Tricia McNair: Noble Life Ministries

Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.” Luke 9:23(NLT) One day Jesus went to the town of Bethsaida to get away, but the crowds found out where he was going and they followed him. He welcomed them and taught them about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who were sick.  Late in the afternoon the crowd was hunger, but the disciples only had five loaves of bread and two fish, which actually was a little boy’s lunch.  Jesus changed the boy's lunch to a feast and fed 5000 men. The people were filled; Jesus feed them physically and spiritually, yet they had not changed. We find this to be true because, Jesus later turned to the crowd and said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn ( change) from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.”  Jesus had done everything possible for these men and their families yet they remained with th

“ A wise person is hungry for knowledge, while the fool feeds on trash.”  Proverbs 15:14 Lately, more than usual, I have noticed that people seem to be without guidance and direction for their life.  It is as though the world all around us is a desert for wisdom and a paradise for foolishness.  Even the paths of our leaders have found their steps among the foolish things of this world. Proverbs 15:21 states, “Foolishness brings joy to those with no sense; a sensible person stays on the right path.”  The wise person is indeed hungry for knowledge and lives for it.  For example, a wise person who wants to truly get out of debt will begin to study financial matters. I have learned that it is not wise or sensible to ignore your income and pretend as though you have more money than you actually have.  Yes, you can charge it, but you still have to pay it! The bill will come in sooner or later.  And because you use debit/credit cards it feels as though you are not really sp

You can have a better life by changing your heart and your environment. Psalm 36:1 states "Sin lurks deep in the hearts of the wicked, forever urging them on to evil deeds. They have no fear of God to hold them back.  Instead, in their conceit they think they can hid their evil deeds and not get caught."  When you are surrounded by evil women and men you may find yourself caught up in their evil acts. However, if you will make up your mind today to turn back from them and go with God, your life will change for the better.  Someone once said, "Evil prevails when good men do nothing."  We saw this in the news this week over and over again.  Don't sit idle by and watch evil happen.  Remove yourself from them.  Remove yourself from negative people who brings death and destruction to your soul.  Some of you may need to get rid of  a friend or two!  Especially, if they tear you down and crush your spirit over and over again.  Evil people lie awake at night to hat

Luke 1:35, " The angel replied, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of God shall over shadow you; so the baby born to you will be utterly holy - the Son of God. " The mother of Jesus, Mary experienced a miracle that day through the power of God. I know that life can be overwhelming and it is just sometimes downright hard. People disappoint us and break our hearts. You may have those around you that mean you more harm than good and you don't know where to turn.  In these economical down turns there are a lot of people with great needs.  Someone once said, " What goes up must come down." And that is true in physics, but when it comes to our lives, God's does extraordinary things that goes become the matter of physics. He said the last shall be first; and you may be down, but Jesus can bring you up. You may be experiencing an economical downturn, but things will change and there will be an economical up swing. Trouble really does n

In Isaiah 62, Isaiah the prophet is praying for Jerusalem and the text states that God told him to smooth out the road; pull out the boulders; raise a flag for all the nations to see for their Savior is coming! I found this to be amazing. I would have thought that the Lord could come no matter what condition the road was in. However, God sees a need to make a smooth path in the road for the Lord to show up in their lives. A growing population of people (young or old) are now just rude to each other. Some people enjoy insulting other people. However, Proverbs 20:20 states, "If you insult your father or mother, your light will be snuffed out in total darkness." Yikes! Even children are known by the way they act. Every human being here on earth was created by God and is here to serve a purpose. Don't let your light be snuffed out. You cannot glorify God and Satan at the same time. Maybe life is harder than usual in today's world; given the economy and high unemploy

We all have many different types of relationships. Some are healthy and some are not so healthy. Relationship is more than a biological or physical connection. The definition of relationship from the Online Dictionary is " state of connectedness between people (especially an emotional connection)." Emotional connection is what causes the conflict within the relationship. When you are not in a relationship you simply don't care about what the other person said or did. But when you are in a relationship there is always an emotional connection. That connection can build you up or tear you down. The reason why relationships are so hard in the first place is because of the emotional connection we have with each other. Oftentimes, you must deal with the conflict or you will lose the relationship. The word relationship appears in the Bible 14 times and mainly focuses on having the right relationship with God and man. When you are in a conflict with a person that yo

