Monthly Archives: July 2025

Camino, Verdad y Vida

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FMF: Path

BERJAYA

La Camino

How can I write about this in five minutes?

I’ve just been blessed with a wonderful holiday, staying with a dear friend that I’ve known for about 26 years.

She lived with me for several years, and yet I have never been to visit her home town, or the village where she enjoyed much of her childhood.

Until last week.

My husband and I went to stay with her and her parents in Logroño, La Rioja.

And we also enjoyed a weekend in her late grandparents’ village of Camprovín.

I can’t tell you all about it here, except that they were excellent hosts – kind, loving, fun and interesting – and we played the tourists, visiting many amazing places and relaxing with siestas and good food.

What really blessed me about the place, was the fact that the town is actually on the pilgrimage route of La Camino. The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage that people have followed at least since the 10th Century, moving between holy sites all the way to the shrine of St James, one of the apostles of Jesus.

The disciples followed Jesus.

We follow Him still.

Jesus walked His own pilgrimage to the cross.

Disciples too have to take up their cross to follow Him.

For centuries, pilgrims have followed the pilgrimage trail to Holy Sites.

In one beautiful church on the Camino (San Pablo), I was doubly blessed to find a striking representation of Jesus carrying His cross – in the depiction the eyes looked right into the viewer and I spent some time in meditation, before reading the beautiful prayer written on a plaque beside the model – it referred to Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life – in Spanish, as ‘Jesús es el Camino la Verdad y la Vida’.

BERJAYA

Jesus is the Camino, the path, the way – and we must follow only Him into truth and life, carrying the cross He gives us – but His yoke is easy and the burden light.

The following is a translation of the prayer next to the Statue on the Camino, translated into English:

PRAYER TO JESUS OF NAZARENE

Oh, Jesus of Nazareth, the way, the truth, and the life: We believe that you are the source of love, forgiveness, and compassion, since by suffering and dying on the cross you have shown that you love us intensely.

We humbly implore your mercy to grant us the grace to become like you in thought and action.

May we unite our sufferings with yours for the sanctification and salvation of our brothers and sisters.

With you, we come to understand that we are not alone, but that we are all part of the family of God’s children.

Grant, we implore you, that we may work to create a new world where love, peace, and brotherhood reign.

We ask this of you, who live and reign with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit and are God forever and ever. Amen

This post is written as part of the Five Minute Friday Community. To read other responses to this week’s prompt: PATH, see the link below.

Join the fun and meet other writers here​

Stinking Thinking

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BERJAYA

Fmf: Transform

Sorry I’m coming at this prompt late again. I nearly forgot altogether!

The scripture that came to mind is in Romans 12 – Do not conform, but be transformed…

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2

Funnily enough, as I opened my Bible, my eyes fell on the following page, Romans 13, which grabbed my attention as it was talking about why we should submit to authorities.

I had to laugh at myself then and read what the Scriptures have to say, because only this morning, I had been asking such questions of the Lord.

I don’t know about you, but my life had been established on some dodgy foundations.

Much of my thought life was either wonky, or just plain false.

The enemies plan is to mess us up with lies. To mess up our thought life.

Joyce Meyer calls it ‘The Battlefield of the Mind’.

In AA it was called ‘stinking thinking’.

Things I believed about myself were lies.

Things I believed about men, women, children, authorities – even God Himself – were lies. And because my beliefs were wonky, so was my life.

Thankfully that is something that God can change; He wants to change.

Jesus is the Way, the TRUTH and the Life. The TRUTH sets us free.

Lies put us in bondage.

So God has been renewing my mind. He has been showing me the lies and replacing them with the Truth. With His Truth.

Recently I have done the ‘Freedom in Christ’ course and have been lovingly taken through the ‘Steps to Freedom’ contained within it. It has been very transformative, especially dove-tailing with the prayer ministry work of Elijah House, that I’ve also been a part of.

One suggestion at the end of the ‘Steps to Freedom’ is to create some ‘Stronghold Busters’, which I am doing. These are statements that identify and renounce the lies we believed, and identify and announce/declare the truth of God.

This is proper renewing of the mind.

