A Steadfast love!

Lamentations 3:21-23 (NIV)
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Do you sometimes have trouble recalling the love of God in your life? Are you far from God right now? Are there days when you wonder what God is doing with you? Are you struggling right now?

If the answer is yes and ‘I don’t know’ to these questions let me encourage you today. The inventor of love, the Creator of the Universe thinks that you are special! He thinks that you are worthy of His fellowship! Now when I bring that statement to mind how do you feel? I hope it evokes in you a warmth of love and peace because our Father in Heaven wants us all to know that we matter to Him!

These beautifully written verses tell us that His grace and love are new every morning for us. How awesome is that? No matter how badly we’ve screwed up in the past our God wants to mend and forgive. The only issue that keeps us from receiving these promises of love and compassion…is us. Do you doubt? We cannot allow doubt to replace faith in our lives. Doubt can pull us away from God because we just can’t grasp Him in a tangible sense. But know that He is there and faith is the evidence of things unseen and believing in Him!

Do you stumble and trip in sin? I want to caution you that this life isn’t a game. We are granted grace by God, but that grace isn’t some ‘get out of jail’ card that we flash every time we choose to sin and think callously ‘oh well God will forgive me.’ We have to get serious about our faith, meaning if it is in our power, which it is and God can grant us that power, we must avoid the trappings of temptation all together.

Yes God’s love and compassion are steadfast! These attributes of God are not going anywhere, but we have to wise up and shake up our lives in order to receive them from God! He is spurring us to change our patterns and to accept Him and His renewing grace every day! Will you receive it anew today? He loves us so very much and desires for us to love Him back without strings or conditions attached.

This beautiful passage always strikes a chord in my life and evokes for me a sense of His perfect peace that He offers anew to us each and every day. How awesome is that?!

June 5, 2013 0

Have You Forgotten???

Psalm 103:2-6 Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

Do you have trouble remembering what God has done for you? Are you lacking in your confidence that He is actually there for you? Sometimes it’s beneficial to read scripture passages such as Psalm 103 to bring to mind once again in great detail what the Lord has done for all of us. Look at these verse above once more…it says right at the beginning “forget not all his benefits.” The psalmist stresses the need to never forget the things that God has done for us, and then he goes on to list them for us, just in case we’ve indeed forgotten.

What Are the Benefits of God?

1. He forgives ALL your sins!

Not just some of your sins, but all of your sins! Think of it, what God offers to each and everyone one of us is complete and total absolution for our sins. The slate is literally wiped clean! When the slate is wiped clean, we are provided freedom from sin and death. This first benefit is epic in that we can be brought back into a right relationship with the Father. No longer do we have to be bound by the shackles of sin, but instead the binds of bondage are taken from us…we are free indeed!

2. He Heals all your diseases:

Don’t misunderstand here, perhaps we may yet have to endure actual physical health issues or struggles, but ultimate we will one day be complete healed and given new heavenly bodies. But God does in fact still heal His people here on earth. Miracles do still take place and He can provide this blessing of healing to those He deems in need of it…but the problem arises for us when we consider the question, ‘what if He doesn’t choose to heal me?’ When we submit our lives to God we take on a vital component of the Lord’s prayer in action in our lives when we pray, ‘Thy will be done.’

3. (He)… redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion

Because God forgive ALL of our sin we have been saved from eternal punishment and instead have been given the right to be called sons and daughters of God! We have been grafted into the family of God because of Jesus Christ! He stands before us with nail scared hands and wraps His arms around us and showers us with His love! Isn’t that awesome to think about? His love and compassion escorts us into the family and we are able to sit before the Father of all creation because of Jesus and what He’s done for us!

4. (He) “satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s”

Does God provide for you? Is He not the Jehovah Jireh in your life? God have given us all that we need, not all that we want. He provides us with the things that are vital to our lives, but be careful that you don’t mistake wants for needs. God will always give to his children that which we ask for in His name, not ours. Make sure the things we ask for aren’t for any selfish intent or prideful purpose, but rather humbly ask for things which God will grant to benefit his children living His kingdom out here on earth right now! He does satisfy our needs and He will sustain us and renew us within all our energies and motivations.