In I Corinthians Chapter 13 – Paul tells us about the gift of love. The church of Corinth had problems with people who insisted on expressing their gift of speaking in tongues. They were unruly and unloving to those around them. So Paul tells them that the Holy Spirit gives us nine distinctive gifts (Words of Wisdom, Words of Knowledge, Special kind of Faith, Power to heal, Power to Perform Miracles, Ability to Prophesy, Discernment of spirits, gifts of tongues and the interpretation of tongues), but the greatest gift is gift number ten – the gift of Love. This tenth gift was so important that Paul wrote about it in Chapter 13. Without the gift of Love all the other gifts are powerless. I just have time today to talk about two colors in the portrait of love. Let me say a few things about patience and kindness. These two attributes are lacking the most in the love that I see most people claim they have for each other. When we say love is patient we often think of someone who

HEAR, O ISRAEL: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deut. 6:4-5 This commandment is not only for Israel, but it is for us as well. We are instructed to love the LORD our God with all our hearts, soul and strength. God wants us to love Him the most, but he also want you to know that He loves you the most. He loves you whether you can feel it or not. Love is not just a feeling (emotion) it is an action that is demonstrated by the one who loves you. If a man is abusing, using and confusing you, he DOES NOT love you. As my sister Rachel said, "A good man covers his wife." He will take care of you and help you and provide for you. He will not use, abuse and forsake you. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in ev

This past Sunday, I taught in my Sunday School Class on Effective Prayer that we should be merciful and humble. Our Lesson continued from Luke 18:1-14. We saw how Jesus connected justice and mercy. The widow was persistent in her prayers and she was asking for the unjust judge to have mercy on her and avenge her. Jesus tells us that we ought to always pray and not lose heart, and God shall avenge us, His own elect who cry out day and night to Him. Then Jesus in our text connects justice with mercy. He tells us not to trust in ourselves and not to think that God will answer just because we declare ourselves to be so righteous and persistent, but believe instead that God is a just and merciful God. We should humble ourselves before Him. It is by His grace that we receive anything. Jesus tells the story of 2 men in the temple. The Pharisee trusts in himself as being righteous ( claiming that he is not like other men) and believes he deserves to have his prayers answered because of hi

I recently told one of my children who was going through a tough time that, "Success is not measured by the things you have, but by the character of your heart." I believe that was straight from God. There are so many times that we compare ourselves to one another, but the Bible teaches us that we should not compare ourselves to each other. "Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won't need to compare yourself to anyone else." 3 Ways to be successful: 1 ) Stop comparing yourself to someone else . Focus on your strengths. Write down the key strengths you have and focus on those. As we say in business, play to your strength. Then write down your weakness or things you need to improve. Work to make your weakness play with your strength, by working to improve them based on what you need not what someone else needs from you or what someone else has that you may admire. You have to love you be

I can relate to when you work hard and try to do the right thing and nothing you do seems to be working out. At times like this I want to say, " Stop the merry-go-round and let me off!" I realize that even King David in the Bible, of long ago, felt this way. He writes in Psalms 55:1-6 " Give ear to my prayer, O God, And do not hide Yourself from my supplication. 2 Attend to me, and hear me; I am restless in my complaint, and moan noisily, 3 Because of the voice of the enemy, Because of the oppression of the wicked; For they bring down trouble upon me, And in wrath they hate me. 4 My heart is severely pained within me, And the terrors of death have fallen upon me. 5 Fearfulness and trembling have come upon me, And horror has overwhelmed me. 6 So I said, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. " When the pressure of life is too tough and hard we all want to fly way and be at rest. But then I remember who I am in Christ and my emo

Never stop praying - I Thessalonians 5:17 (NLT) I remember being able to pray to God for help since I was very young. I used to see my mother and grandmother pray and ask God to help us. Whenever things were tough we could always count on God to make a way out of no way. My Mom, Billie Jean, never stopped praying for what our family needed, and somehow it seemed as though every single time God would answer. I came to believe that my mother had some special relationship between her and God. It seemed as though when Mom prayed God heard. I have seen her on her knees asking God to bring home my sister who was her wayward daughter, as she would say. She prayed consistently for my sister when she ran away from home. One day through a lot tears and praying my sister, Helen, finally came home. My Mom never stop praying, she never gave up on any of us kids, and she never gave up on God. There were times in our family when we had no food in the house even though my father who was a Steve

