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.

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The Human Need for God and How it Influences and Pertains to Real Life

Why do we need God? I don’t think we consider this question very often. “Need” sounds weak, like a problem or a weakness. I believe we need God, and we cannot exist without Him. It is not a weakness, though, it is a reality. We need God to make sense of this world and our part in it.

I asked myself this morning, why do I need God? Why do others need God? What is it about God that I need and find important in life? The list in this blog contains the thoughts that came to me immediately, one right after another. I do need God. I need Him every second, minute, hour, and day. He is part of my life in a concrete and living way. I know I could live life without embracing His presence, but His presence would still embrace me even if it was unrecognized by my belief system. His reality is very “present” with me. I see Him in little and big details all around me. Even the symmetry of life and the intricacy of its mathematical composition speaks to me of His being here with us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

I think the god of Science has robbed the secular world of the wonder of God. Science has replaced God in the minds of intellectual society. Thinking people tend to discount the religious belief of others not realizing its basis in truth. It is a shame. Most people who have an awareness of God are thinking people too. Some are great intellects who brave the exclusion with courage and fortitude. They speak when the world mocks them. It is a shame that they have been devalued in the estimation of polite society.

I see the beauty of our human giftedness as a semblance that originates in the giftedness of God. He creates every day of the year. Each new fertilized seed that springs to life is one of His creations. The sticker label says, “Made by God.” He has made us in His own image. That is why we create, and we will always create. It is a human quality that we have been given from Above. We are separate from other created creatures in our human ability to create and to improve on our creations with more created expressions, tools, and mechanisms. It is an amazing thing. While I was driving on the freeway yesterday, I was imagining human travel one hundred years from now, people coasting along in driverless vehicles. I pictured people moving in the sky with self-propelled individual crafts, hovering like a helicopter when necessary. I’m sure the technology is present now, just the managing of space travel is problematic; how would we keep from crashing into each other?

God created us to need Him. We cannot operate independent of His help and benefits. Our very lives need His breath of life. Our hearts need His perpetual life-giving source. Our earth needs the sun’s energy, earth’s transpiration, and life-giving nutritional substances. We wouldn’t get far without God’s intervening on our behalf. Every so often, God shakes it up a bit so we will remember that He is the One Who is in charge. We are independent creatures bent on our own wants and needs easily forgetting the God of the Cosmos. God gives and gives to all of us people.

Here are a few areas where we need the touch of God in response to our physical, mental, and emotional human need and development.

  • We need God for the wisdom He imparts to us on a daily basis.
  • We need God to help us with the trials in life. He gives to us in an a sundry of ways.
  • We need God because we need His love. His love is unconditional. He loves because He personifies love. God IS love. It is who He is, His nature and being.
  • We need God because we are weak and unstable and easily influenced. He speaks truth to us, and He gives us strength.
  • We need God for health, life, and energy. He is the divine Giver of all. Without Him, there would be nothing. We would be without life and without hope.
  • We need God to bring us into a right relationship with Him. Through Jesus Christ, we find redemption for our unrighteous spiritual condition. The lost is found and then given a new status with God. It is called eternal life.
  • We need God for us to understand the nature of truth. He gives us understanding. He enlightens our thinking. He gives us truth. His Word, The Holy Bible, gives the essence and full measure of His truth. It is a road-map that shows us the way to live a life well-lived and victorious.
  • We need God to know the way. God is the director of our destiny. A life yielded to Him will find the meaning of “journey.” We are strangers, pilgrims, not meant to live the totality of our lives here on earth. This is just the introduction. We are made for God. The journey here is but a foretaste of the better and fuller life to be lived in the hereafter in glory with God, the place where we find that which is everlasting eternal.
  • We need God to help us. We need to heal, we need hope, we need faith, we need fortitude, we need strength, we need friends, we need solid relationships, we need family and children, we need ideas and new beginnings, we need food and shelter, clothing and resources, we need jobs and skills, we need a church family and people to love us and want us, we need a reason to live and positive self-worth and intrinsic value, we need purpose and kindness, strength and courage. There is so much that we need. We need forgiveness, we need second chances and new beginnings, we need removal of painful damaged emotions, removal of hurt and difficult problems, freedom from depression, overcoming of addictive behaviors, freeing in our inner person, better relationships, better situations, stronger character, positive mentors and teachers, people who believe in us. We need so much. We are a needy people. It is hard to admit, but it is true.
  • We need to find God. We need to reach out to Him. We need to ask Him to reveal Himself to us. We need to understand what relationship with God looks like. We need genuine life in God, not false ideas that fall flat and are worthless in value. We want to know that life is better with God. We want to see Him manifest Himself into a living relationship with us. We need Him to infuse His character and His likeness into our character and our likeness.
  • We need God to show us how to love well and how to love others with unconditional love. Love finds its essence in God. We would not know love without God giving us the capacity to know and absorb love. He is the greatest and purest example of love. He demonstrates, through the life of Christ, that it is in the poor things of the world that one can find richness that fills and has lasting value. The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, & 7, unfold the core teachings of this type of purity of lifestyle and meaningful existence.
  • We need God for His life-giving sustenance. He is living water, living bread, living light, living peace, living life.
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Six Reasons We Write

THERE’S NO BETTER TIME THAN NOW TO GET YOUR WRITING ON. Do what writers do and begin expressing what is in your heart. The first time I met with a writing instructor I was told that writing is a craft that one must learn. Good books don’t just happen, they come through a birthing. You may be like me. I have a drawer full of writings that I wrote over the years that have never come to print and were never meant to. Some were caused by overflow within me. Why do writers write and authors author? Here are a few  of the reasons.

  1. We write because we have something to say. We know what we know. We like what we like. We love what we love. We don’t like what we don’t like. It bubbles to the top–in and out–much like a mountain spring, it flows out from our inner well.
  2. We write because we have a love of words. We like how they sound. We like their musicality. We like the game of finding just the right word. It’s like a puzzle that one works at until you find the exact piece that fits. Our craft is one of words and their inner connections and vital signs.
  3. We write because of an inner compelling. We give voice to our emotions. Our heart bids expression. We write, in love. We write, emotional, even angry. We write, unhappy. We write, ecstatic. We write, enthusiastic. We write, lonely. We write with urgency. We write, we write, we write. There are times we write as a therapeutic exercise, only for ourselves.
  4. We give voice to our words for we are writers of messages. We write to say worthwhile considerations, something that needs to be shared. We write so that people can learn and grow. We write through our voice of experience. We write to teach as a way to communicate what we wish to say. We wish to influence as a way to cause others to think and consider. We seek to state our cause succinctly with passion or grace or force. We are messengers. This is why we write, even when we are our only audience.
  5. We write to encourage or cause emotion. We write to validate, to praise, to appreciate, to sympathize, to empathize, to lift up, to set down, to remember, to correct, and to guide. We know words have power. We are the guardians of our words and we take our guardianship of them with great seriousness.
  6. We write to establish a presence that speaks. We write to create a business model, to execute to the next level. We write with personal or professional agenda, to make sketch of the realistic non-fiction venue or to share our talent through the casual informal note of the letter writer.

I choose to write for all of the six reasons I have stated. If I didn’t have something to say, I am sure I wouldn’t spend the hours I do at the computer trying to say it. I’d do something else with my day.

I encourage you to write if you are so inclined. Don’t put it off. There is no better time than now. Do it, and keep at it until you get it right. I think I can, I think I can . . . said the little engine that could.

Bless you.

 

Let me know how it’s going. I’d love to hear.

Norma