5. The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

Be assured that those who are oppressed, those who are serving Him through difficult circumstances and facing trials and persecution will one day find justice from those who have wronged them. This isn’t a vindictive statement but a holy truth. God is Lord of all including those who are unrighteous and those who oppress His people. Everyone will one day have to stand before God and take account for their actions here on earth. I know that God will bring His pure and true justice upon us all. I also know that God still works through the oppressed and impacts this world for His glory regardless if man and their kingdoms oppose His message. His will always prevails despite the attempts of the enemy to discourage and dismantle His cause. Know that despite their trials, and even ours that we serve a God who doesn’t fail even if we do. If we are faithful to Him and do what He asks of us, He will provide the victory even if we do not get to see it fulfilled in our life time.

Have you forgotten? Do you lack understanding of what it is exactly that God has done for us? Read this passage again and be encouraged! Understand the God is on your side and wants you to know that He prevails in and through all things! Don’t forget these awesome facts and bring them to mind whenever you feel discouraged or downhearted. May the Lord remind you in your times of trouble that you matter to Him and also what He provides to you still today!

June 3, 2013 1

Eye of the Tiger

Ok…cue the music…let’s get it over with.

Perhaps I am showing my age, but I can remember going over to a friend’s house and cranking up his dad’s stereo and singing at the top of my lungs this song “Eye of the tiger”. I associated it with Rocky of course, but to me it spoke to the essence of my own life. It evoked for me a sense of iron determination and if I had that iron determination I could accomplish anything in life! I played soccer at the time and so I imagined myself out dribbling my opponent and scoring the game winning goal all because I had the ‘Eye of the Tiger’.

Still today I occasionally think about that song and even though many years have passed since I was young and screaming its lyrics at my friend’s house, I still get a charge out of it. The song still pumps me up and encourages me to keep on going no matter what obstacles might lay in my way.

In the spiritual realm, many so desperately need to have this ‘Eye of the tiger’ buried within their faith. Unfortunately it is not uncommon for fellow Christians to get so bogged down by burdens and stress and issues that they abandon their faith all together. Sometimes when the going gets tough those that lack the proper endurance fade away or simply abandon the cause all together. How sad it would be to have come so close to grasping the image of Christ in our lives and to just give up when we are spiritually attacked or oppressed.

Do spiritual crisis’ still come to those who are in Christ? You bet they do, in fact sometimes they often increase instead of diminishing. The father of lies, Satan himself, would love to deter us and convince us that this path that we’re on is too hard or impossible to continue. Often times when we see victories for Christ taking place in ministries and in our lives we may face strong spiritual opposition because Satan would love for us to give up and abandon instead of witnessing these victories that God provides.

You and I need the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ in our faith! We cannot be deterred by the slings and arrows that the evil one throws our way. But we must also be careful because, we cannot claim victory by and of our own strength. Our Heavenly Father will supply us our needs and our His strength all we have to do is ask for it and it will be given!

Perseverance is often viewed as keep on keeping on…willful determination in the face of adversity. We too, must keep going no matter what types of discouragement and obstacles we face!

Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

Do not give up! Don’t quit the fight or lose your way! Embrace this strength that comes from God so that we too can be more than conquerors!

“In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:378

Do you have the Eye of the Tiger in you today?

Better yet do you have the Eye of the Lion of Judah in you today? Don’t quit, your battle is not fought alone! You are not engaged in this spiritual war in and of your own strength either, He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion (Phil 1:6)!

Get on with it, stand boldly on your faith and keep on keeping on!

May 29, 2013 0

Bury your head in the sand?

Contrary to the notion that Ostriches burying their heads in the sand…this is simply not true. When faced with fear, their first instinct is to run. And since an Ostrich can run at a sustained speed of up to 40 miles an hour/ 65 km their first instinct is probably their best instinct.

So where did this fallacy of buried heads in the sand come from? Traditionally Ostriches do not make nests like a traditional bird, since they are so big and most trees couldn’t hold them they will bury their eggs in the sand. From a distance it can appear that an Ostrich is putting its head in the sand when in fact they are simply checking or turning their eggs.

So what they do in fear is actually out of necessity for the survival of their young. If they didn’t run very fast and distract other predators from their nests, the Ostrich would cease to exist and suffer extinction.

Isn’t it interest that what we thought was cowardice is really a parent protecting their young? Perhaps there is something to learn from this huge, fast birds…are we protective of our youth today? Instead of being fearful of the world around us are we protecting our youth by nurturing them and not really caring how it would appear from the outside world?

Our youth needs us! They need people of God who will instruct them and protect them from the predators in our world. Perhaps there is something to learn from the Ostrich, perhaps we might even reconsider what it means to bury our heads in the sand.

