was the Holy Spirit, because it’s his time to bring more healing.

So I encourage you. It’s time. It’s time to speak the Word. It’s time to walk in forgiveness. And it’s time to allow God to bring restoration and healing into relationships that need this. Do your part, and then let God do His part, in His time. He is always faithful to perform His Word.

Gems from the Crown is a weekly blog to strengthen and encourage believers in Christ in their walk with God. If you would like to receive Gems from the Crown delivered directly to you, please click here.

When Fear and Faith Collide

Presents and Gifts

When Is It Wrong To Judge Others?

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.

Do You Know a Pareavor?

As a parent who has experienced this horrific event, I found myself trying to think of a word to describe what I felt, and the only thing that came to me is death—the pain of my own death. A part of us dies along with our child.

This got me thinking. A widow or widower is someone who has lost their spouse; an orphan is someone who has lost their parents. Since it is acknowledged that losing a child is the worst event a person can go through in life, then why isn’t there a word for us?

I have thought and prayed long and hard on this. One day I sat down and listed all the words possible for parents, grief, bereaved, children, etc. to see what I could put together as a word for a grieving or bereaved parent.

That is how I made the word being introduced in this book: PAREAVOR. A pareavor is a parent who has lost a child through death. How did I come up with this?

“Pa” comes from the word parent: a person who is a father or mother; a person who has a child (Merriam-Webster)

“Reave” comes from the word bereave. The meaning of the actual word “reave” (which the word bereave comes from) is: to plunder or rob, to deprive one of, to seize, to carry or tear away (Merriam-Webster).

“Or”: indicating a person who does something (Wiktionary)

This sounds like a pretty good description of what happens when a child dies, no matter the age of the child. So a “pareavor” is a parent who has been deprived of their child who was seized and torn away from them through death.

Some people (myself included) describe the death of a child like an amputation. The daughter we lost at age 29 lived 26 of those years with only one leg. It was amputated when she was only three years old, due to bone cancer. So we have experience with what living with an amputation is like.

You have to learn how to live and function with a part of you missing. It can be done. But unless you have had to learn how to live day-to-day with an amputation, you don’t realize or understand the many things in life it affects.

These are just a couple of examples of how different our lives were, raising a child with an amputation.

Yes, an amputation is a good description to help people understand what it is like to lose a child through death. But there is another one that actually seems even better to me.

So how does it feel to lose a child? All of us who have been hurled into a life-long membership in this unwanted club hope and pray you never have to find out.

Perspective can change everything. But it cannot be “forced” on a person. It can only be gently presented as a thought, allowing those in deep grief to take it and make the change in how they see it.

To find out more about Come Grieve Through Our Eyes: How to Give Comfort and Support to Bereaved Parents by Taking a Glimpse Into Our Hidden Dark World of Grief, click here.

We also have a ministry for pareavors: GPS Hope (Grieving Parents Sharing Hope) and can be found at www.gpshope.org.

The Right Word at the Right Time

Gems from the Crown is a weekly blog to strengthen and encourage believers in Christ in their walk with God. If you would like to receive Gems from the Crown delivered directly to you, please click here.

Recent Posts

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK

Contact Us