Running with Amanda

Running with Amanda Running to Stop Teen Substance Abuse, Glorify Jesus Christ, Raise Money for Charity -- In Memory of Amanda Marie Allison, 1993-2011

We run, speak, or anything else we can do to raise awareness of the dangers of teen substance abuse and to raise money for various children's charities in memory of our daughter, Amanda Marie Allison, who was murdered on 1-15-2011, only 4 days before her 18th birthday.

10/14/2024

Journey through the Bible in a year.

I started 2 Corinthians this morning and found these two verses at the end of chapter 4 crying out that someone out there needs to hear them today.

2 Corinthians 4:17–18 (NIV): For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Whatever you’re going through today can’t compare to the joy and peace you’ll have in Heaven if you have placed your faith and trust in Christ! Take heart!

06/01/2024

Journey Through the Bible in a Year

Today I read Psalms 51-60. This particular passage stood out in light of recent events.

"Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge people with equity?
No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth." - Psalm 58:1-3

But no matter what those who hold positions of power here on earth do, God is in control. It may get plain ugly here on earth. It may get absolutely miserable. At the end of this life on earth, for the believer awaits eternity in Heaven, where there will be no pain, no suffering, no tears, and no injustice.

05/28/2024

Journey Through the Bible in a Year

Today, I read Psalms 11-20. The resounding theme here is: God is my refuge, my strength, my protector.

King David wrote these Psalms, some while at some really low lows, and some at some really high highs. In the lows he questions God, why are you not here? Much like we mentioned before. But even in those questioning times, he consistently reveres and praises God. In the highs, he gives all glory to God.

One of the hardest things for us to accept is that God allows us to struggle. He allowed David to be pursued by Saul. Saul wanted David DEAD! He pursued him relentlessly with the plan to kill him without mercy. David was chased and hunted, though he had done nothing wrong.

We often can't accept that God allows us to suffer and hurt. David didn't understand, but he didn't turn his back on God either. Too often, we decide in our suffering to lose faith. We end up turning from God because things don't go for us the way we believe they should.

But God is God! The One True God! Creator of Heaven and Earth! He is supreme! He has ALL authority to run this show how He sees fit. He doesn't have to ask what we want. He doesn't have to do things our way. He makes the rules for each and every one of us. We are his to do with as he will, to pull us out of a fire, or to let the flames burn us.

I can't explain why God chooses to let this or that happen. Why does it sometimes seem that bad things happen to good people and good things to bad? I don't know.

What I do know is that God is a God who keeps His promises...ALL OF THEM! What I do know is that God is a righteous God, which makes me believe Romans 8:28 where God told us ALL things work for good for those who love the Lord! What I do know is that God has a plan and I'm not privy to every part and detail of that plan. What I do know is that I have to trust God, even when I do not understand.

Oh that I could be like David, as strong and as faithful! Lord give me a heart like David, bent on following you, bent on praising you, bent on worshipping you!

The sun is about to rise and the day about to start. I pray that I can respond to whatever comes as David would have...thanking God, worshipping God, praising God, and faithful to follow God.

Thank you to all the brave men and women who answered the call and paid the ultimate sacrifice and to those with an empt...
05/27/2024

Thank you to all the brave men and women who answered the call and paid the ultimate sacrifice and to those with an empty seat at the table because of it.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." -- John 15:13, KJV

05/25/2024

Journey Through the Bible in a Year

This morning I read the first 10 Psalms. Most, if not all of them were written by King David.

Psalm 1 pretty much says God will reward those who are faithful. Some might take issue with that because we've all seen things that make us ask the age old question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Heck, we just read Job's story of suffering the other day! But the Psalmist does not say here that God will reward us NOW. He just says God will reward us.

We all endure hardship in life. No matter how often we go to church. No matter how we greet or don't greet people who are new to the church. Regardless whether we follow or refuse to follow, we are going to endure hardship. The ultimate reward for Christians is Heaven after our time here on earth is over.

I kept reading today and found the next few chapters help a pretty common theme. I was in chapter 9 and thought to myself, "King David never waivered in his faith. While he was running from people who wanted to kill him, his own son even, he was praying to God for deliverance, trusting God to preserve him.

Then came Chapter 10. Immediately I knew David's tone had shifted. Here he began to question God. Why wouldn't God protect the faithful and destroy their enemies?

Like Job, David was a good and faithful servant. To our human minds, it doesn't make sense that he had to endure all those tough times. But God sees all and knows all. He knows what's coming and He's using us to achieve His plan. He has every right to do things however He wants.

When times get tough, remember David. He lived a long, good, prosperous life. He was a man after God's own heart. But he still faced difficulties and struggles, just like we will along the way.

05/23/2024

Journey Through the Bible in a Year

Just finished the book of Nehemiah.