May 28, 2013 0

Friends & Cheers…and belonging!

Isn’t it everyone’s longing and hope in this world to find a place that you belong? Isn’t that the hope of every person living? We want to find acceptance, understanding and people who will love us for who we are…truly love us regardless of our faults and flaws. Isn’t this why television shows like ‘Cheers’ and the more contemporary ‘Friends’ became so popular in the first place? We find identity within characters who have found this formula don’t we? We, perhaps covet their meaningful relationships because we too crave this type of deep level of fulfillment in others as well.

Sure the characters are flawed, have issues, aren’t perfect and yet these characters had people coming back for more each week to find out how their favorite fictional characters were getting on. These syndicated comedy shows have been so popular that for Cheers they’ve aired followup episodes to please its following, and rumors are they are planning this type of event for the cast fan base of ‘Friends’ as well.

Perhaps it’s loneliness that drives these franchises to popularity, or perhaps they touch on a very familiar topic and emotion in the majority of our world…we want to be loved and find belonging.

Perhaps a passage of scripture that seems obscure or a book in the bible you don’t often read says this to us about God’s love and our search for belonging in this life: Zephaniah 3:17 “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”

Perhaps some of us feel lonely in this life…know that God is with you! Perhaps some of us feel unloved or unlovable…know that God ‘will quiet you (and your heartache) with his love’! Perhaps some of us worry about how our bills will be paid, where our next meal will come from or even the relationships (no matter how broken they may appear)…God will rejoice over you!

Do you need to be cheered up today? Are you in need of Friends?….I know sorry about that play on words there, but God wants to be involved in your life and to remind you that you aren’t alone, you are never alone! He loves you so much and wants you to find fulfillment in this life through others as well as your relationship to Him.

Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.” -Hellen Keller

May 28, 2013 0

Salt: Flavor & Preserver

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” Matthew 5:13

Did you know that salt is not only a flavoring element within food, but is also a preserver of food? Salt has been one of those ancient ways in which people have used to prevent food from rotting. So when Jesus told those gathered there that they were salt of the earth, he chose a topic with which the people would understand. Still today food is of epic importance to our survival as people. We can last for a long time without it, but food nourishes us, sustains us and provides us with the appropriate vitamins and nutrients. Without those vital components in life, we will eventually perish.

Jesus brought his message home to those who would listen that this world is perishing. All things have an expiration date…yet what will preserve us? What will make us last a little longer? What will inject much needed flavor into our world? The answer is simply those who will follow after God’s own heart!

This world will eventually pass away, and sometimes we may think it may be in our life time when we see unspeakable horrors and violence, humans turning on other humans, death and destruction…our world is a violent place. Yet, the preserving element of life is God who is the author and sustainer of all things. When we align our hearts, body and soul to Him, we find that the outpouring of this faith is love, peace, hope and joy…something this world desperately needs more of!

When we display love without strings attached, a joy without ulterior motives other than for others to find this same joy as well, we will inject our worlds with just a little bit of God’s epic flavor.

So how about it? Are you prepared to be God’s preservationist? Are you prepared to offer a dying world hope in the eternal one? Being salt to a flavorless and empty world is what we ought to strive for!

Another interesting notion in this passage of scripture for us to grasp is that typically all of the salt that was utilized in Israel at the time of Jesus was brought up from the Dead sea, which as you may know is extremely salty. But there is also something else about the salt content of the Dead sea that you may not know. The salt deposits within this body of water is full of impurities and often, after time, will lose its flavor.

Jesus instructed, perhaps even pleaded with this audience that we should never lose our flavor. If we are to provide a flavorless world with the undaunted grace and richness of God then we must be mindful to always draw from His source of power and might. Because if we stop drawing from Him and instead begin to rely on our own merits and flavor, we will lose the very essence of His character and love to a world so desperate to find hope.

Be flavor and a preserver to this world through the power of the One who sent us out into it! Never let this hope diminish or lose its flavor!

May 28, 2013 2

This Old House…Peeling back the paint

Sometimes recalling certain memories can be like peeling the paint from an old weathered house. You know the old house needs it, it’s crying for it and yet the whole facade will change. Peeling back the paint will remove the years of character and sometimes charm, but underneath it all you know the walls need to breathe, to be set free, and sometimes the old paint holds moisture in, green and molding smelling ripe like mildew. All unseen by the naked eye without the begrudging labor of the paint peeler.