There are 192 Scriptures on Wisdom in the Holy Bible and many examples, from Solomon who was considered the wisest man who ever lived to Queen Esther who was considered to be a woman with wisdom and discretion. She was wise in the way she laid out her plan to approach her husband with the news that her Jewish race was at risk of being annihilated. She fasted and prayed for 3 days before going before Him, and she was successful and prevented her entire nation from being destroyed! Proverbs 2:12 (NLT) states that , " Wisdom will save you from evil people, from those whose speech is corrupt." Getting wisdom is the most important thing you can do! And whatever else you do, get good judgment. How do you get wisdom? First you ask God for it. He promises not to withhold wisdom from anyone who wants it. You will find that understanding is tied to wisdom. So next, seek to understand before making major decisions or judgments or talking about something. Esther sought to under

"The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles." Psalm 34:17 Deliverance is the act of delivering, a state of being delivered. It comes from the basic word deliver, it is to be set free, to be saved from something objectionable, to give up, to hand over. God promises us that he will deliver us from the things that bind us. Jesus said he came to set the captive free. Are you trapped in a situation? Jesus said in his word he came to set you free. You may ask, deliverance from what? I think if you just sit and think about it, you'll know in your heart what you need to be delivered from or what you have been delivered from. The extend of deliverance is vast across the human conditions of this world. It can be from eating too much to being delivered from child slavery or prostitution. True deliverance is achieving freedom from that which binds you and keep you from being all that is possible for you to be. You can be set free

Scripture: Proverbs 5:16 NLT “Why spill the water of your springs in public, having sex with just anyone?” Even though this advice in scripture is a father’s instruction to his son, I think we as women can take this as our Heavenly Father’s instruction to us. The father is advising his son against having sex with just anyone! He tells him to run from an immoral woman. His final advice is for his son’s heart to be captivated by his wife only. You as a woman (single or married) must also run far away from immoral men, because if you do not, you will lose your honor and hand over to merciless people everything you have achieved in life. I don’t know one Christian woman after finally meeting the one who truly loves her and then marries who did not regret that she had sex with other men before him. Because she finally realized that her wedding night bed cuts the covenant with her husband in blood, just as Christ’s blood cuts a covenant for us with God. I have compared single wom

I once believed long ago that becoming a Christian would make my life easier. Instead what has happened is my ability to handle life has become easier, because of my faith in Christ, but I still have trials and tribulations. I know who I am and whose I am, but I am not exempt from trouble. I know who I was Before Christ (B.C.) and who I am After Christ (A.C.) and they are not the same person. I know that my past is under the blood and my present is covered by His love. I know when the destroyer tries to work havoc in my life that Isaiah 54:17 says, that no weapon formed against me shall prevail and I will refute every tongue that accuses me. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from God. I still face challenges everyday, just because I live here on earth. But, I told my Sunday School class that since we fight the unseen battle, a spiritual warfare we cannot see, we should not contribute to it by gossiping and lying about someone ourselv

Anger: can be a clever remark, verbal attack, or in its most common form an exploding temper. We struggle with that form of anger (exploding) because it is childish. Yet many people are angry, but are almost totally unaware of it. Some people try to pretend that they have no anger, but there is chaos within. They will even say, "I am not anger." Yet there sharp voice and other physical feature shows the anger within. Yes, anger is a natural emotion, but misplaced anger is deadly. You can’t “stew” on your anger, over and over again. Internalizing what is making you upset builds ups a strong hostility and a stronghold in your life. Think of times when you have been angry? What was the result? How did you cool down? There are times when we have every reason to feel angry. People can disappoints us, let us down, hurt us or hurt our family. Anger is a valid human emotion. But there are times when our anger can seriously be misplaced. For example, Apostle Paul who w

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” – Proverbs 23:7 NKJV Our thoughts creates our emotions. Self-talk is nothing new. We talk to ourselves constantly by what we are thinking. How many times have you passed that mirror today and said something negative about yourself versus something good? Count them. You might be surprise. Proverb 23:7 tells us that "as he thinks in his heart, so is he." What we believe is manifested in our bodies, our speech, our choices. We can even have physical symptoms as well. When people are deeply depressed, their bones ache, and their bodies begin to feel as if they are wasting away from lack of food. What you continually think of becomes a reality for you. Jeremiah the prophet continually thought of his misery. No wonder he was known as the weeping prophet. He was depressed! Our thoughts affect our behavior. I am a Computer Scientist by trade, and in computer languages we have a saying called GIGO, "Garbage-In, Garbage-Out&quo