Israel and Judah had sinned so grievously that God handed them into captivity. Now, Nehemiah has returned and rebuilt Jerusalem. Like so many times we see in the Bible, Israel turns from God and disaster strikes. Israel repents and cries out to God and God shows His great mercy and restores them. And the cycle repeats.

Even here. Nehemiah had been King Artaxerxes' cupbearer when he asked the king for permission to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. He returned, took charge, and led the people to rebuild the city. He trained the Jewish remnant to again follow God's laws. Israel repented and served God. After 10 years in Jerusalem he returned to serve the king.

He doesn't tell us how long he stayed with the king, but says, "Some time later," he returned to Jerusalem to find the people once again flagrantly violating the laws of God. He straightened them out again.

A kid the other day told me she didn't understand why history is important. Well, here is the explanation, from several thousand years ago. People who forget history repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. God's chosen people did it over and over. Our own society is doing it again. Making the same mistakes the Israelis did so many times so long ago.

But God showed mercy again and again when Israel repented. If we repent, we will also receive His mercy. He's the same God now He was then. Always and forever, never changing.

It's time for America to repent and return to a God-fearing, God-following culture.

03/02/2024

Journey Through the Bible in a Year

Read Deuteronomy 22 - 30 this morning. Moses is preparing the people to cross the Jordan and take possession of the Promised Land. He is reminding them of the rules of the covenant, God's rules, His promises.

As Creator, who formed us from the dust of the Earth, who formed the Earth, the Heavens, and everything within, God has a right to set the rules. As a father rules his house, God the Father rules all of His creation. If He wanted to make a rule that we are required to wear our left shoe on our right foot, He can make that rule, and we would be required to obey it.

We may not like all His rules. We may wish some of those rules were different. But we don't get to make those decisions. There is no rules committee, no vote, no process to change God's rules. He makes the rules. Period.

When I look around today I see the United States in open rebellion against God's rules. Just as Eve ate the forbidden fruit hoping to achieve at least a God-like status, our society today ignores God's laws, or openly defies them. Like Eve, we are declaring ourselves on a level plane with God, or even a higher plane. We declare that God doesn't have the right to set the rules, that we as people can override or overrule God's laws. This is what I see when I look at the US today. A nation in open rebellion.

God laid out clearly here in Deuteronomy what would happen to the nation of Israel, His chosen people, if they became what we are becoming, or maybe already have become. He followed through on that promise with Israel.

I know there are still many trying to get us back on track to follow God. Maybe their efforts are delaying the fate I believe lies ahead if these folks are not successful. Will we be like Nineveh and repent? Or will we be like S***m and Gomorrah and refuse God's warnings to repent?

For our sake, the sake of our children, and our children's children, I hope we heed God's warnings in Deuteronomy and repent.

03/01/2024

Journey Through the Bible in a Year

Read through Deuteronomy 21 today. Lots of laws and rules. I know one thing. If I'd have lived back in the early days as an Israelite son and made the choices I did when I was young, I'd have been dragged to the gate and stoned to death as rebellious.

I'm so thankful God chose to send His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the price for our sins. I'm so sorry for my rebellious past. I'll never know how many people I led away from the Lord, who might have come to Christ if I'd have made different choices in my early days.

I deserve death and eternity in Hell.

But Jesus Christ did come. His blood was shed to pay the debt I owe. Jesus Christ, through His life, death, and resurrection, made it possible for a sinner like me to spend eternity in Heaven when I pass from this earth. Likewise, for everyone reading this and for everyone not reading this, Jesus provided a path for you to Heaven also.

Believe in your heart that Jesus lived, suffered, died, and was resurrected. Ask Him to be Lord of your life and confess it before men. Repent of your old ways and strive to live the life He guides you to live. The Bible says when we do this we are saved! We become Heaven-bound sons and daughters of the Living God!

I pray today, God, may you touch and turn the hearts of every nonbeliever reading this and all whom they know, so they might acknowledge you and accept your gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. Amen

02/25/2024

Fell off the wagon of reading the Bible for a few days. Trying to get caught back up this morning. Read through Deuteronomy 11 today. So far in this book, Moses has recounted the journey from Egypt, through the wilderness, and finally to the point where the Israelites are about to take possession of the land God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In these first few chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses begins several chapters with "be sure to observe the commands I've given you..." Then he reminds us of the rebellions against God since they left Egypt. The people were promised good fortune and abundance if they followed God's commands, and God's vengeance if they didn't.

One particular thing that struck me in this reading was in Deuteronomy 8:17-18. Here we are explicitly warned against forgetting that all good things come from God. Specifically, God tells us we will be tempted to take credit for our success, forgetting that without His blessing, any and all effort would be in vain. Whatever success we achieve is a blessing from God.