Withholding our memories, holding them at arm’s length, quivering like a lost puppy who whimpers and shies away from everything including a loving hand, we fear what we will find underneath it all! We fear that others will be horrified when the truth is revealed…memories are like prison bars and razor wire fences. We’re a captivated audience of one, too afraid to move…to make a break for it. Too afraid of our own shadows lurking within corners that we’ve created. Memories that we avoid do not fade, but rather they deepen in their staining. And we within our self-made prisons peer out at them from behind our bar windows, clutching fragments of sun light instead of basking in it.

This old house needs a new, fresh coat of glossy clean paint that sparkles in the sunlit day and gleams when the stars in the night sky comes a callin’…but first this old decrepit brown weathered tinged paint must be peeled back…we must reveal our hurts, our wounds, our heartaches, we can’t just paint over the old for the old with infect and deflect the new.

So with weapon of choice in hand we, knowing it to be the right thing to do, must embrace the mess, confess to the wrongs, embrace what it is now, relish the opportunity to begin again. Peel back the pain that harbors itself beneath the paint. Let it breathe free and when the sun has baked its cold moisture away…this old house can take on a new creation.

May 25, 2013 0

Becoming Gollum

“For where your treasure is, there your heart is also” Matthew 6:21

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novels “Lord of the Rings” we meet a curious creature named Gollum. He’s a vile creature and yet something to be pitied as the sorcerer Gandalf has said. Gollum is obsessed with The Ring. He even calls it his “precious”. Yet we catch just a short glimpse of what Gollum looked like before he turned into this vile, repugnant creature. He too was a Hobbit from some shire, and he too had friends and family. Then the ring captures his attention one day as he mistakenly discovers it and he kills one of his own to claim it for himself…Gollum is born.

He was never supposed to be this way. He wasn’t created to live out his days in total and complete subjugation to this evil that is the ring, yet he is a slave to it, and a direct result of his slavery is this ugly transformation into a despised and tortured creature.

We’re all Gollum. Every single one of us has been bound by sin and subjected to enslavement to our “precious”. Since the fall of man, when Adam and Eve broke God’s heart in the garden of Eden, try as we might we couldn’t break our obsession with sin…and so sin transformed us. We were at one time created in the very image of God, but because of sin that image is now marred within us…there is still some resemblance but it’s faded.

What is our ‘precious’…is it an obsession with stuff? Could our ‘precious’ be relationships? How about money, or our jobs, or our kids…there are many, many things with which sin enslaves. Whatever consumes most of our time, whatever we think about incessantly becomes our god. What is your god?

Our Heavenly Father has, since the fall of man, attempted to bridge this void that is sin between us. We have all fallen and so Christ became our bridge, through His sacrifice on the cross, between us and God. Christ has taken ‘the ring’ from our possessions, died for us so that our resemblance to God could be restored. What love to have taken our place! He knew we couldn’t save ourselves and so He came to our level and took upon himself our enslavement…and it didn’t end there. He was strong enough to conquer sin and death and open the doors of heaven for us.

We are all Gollum…but we don’t have to remain that way any longer! We can be free! If you have been set free by Christ, what’s stopping you from sharing this with others who are still captured in their enslavements? This good news must be shared to help set the captives free!

We don’t’ have to be fallen and rejected any longer! We can be transformed and renewed by the grace of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ. Will you let go of your ‘precious’ and give Him a try? If you do, you will find yourself set free indeed!

May 24, 2013 0

Give us today our daily bread

Do you know where your next meal is coming from? Do you wonder how your next month’s rent or car payment or other bill is going to get paid? Our basic essentials in life obviously come because we can pay for things…right? What we make at our jobs generally helps to pay for our lifestyles. Sometimes, though we realize that we have not been living within our means when we run up a credit card or lease/buy a vehicle that we cannot afford the payments on. Living within our means forces us to realize that we ought to separate our needs from our wants.

When we pray to our Father in heaven the way Jesus has instructed us in what we call “the Lord’s prayer” what we realize is that we are placing our entire being, fully surrendered, at the foot of God himself. When we pray “give us today our daily bread” we are not praying for tomorrow’s supplies or tomorrow’s worries, we are strictly and implicitly focusing on what is right before us within this very day. Who knows what tomorrow holds, but when we focus on God, his might and power and his kingdom, we can’t but help realize that He is ultimately in control over our basic needs.

