Peace Robbers

Recently there as been an attack for my peace. The conscious effort and fight for peace these past few years has cost me almost everything I have. When your peace is attacked its a war you need to be ready to rage. If you are not ready it can take you into a world win of things that will damage you and steal your destiny. A few days ago I had the wind knocked out of me figuratively speaking. I can not get into the details of this as I'm still in the storm of it but my immediate response to the circumstance I asked the Lord "why must you allow this to happen?!" I didn't really ask the question wanting an answer. I have experienced that in my deepest moments of agony words flow out that seem to my mind to be nonsense but nonetheless it is what it is. In my studying for seminary school there was a assignment of looking up a word and its meaning. I chose the word peace because it stood out to me out of the index word choices. I started to look up the meaning in the english dictionary as my assignment was telling me to do and also the synonyms and antonyms. I started to feel like the holy spirit was trying to allure me to certain words and show me whats happening in my situation. I realize there is a spiritual war raging for my peace ( smiles )! I am not giving over my peace to anyone, thing, situation, or demon! There are such thing as peace robbers. Some of these peace robbers are possibly unintentional; maybe yo have someone in your life you isn't living by the kingdom standards and just doesn't understand why you aren't freaking out or getting mad about something going on in your life so they unintentionally start to pry away at your peace. In this case we can share our reason for peace freely and let God do the rest of the work these people need to be shown grace. Others are intentionally trying to make sure that you do no live in peace. These people need some true God intervention and we should pray for them even when we do not want to. They are unhappy and miserable and wicked in their acts and intentions. I am dealing with that type of things now. BUT, that attempt to rob my peace has failed in the name of Jesus because the work that Jesus has done for me on the cross has given me an unshakable, unstoppable, perfect working of peace in my life. Sometimes you have to war for peace. We see that in the natural often when nations go to war for peace in their country. The Holy Spirit is the great counselor seeking him shows us which way we need to take for our peace to remain. My prayer for you who read this is that you would have the perfect peace of God in your life and that you will never be robed nor will you be a robber of anyones peace. Peace is my portion and I will fight for it!!!

My sisters blog she wrote years back..TOUCHING

Be happy with things as they are I usually don't cry in front of others, it's not in my nature, it just doesn't come easily. When I am alone and feel it comming on, I just go with it, but for me, this is a very intimate and personal thing that I find incredibly difficult to share. Today however, I could not contain my emotions and found myself crying while trying to find my way out of the maze St. Ray's calls Radiology. I had just had a chest x-ray, they were looking for new tumors on my lungs. Still, this was kind of surprising because this certianly isn't the most daunting test I've had to face, but it really got to me today. When I made it back to my oncologist's office for my chemo I sat next to an older woman. We began talking, swaping war stories (it's what you do when you're on the chemo assembly line) and she was also stage 4 breast cancer. I was schocked to learn that she was 87 years old. She looked fabulous for a woman her age, let alone a woman her age with cancer. Then she shared with me that she was currently undergoing radiation 5 days a week and was glad to have dropped down to having chemo once a week instead of the 3 treatement per week she was undergoing prior to begining radiation. She had had a radical mastectomy and a tumor on her spine removed. Unfortunately the cancer had now spread to her bladder and due to complications with her heart, she is not a good candidate for surgery and had to resote to chemo and radiation to try and kill the cancer. While everyone knows that chemo sucks ass what people generally don't know is that radiation is worse. It burns the hell out of your skin (leaving it dark and saggy when you're done) and it hurts like a SOB. It is also incredibly draining and probably more so because one doesn't expect it to be so and is not prepared for it. But here she was with a smile and her wig looking fierce as hell for an old chick. She had nothing but entertaining stories and kind words. Her cancer has spread to her bladder wich has something like an 86% mortality rate and here she was content with her life and more importantly just living it. I was ashamed that I had indulged in such self pity. Here I am young, relatively healthy (for the most part) and have a happy and full life. It could always be worse, unfortunately we rarely if ever stop to consider this. If I have learned anything from this shitty disease, it's that I will not be here forever or even as long as I might have thought or planned on. I need to just be in the moment and enjoy it. By my AMAZING sister Melissa DeVillegas who sits on the right side of the Lord