In Chapter 9, verse 6, Moses tells the Israelites their inheritance is not due to their righteousness, but due to the wickedness of those who occupied the land at the time. He called the Israelites here a "stiff-necked people." This reminds me that we were all created for the purpose of bringing glory to God, and that He uses us, even in our imperfection, to achieve glory for Him.

When I think about the Israelites' journey through the wilderness, I think about my own life. I wandered through a sort of wilderness of my own, trying to figure out where I was supposed to be. Even when I finally arrived, there was (and still is) plenty to work on. I'm nowhere near perfect, but God has blessed me like He blessed the Israelites in the wilderness. The Promised Land lays before them at this point in my Bible reading. My promised land, Heaven, lies before me at the end of this life.

I am grateful for God and His promises. I am grateful that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the price for my sins. I know that at the end of my time in the wilderness (life on earth), I will be carried to the promised land, Heaven, to spend eternity with Him!

It's Sunday morning. Let's go to church to praise and worship the One True God!

02/18/2024

Journey Through the Bible in a Year

It's been a buy February for me. Zoey's basketball season ended yesterday. Her softball practice has started already and the season begins soon. I haven't had much time for writing the past few days, but this morning I finished the book of Numbers during my daily Bible reading.

In the past when I've tried to read the entire Bible, I struggled through these first five books of the Old Testament. Even when I was reading a randomly selected chapter of the Bible each day, a feeling of "oh no, not the Old Testament" would come over me as soon as I realized where I was tasked to read.

It's been different this time. In the past, when I'd try to read the entire Bible, it was usually either an attempt to placate God in the hope He would lift some burden from my shoulders, or to fulfill a sense of obligation. My attitude as I make my way through this journey is to learn, to see what God has to say to me.

That attitude change has made all the difference. It dawned on me that God left the Bible for us, to give us all a roadmap for life, and in the doing, that He wouldn't waste a sentence or even a word. This is God's word, for us, to us, and every syllable is important.

Tomorrow, I start the book of Deuteronomy, looking forward to see what God has to share with me!

02/11/2024

Journey Through the Bible in a Year

Numbers 13 - 15

Moses sent a man from each tribe to explore the promised land. The twelve men returned describing a land of milk and honey, but most of them feared the battles that were sure to come if they tried to take the land from its current inhabitants. So all but two of the twelve began to spread their fear throughout all the Israelites. They told tales that made it seem impossible to defeat those who dwelled in the land.

However, two of the twelve men, Caleb and Joshua, told a different tale. They worked to convince the people that God had been with the Israelites, was still with the Israelites, and would be with the Israelites when they went in to take possession of the land. But the people's fear persisted, which angered the Lord.

After all the miracles He had done to get them out of Egypt and since, they continued to live in their fear instead of trust the God of Abraham. That lack of trust and faith angered God. He declared to Moses that the people would wander the desert for 40 years, until everyone of them over 20 years old was dead. These people who God parted the Red Sea for would not see the promised land because they continued to grumble, complain, and refuse to trust He who had already done so much for them.

God declared that only Caleb and Joshua, and the children under 20 would cross into the promised land. The rest would perish in the desert.

Ladies and gentlemen, each and every one of us is a living, breathing miracle. We see miracles performed by God over and over again. He may not part the Red Sea for us today. He might not turn a staff into a snake before our eyes. Though He still could, His miracles may appear more subtle to us today.

I see His miracles every spring as the days lengthen and plants bloom. That which seemed dead all winter returns to life. The birth of every living thing is a miracle! Think of all that has to happen for procreation to occur. The idea that this uncountable chain of events occurred by random chance is statistically impossible. The likelihood of all the atoms, molecules, and cells that had to convolute themselves in such a precise order to allow us to reproduce is lower than the threshold we set for any other hypothesis in any scientific investigation. Yet still people choose to believe that a big explosion of a bunch of nothing put this whole universe together in such a way that it did occur.

We and every other living creature are miracles of God. So how can we continue to deny His existence? How can we doubt His power? How can we rebel against Him when He calls us to service? How? How? How?

When we refuse to acknowledge God's will or follow it, we will be lost in the wilderness. Oh, we may have a house and plenty to eat, but we'll never feel fulfilled. We will never feel whole. It's been said there is a God-shaped hole in each of us that only He can fill. We try so hard to fill that hole with anything else--drugs, alcohol, s*x, money, etc., but the ONLY thing that fits in that hole is faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the only thing that can fill that hole to make us whole. Only Jesus.

If you're wandering in the wilderness, wondering why you can't feel fulfilled, try filling that hole with what God gave us to fill it with--Jesus Christ. His Son was the sacrificial lamb. Jesus is the sacrifice that paid the price for all our sin. Once we accept Him as our Savior and Lord, once we believe that He was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died on the cross to pay for our sins, and rose from the dead to pave a road for us to get to Heaven. Once you believe that through faith, you become an adopted son or daughter of God the Father!