When we pray this portion of ‘the Lord’s prayer’ we quickly realize that it’s not our wants that He will supply but our needs. What is it that you need today? What do you struggle with daily? Have you prayed about it? Is it really a need or is it a want? “Daily bread” isn’t necessarily the food that we eat but every human supply of our needs is included here. God is supremely over all and through all! When we come to this conclusion even the little things in life are blessings given to us by God and we ought to thank Him for these daily…even moment by moment.

Do you have needs? Are you lacking today? Have you prayed about it? Are you surrendering it all to your Father in Heaven? Consider the works of His hands today and consider how blessed we are because He can and will provide for us the things that we need.

May 22, 2013 0

Why do bad things happen to good people?

This is one of the questions many are asking today in the aftermath of yesterday’s horrific natural disaster in Oklahoma. Almost 60 people were killed as a mile wide tornado struck the outskirts of Oklahoma City/Moore area. It has been reported that nearly 21 children were among the death toll in this awful destructive storm.

So many people are questioning many things today. Many are considering why God would allow something like this to happen. Others are questioning why bad things seem to happen to good people. And there really isn’t a good answer is there? What can you say to a family in mourning when they have just lost a child or a father in the wake of this horrendous disaster? What soothing words can we offer to grieving people when they’ve lost their entire homes, pets, and loved ones?

One of the best things we can do is to just be there. We have to show up, without any other agenda than to be a shoulder to cry on. As many of us view this disaster from a far, we may feel powerless to help…but we couldn’t be more wrong. We can do a few very useful things at this very time!

1) Pray. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles prayer isn’t empty or something we do like rubbing a lamp and making a wish. When we pray we are going before the Father in Heaven and He actually hears us. We serve a God who isn’t a distant God but One who is active and living and wanting to hear our conversations. Prayer for others is called intercessory pray…meaning we are before the Father for others, asking Him to intercede for their concerns. Prayer is a very powerful thing that we do, it isn’t or should be construed to be a last resort kinda thing but rather a first resort daily connection to God’s infinite power.

2) Reach out. How do we reach out to people who are hurting right now in Oklahoma? There are some very worthy groups on the ground right now that I know and I trust. The Salvation Army is one of them. They have been there minutes since this disaster occurred. They don’t just ask for money and only give a small portion, they use what is given for these events. Not only will they offer physical needs to survivors and victims like food, clothing, and basic essentials, but they also counsel and offer spiritual support.

When one has gone through a disaster such as this physical support isn’t enough…one needs moral and spiritual support. This is what I know The Salvation Army does very well. Here are a couple ways to support The Salvation Army in these matters: https://donate.salvationarmyusa.org/uss/eds/aok

or text Donate Via Text:
Salvation Army by texting: STORM to 80888
Each text is a $10 donation and gets billed to your phone line.

3) Get involved.

There are many place in your community that you serve to give back. By helping feed people in a soup kitchen to volunteering at a local food shelf/bank. You can help in little ways to bigger ways by signing up to help out with Emergency Disaster Teams. But we can help in many ways by just donating our time to an organization and be available.

Questions:

So why do bad things happen to good people? and Why does God allow bad things to happen?

The easy answer is that God doesn’t cause these things to happen…it’s a natural part of the world around us. As sad as it is, and it’s awful to witness first hand the destructive nature of these types of disasters, God didn’t make this happen! Please know that He loves His people and He weeps with us when we lose loved ones and when bad things happen to good people. That was never His intent or purpose.

We live in a fallen world and because of this, bad things do happen. One might say then why doesn’t God deliver all people from these things…who’s to say that He didn’t? Yesterday, as heart wrenching as it may be, God delivered 21 children into the loving arms of Christ. This isn’t what any of us want, yet as that tornado bore down on that city, God saw fit to ultimately deliver lives from this world. I wish there was additional comfort for those that were left behind in the wake of this event…yet they don’t mourn alone. I am convinced that His angels are present and bringing comfort from the Father. Not only are celestial angels bringing comfort, but the hands of other humans are also doing likewise.

This world in which we live was created perfectly, yet because of the fall we now live in an imperfect world. Yet through these tragedies I am convinced we will see the determination and victories of humanity and that should also give us hope.

Please pray, please support where and when you can, and know that God weeps with us in these moments. We aren’t alone in our sufferings and our pains.

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

May 21, 2013 2

Category: Life