“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; Isaiah 58: 6-8 I would encourage you to read the whole chapter of Isaiah 58. What a cool picture of true fasting. A day removed from the beginning of lent I started to reflect on the beginning of my journey. Not yesterday, but my journey from my previous thoughts on fasting to where I am now as I start out on my 40 days. I humbly… [Read More]
Posts Tagged ‘trials’
Suffering for Christ
January 30th, 2011 
Dana Fisher But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. ~1 Peter 4:13 You ever notice the more you veer towards the Lord the harder life becomes? That straight and narrow path is narrow for a reason and sometimes, certainly for me, it feels as if either side is a ledge. When I look back at some of the big trials in my life I see a moment in time on that same point where I made a decision for Christ and against the World. We don’t teach that in Sunday School. We teach hey come give your life to Jesus and watch the blessings flow. I believe Christianity need come with a warning. Those blessings do abound but they come at a price. They also often come inside peace that surpasses understanding. I realize this is hard… [Read More]
Posted in American Christianity 
Tags: 1 peter, 2 timothy, bible, blessings, Christ, Christian, Christianity, christians, death, devil, evil, fear, glory, God, Isaiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, joy, life, Lord, love, Luke, peace, Peter, Psalm, satan, scripture, sin, Spirit, spiritual, Timothy, trial, trials, trust, truth, war 
Comments OffWielding your Knife
November 10th, 2010 Dana Fisher Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. ~Genesis 22:10 As I made my way through customs on U.S. soil I knew the attacks would be coming swiftly. No sooner do we come down off the mountain with Jesus then the wave of doubt and destruction and hardships come crashing against us like the ocean hitting the sea wall. Sure enough, I set my bags in the car, sat down in the passenger seat and it began. I would be headed to Denver soon, uprooting my entire life, leaving my friends, family, and church behind. Most of my possessions would be gone and I would be traveling with only what would fit in two cars. It was not an easy decision by any means and one with which I wrestled for a very long time(and even still struggle with even after the fact). It… [Read More]
When Two Worlds Collide
August 6th, 2010 Dana Fisher It’s so hard for me to write when things seem to be crashing down. The last thing I want to do when fighting a lion is pick up a pencil when I need a sword. It just seems to be anti-climactic to write something about fighting the good fight, when all I want to do is wave a white flag and ask for a truce for a few days. Some times I just want a break, I just feel so mentally drained. It’s not physical at all, I feel like I could go play football all day or run 5 miles, but my mind is spinning so fast it tires out my entire body. It’s sort of like an overloaded washer. The clothes are in there spinning relentlessly but there’s to much in there and the pressure and weight of it all is pushing on the door, weakening the seal…. [Read More]
Posted in Christian Living Tags: bible, burden, Christ, God, Jesus, love, pain, peace, satan, temptation, trial, trials No Comments »Keep Digging
June 15th, 2010 Dana Fisher Make this valley full of ditches. For this is what the LORD says: You will see neither wind nor rain, yet this valley will be filled with water, and you, your cattle and your other animals will drink. This is an easy thing in the eyes of the LORD; he will also hand Moab over to you. You will overthrow every fortified city and every major town. You will cut down every good tree, stop up all the springs, and ruin every good field with stones. ~2 Kings 3:16-19 My pastor used the above passage in his sermon last week and while it wasn’t so much “in passing”, it definitely wasn’t the focal point of his message. Yet, like that piece of sidewalk gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe that you just can’t seem to scrape off, it just keeps sticking in the forefront of my mind. I… [Read More]
Posted in Christian Living Tags: faith, faithful, God, John, Lord, old testament, satan, sin, trials, trust, war No Comments »Let the horse do the work
October 28th, 2009 Dana Fisher Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.. ~Matt 11:28 “I want you to take your hands off the reigns and trot over the bars without holding on.” The instructor said. “You want me to do what?” I looked down at her perplexed from atop a beautiful, large horse. I hadn’t ridden on a horse in over 20 years and I had only been on this one for about 15 minutes. “You’re leaning forward with your shoulders, using your own power to keep you up.” She replied. “You need to sit back more and allow the horse to do the work.” I’m a sports guy, I’ve played them my entire life. The instructor went on to explain that in sports you are trained to lead with your shoulder and in horseback riding it’s the complete opposite. There’s this large, powerful horse… [Read More]
The grass is always greener
March 24th, 2008 Dana Fisher Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered,… So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan. -Genesis 13:10-11 Some times trials aren’t bad things happening to you. Some times trials sneak up on us as perceived blessings and only bite us later on down the road. We look back and realize “Man that was a dumb decision”. For years I prayed for the “perfect” job. Everyone has their own idea of the perfect situation. Mine was this: 1. It payed the bills, 2. The people were nice and not overbearing, 3. They were understanding when you were sick and not second guessing you every time you called in, 4. It was close to home. That’s in no particular order and I earnestly prayed, Lord if you can make it happen please do. Put me in Your perfect situation. If money… [Read More]
Salt Water Taffy
March 19th, 2008 Dana Fisher …but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. – John 4:14 I love salt water taffy! One minute you’re chewing on cinnamon, the next mint chocolate. Any flavor you can imagine probably exists as a piece of salt water taffy somewhere. One of the best and worst parts is how chewy and sticky it really is. It gets stuck so far down in your teeth you taste it for hours. As I grabbed a piece from the candy jar at the pet store the other day it got me thinking; I’m just like this little piece of taffy. In the scope of things this little piece of taffy is insignificant. If it fell on the ground, or got dirty and was unusable we’d throw it away. We get dirty every day with sins we don’t even realize we commit. Yet Jesus comes along and cleans us off,… [Read More]
Defiant
February 11th, 2008 Dana Fisher “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion” – 1 Peter 5:8 Have you ever heard the saying “everything comes in 3′s.”? It’s a common theme, you get a new car cheap, and find a $5 bill on the floor of the local stop and shop and one of your friends mentions “hey what’s next? Good things come in 3′s.”, and vice versa for bad things. Let me walk you through the last month of my life: I got severally sick for 2 weeks(bed ridden for days at a time), my heat broke, I ran out of heating oil, I hurt my back to where I thought I had just had back surgery again, I was down to my last dollar, a girl at work is trying to make my job hard and for some reason doesn’t like me, and as soon as I fixed my heat, it… [Read More]
You’re an equal
January 30th, 2008 Dana Fisher …Proclaim to it the message I give to you. – Jonah 3:2 Yesterday was media day at the Super Bowl. A general circus of reporters clamour for players attention and ask some of the most ludicrous questions you could imagine. My team, the Patriots, are in the Super Bowl this year and as such I was interested in what would be said, who would be talking, etc… About 20 minutes in to the event a reporter asked Tom Brady what his purpose in life was. “Why do you have this platform?” he asked. Hmmm… Jonah had a platform. He was charged with going into Nineveh and proclaiming God’s message. Scared, he ran from God but our God is so big there’s nowhere to hide. God will never force us to do what he asks but we will face trials by disobeying. Once we obey we find that what He asks… [Read More]
Posted in Christian Living, Radical Christianity Tags: brother, change, Christ, Christian, destruction, God, hell, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Jonah, life, Lord, Nineveh, praise, Psalm, salvation, saved, sin, trial, trials No Comments »