God promised, to each of us who places our faith and trust in Jesus, a place in Heaven. Claim your place today. Jesus is waiting, patiently waiting, no matter what you're doing or what you've done.

Jesus wants you! He died for you!

02/10/2024

Journey Through the Bible in a Year

Haven't had much time to write, but over the past several days I've managed to read Numbers 7 - 12. A lot of really interesting stuff to talk about, but I'm going to focus today on that last chapter, Numbers 12.

There are a lot of different ideas from many different people on God, Jesus, and Christianity. Some say God accepts all sinners. Some say God doesn't. Some say God takes us how we are, and others say we have to get right before He will take us. Some believe God incapable of sending anyone to suffer in Hell for eternity, and others believe that anyone who doesn't accept Christ as their Savior will suffer forever in Satan's lair.

I won't address all those here, but I will tell you that my beliefs are rooted in the idea that Jesus died for everybody. He wants everybody in Heaven. That He will accept any of us into the fold, but once accepted, He WILL change us.

Numbers 12 is an anecdotal example of how He used His word to make a change in me many years ago. I, like most people, had my own ideas on who God was, what He was like, and what He expected from me. My beliefs were shaped by when and where I grew up. I was convinced that my ideas were right, and they were pretty much unshakeable.

But God, in a way that only He can, shook one of those deep-rooted, unshakeable beliefs, forcing me to turn 180 degrees from what I'd grown up believing and what I firmly believed on that day. He used Numbers 12 to do it.

As a young man, I was adamantly opposed to in*******al romantic relationships. So opposed that I was estranged from a very close family member because this relative was involved in such a relationship. I had not spoken to or seen this relative in years. I was raised in Arkansas, coming of age in the 1980s, where we didn't have race riots, and we didn't even hate each other. But most white people didn't think it was right to date and marry black people, and most black people didn't think it was right for them to date and marry white people. We didn't hate each other, but most people in both races thought crossing that line was wrong.

I was driving a truck at the time, often driving late into the night, or even all through the night. In a single night, I'd cover enough ground that I would pass in and out of range of FM radio stations. Therefore, I tuned my radio dial to the AM band most nights. One night, somewhere in Kentucky, either very late at night or very early in the morning, I was listening to a preacher on an AM Christian radio station. He was preaching and in his sermon told the story of Miriam and Aaron challenging Moses because of the latter's Ethiopian wife. This is the story relayed in Numbers 12.

I'd never heard that story before, and I'd heard lots of Bible stories. This was pre-internet days, and I wasn't familiar enough with my Bible to find the story in the Bible I carried with me. But this sermon shook me to my core, because it didn't just challenge one of my core beliefs, it shattered it. I told myself I had to find this story and read it myself.

I finished that week on the road and came home where I had a few free hours to comb through the Bible and find this story the radio preacher had told that knocked down a pillar in my belief system that I never would have thought could be knocked down. I found the story in Numbers 12 and read through it on my own, free of any radio preacher's interpretation.

After reading the story, how God called out Miriam and Aaron, challenged them, and even visited the dreaded disease of leprosy on Miriam, I remember holding the open Bible in my hand having to admit to myself that I'd been wrong all my life. I remember asking myself that if it was good enough for God's right hand man, Moses, who was I to stand and say in*******al relationships were inappropriate?

I was forced to admit I was wrong. I was forced to reach out to my relative and apologize. I was forced to change my heart. God used His word to change my heart. Through a story He directed someone to record all those millennia ago to admit that God never had a problem with in*******al romantic relationships. It was me who had the problem, and I was wrong.

I'm of the belief that God does accept us as we are. I believe that Jesus died to pay the price for all of our sins, but that we have to accept that gift of salvation to redeem His gift. I believe that He will cash that check no matter where we are.

I also believe He will take us as we are, but won't leave us there. He used an old radio preacher on a long dark road one night in Kentucky to initiate a drastically needed change in me.

Today, my relative and I have a great relationship. I am forgiven not only by God but by my relative also. I am extremely grateful to God and to my relative both for their willingness to forgive me for that sin.

This has been on my mind for the past couple of days since I finished that day's reading with Numbers 12.

So my message today is, no matter where you are in life, no matter what you have or what you don't have, no matter how awesome of a person you are or how awful of a person you are, no matter what, turn to God. Take your heart and lay it at His feet and ask Him to show you what is right about what you believe and what is wrong with what you believe.

And when you learn that you've believed something contrary to God and His will, accept it and change your heart. God still uses His word to take us in our sin and forge us into who He wants us to be.

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