If I want to be different, I have to think differently.

Replacing the lies with the truth just has to result in some healthy transformation!!!

So, this morning I was declaring my 3 Stronghold Busters’ – for the 40th day, (which is supposed to be the required time for the renewal of the mind) – but there was something niggling me about my first Stronghold Buster and I realised that I had not really addressed the truth properly.

This is what I asked the Lord about this morning and what He then answered by showing me Romans 13 this evening. The lies I believed were about authorities and Romans 13 addresses the truths I need to declare. So I now need to rewrite and amend that stronghold buster, to include some of the truths in this scripture, and then continue to declare it until it has sunk into my heart.

That first Stronghold Buster that I have been declaring for the last 40 days reads:

I renounce the lie that I cannot trust authorities and the lie that they are unsafe and do not have my interests at heart. I announce the truth that I can trust you, Father God, for you are my Rock, my hiding place and my teacher. I announce the truth that I can trust you and need not lean on my own understanding. I announce the truth that You have broken from me the generational curse of fear and mistrust of authorities. I announce the truth that You have given me a spirit of wisdom and discernment, to protect me and to know who I can trust.

Does this make any sense?

Can you see that I have not really addressed the lie ‘that authorities are unsafe and not to be trusted.’

My second Stronghold Buster, that I believe has begun its work of transformation in me is this one:

I renounce the lie that I have an addictive personality and the lie that one I start, I cannot stop. I renounce the lie that I am all or nothing! I announce the truth that I am a new creation and I am a temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in me. I announce the truth that I have been given the Spirit of love, power and self-control. I announce the truth that I have divine power in me to demolish strongholds and to make good choices. I announce the truth that He that is in me is great and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom to say yes, to say no or to say stop. I announce the truth that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, for I am free in Christ. Amen.

My heart and life WILL be transformed, by the renewing of my mind. And I will keep going as long as it takes.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

This is what we want, isn’t it? We want to do God’s will for our lives. We want to be the persons He created us to be.

So if we allow Him to correct our wonky thinking, He can transform us into the likeness of Jesus and we will know what His perfect will for our lives is.

YAY!

Afraid to look you in the Face

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BERJAYA

FMF: Face

I was thinking of a couple of expressions: 1) to lose face and 2) to be afraid to look someone in the face – two expressions which largely convey degrees of lack of confidence or social anxiety.1

If I ‘lose face’, it suggests I have been socially humiliated, embarrassed or disgraced.

If I am afraid to face you, in most people it suggests that I have done something wrong and I feel guilty; or that I am afraid you will see my anger or feelings if I look at you; or that I feel a general sense of unworthiness, shyness and anxiety that you will reject me, be angry with me or humiliate me.

Both expressions in the negative suggest a strong social anxiety and a high amount of shame.

I’ve heard it said that guilt is a friend, for it instructs us about wrong actions and leads us to repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Shame on the other hand is a lie from the pit of the enemy. Shame lies about our identity, not our actions, and says that we are unworthy and hopeless and offers no solutions.

We live in a very shame-based society in Britain.

As I thought about it, I thought how in the Old Testament, God sometimes turned His face away from His people when they continually rejected Him. But He would constantly pursue them and if they repented, He would relent and turn His face back towards them.

David would express this in the psalms:

Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, God my Savior.

Psalm 27:9

Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress.

Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly.

Psalm 102:2

God desires to turn His face towards us in an outpouring of His blessings. He always desired this. God told Moses that was how His priests were to bless His people, speaking blessing into them by the turning of God’s face towards them.

Many Priests and Church ministers still speak this blessing over God’s people.

In Jesus, we know that the Lord God has turned His face towards us, so we can look the world in the eye, knowing that Jesus has nailed our sin AND our shame to the cross.

We can hold our head high and not be ashamed, for we are forgiven, loved and transformed by His gift of Redemption and Grace.

God will never humiliate, embarrass, shame or disgrace us, and He will never reject us or forsake us.

I leave you with God’s own blessing.

The Priestly Blessing

The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:

“‘“The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”’

“So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”

Numbers 6:22-27

1Autism is an exception to this. Also some cultures forbid eye contact between certain people.