When I was a little girl my Mother, always told me that a man should treat you like a Queen. That statement save me from allowing men to treat me poorly. However, I finally realized that first I must become a Queen in my own heart before anyone could treat me as such. I know of a woman name Esther (Hebrew: אֶסְתֵּר, Modern Ester), born Hadassah, who is the eponymous heroine of the Book of Esther. According to the Bible she was a Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus (traditionally identified with Xerxes I). Her story is the basis for the celebration of Purim in Jewish tradition. The Purim celebration for the Jewish people this year is March 20, 2011. March 17, Thursday, this week, the Fast of Esther will be celebrated. In the days of Persia Kingdom a woman who was born Jewish was born to the wrong race, wrong faith and the wrong kingdom. She had no rights and her people were taking into captivity when she was a child. Esther was the daughter of a Benjamite, Abihail. “Esther

It is really hard to describe what a broken heart feels like. It often occurs when someone you love has left you and now you don't know how to navigate the painfully troubled waters of the relationship that has ended. It mostly feels like you cannot breath, as though someone is slowly crushing your soul and spirit. You feel sad and sick inside. Your mind races over and over again of what you could have done to make things work out. You spirit becomes depressed and you feel as though you just what to die. As a Chi Alpha Pastor, I once saw a young woman so brokenhearted that her entire body became limp and lifeless. I had to literally pick the young woman up and hold her until she could not cry anymore, only dry heaves would come out with an unspeakable moving of the lips. In other words, a broken heart hurts so bad that words cannot really describe it. But God's heart is dear to those who have a broken heart. Psalm 34:18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and save thos

Before I had a personal relationship with Jesus, I thought love was for the romance and marriage was for joining together in a struggle with life. I had no clue that marriage operated best when love is the core foundation of everything you do. I thought it was as Tina Turner once sang, "What's love gotta do with it?" After my life was changed by accepting the love of God I realized that love has everything to do with it! The core foundation of a lasting marriage is pure unconditional love. The husband must be the loving leader and the wife must love and respect her husband completely. Colossians 3:19, "Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them." This verse commands a man to love his wife. Ephesians 5:25-33," Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or

"From a distance Adonai appeared to me, saying, "I love you with an everlasting love, this is why in my grace I draw you to me." CJB In this verse we can see that the Lord puts action behind his words of love. He said, I love you with an everlasting love." He does not stop there. He then states what His actions are because He loves us. First, He draws us to Him, and then He tells us in John 3:16, that He loves us, therefore He gave His only Son so that there would be nothing between us and Him. Can you see that these are action words, He draws , He gave , He does for us? It does no good to say you love someone and you are never there for them. It is really insanity to believe that someone loves you, yet all their actions seems to be against you. Love is for us and not against us. My new son-in-law, Dante, just said to me, "Mom, I believe in taking care of family." He has it right and He loves my daughter and her 3 sons very much. When you love som

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you knew others were trying to cause you trouble or destroy your good works? Have you had your reputation to be at risk because someone slandered your good name? Well if you have you must know that God is a refuge for you in time of trouble. Isaiah 25:4, "For you have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in distress, shelter from the storm, shade from the heat- for the blast ruthless was like a storm that could destroy a wall." When I look at this text it speaks to my soul, and I am reminded that God is my refuge and my shelter from the storm of life and no matter how strong the blast of life may be coming at me, God is my refuge, my strength, my Helper and my shelter. A shelter is a basic structure or building that provides cover. I am here to tell you that there is nothing basic about God. He has provided for us a fortress, a strong tower and the righteous run into it and is save, but when enemy runs into

Judaism is intensely aware of the power of speech and of the harm that can be done through speech. The rabbis note that the universe itself was created through speech. Of the 43 sins enumerated in the Al Chet confession recited on Yom Kippur, 11 are sins committed through speech. The Talmud states that the tongue is an instrument so dangerous that it must be kept hidden from view, behind two protective walls (the mouth and teeth) to prevent its misuse! The harm done by speech is even worse than the harm done by stealing or by cheating someone financially, because amends can be made for monetary harms, but the harm done by speech can rarely be repaired. For this reason, some sources indicate that there is no forgiveness for lashon ha-ra (disparaging speech) A Chasidic tale illustrates this point: A man went about the community telling malicious lies about the rabbi. Later, he realized the wrong he had done, and began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his forgiveness,