Author Archives

Norma L. Brumbaugh

Inspirational Writer, Author, and Speaker

PO Box 6432, Chico, CA 95927
nlbrumbaugh@gmail.com

Keep a smile in your heart.

THE PROMISE OF HOPE by Edward Grinnan (Guideposts Books, 2011)

This book is a collection of true life stories compiled and written by Guideposts Editor-in-Chief.  The Promise of Hope will encourage you in your walk of faith. Edward Grinnan masterfully blends several stories interspersed with a personal account of his own journey to faith. Each story that is shared has hardships that are overcome by ordinary people. Grinnan’s story, as well, keeps us wondering when he will finally come to face the truth of his own spiritual need. When the moment comes, it is compelling and makes us realize how close life and death sometimes are, when life is spiraling down and miracles are needed. It came down to such a moment for him. In this book, we see a mother’s love that sustains, continues and never gives up. We see the pain of a mysterious death. We see the hurt and denial caused by addiction. We also see the the dullness of pain and the sense of a person being lost to their own self. I am glad for this narrative. It shares the human condition in an up close and personal way. We are walking Grinnan’s journey with him and parts of it ain’t very pretty. Particularly touching (to me) was Grinnan’s account of his lost love. Somehow I could relate to his sense of loss and longing and her sense of the need to move on with life. That is a very real experience that relates to many of our painful pasts.  Most of all, I found myself encouraged by the evidence that God still calls the prodigal home. In doing so, He meets people where they’re at and makes them into people they never dreamed they would end up being; better, fulfilled, and grateful.

Posted on

Authentic Christianity

I have never claimed to be a very smart person. That, I am not. But what I am is a seeker of God and a follower of His way. My spiritual journey is an honest one, at least as much as is possible within me. God has changed my life. He healed me and has renewed me. I owe Him a debt of gratitude. He blesses me at His table of grace and fills me with His ever-deepening love. I have received His unmerited favor. I experience His unadulterated peace and holy presence. It is lovely to be God’s child, a safe and secure place to be.

God is the needle. I am the thread. He leads. I follow. With a willingly heart and an open attitude is how I follow my Father God. I learn from Him wherever He sees fit to take me. Praises to God.

It is God Who makes our lives holy. He consecrates the offering and proffers blessings as He sees fit. It is our responsibility and good pleasure toward God and His anointed Head, in reverent obedience and in unveiled contriteness of heart, to adore and worship our divine Creator and Lover. In this, ‘Come unto Me,’ our turning to Him, we find ourselves willing and able to receive more of God with a greater awareness of His being through a soft and sweet joining within the intimacy of spiritual relationship.

We are accepted children in the welcoming and warm embrace of our loving, heavenly Father God. This happens on God’s terms, not ours, and is meant for our own good. He knows the depth of our neediness, and He desires to meet us at the crossroads where faith meets reality in a decided, yet glorious, supernatural way.

No religion or theological position can unmask or detail for us the tenderness of knowing God as the Lifter of our souls. It is a divine union of a Father with His child in the wonder of close, unencumbered and uncomplicated, family relationship. In Him is life eternal.

We, far too easily, get hung up on the wrong things. What God wants from us is our heart, first, then our trust, loyalty, and obedience. What tripped up the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, can trip us up in today’s contemporary Christianity. We can pride ourselves on our ‘good lives’ and ‘good deeds’ our ‘ministries’ and our ‘outreaches,’ our church programs and building ventures, but, do we say the Jesus Prayer? “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and is our life a reflection of the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief, who said, ‘Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more’ to the one stained by her sin?

It was the form of worship that overtook the Pharisees’ religious hearts. They lost the abiding truth of the love of God which demonstrates itself in a love for all the people in the world.In this there is a form of hypocrisy that our religious eyes fail to see. The religious form can smack of spiritual arrogance and over-indulgent (religious) self-worship, a nauseous presence that grows inside church institutions of all religious traditions. There is a dullness that inhibits and blinds the person from knowing God and His ways. We are to come as children to Jesus, He will allow none to forbid the little children to come unto Him. Here we find innocent trust.

The church, its traditions and theology, is not in competition for primacy in a competing religious market despite what we may think or believe. That way of thinking is to have the wrong focus and gaze. Rather, it is the holy trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who, with our gaze fixed upon Them, will bring us into spiritual unity and holy union no matter the religious belief of our childhood days and past spiritual experiences, present church leanings or lack thereof. “Come, unto Me.” is simple and profound and will fully be embraced the day we physically enter God’s holy presence in that day of all days.

God alone.