Purpose To Enter His Presence....

One of the most important lessons we can learn is to seek God's face (who He is) and not just His hand (what He can do for us). Learning this is vital to our strength as believers and to our love walk with God. We learn to enjoy God's presence, not focus on what He is doing or not doing with us. Just simply laying back in His arms and letting His love saturate our spirits, our souls, and our bodies. Sometimes taking the focus off of our problems and our wants is a tough thing to do. But as we make the transition and just relax in knowing that He is after all GOD, we will notice an awesome difference in our spiritual lives. Everything that may seem to be missing can be found in His presence, not in His "presents". God will establish a relationship with us by doing things for us and confirming His word but we must take the next step to maturity by seeking to do His will, not just seeking Him for what He can do for us. It's easy to enjoy God's promised provision and even easier to enjoy His awesome presence. We will go through times of testing, so that we will come to realize we need to lean on Him. During those testing times try praising and thanking Him, loving and adoring Him, sitting in His presence and enjoying Him. He does know the desires of our hearts and as we delight ourselves in Him, He will give them to us, just as He promised in His Word! Decide today above everything else, to seek His presence!!

Love is what it's all about!!

Do you know that love is intended to flow to us and then through us? It begins with God's love for us and is brought to completion when we learn to love one another. Being able to love is a process that I believe God has put in place, and it involves four steps. First, God gives His love to us. Next, we accept and receive that love. Third, we love God in return. And fourth, we allow God's love to flow through us to other people. Without all four steps, love is incomplete. It all starts with Him, and it begins with the fact that He loves us unconditionally. Then when we realize this fact we have to respond and the only proper response is to receive God's love knowing it's something He freely gives, not something we can earn or in anyway secure for ourselves. His love is in us and it is ours and we will learn that loving not only others but loving ourselves properly is God's will. When we grasp this fact we automatically want to give our love to God. How do we show God our love you might ask? We worship Him with our lives, spend time in His presence, study and honor His Word, pray, praising Him, and giving thanks in all things, and of course the ultimate way to show God just how much we love him is to obey Him. This love perfected in us can't help but to flow out to those around us. The Spirit of God will lead us and prompt us to do things that will demonstrate love to all those who we come in contact with. Even just a soft smile, a kind word, a twinkling eye, a slight touch, and even a silent prayer. Who will you love on today? Just decide that every day, once a day, you will pick someone to give God's kind of love to! xoxox

Let Go Of The Old....

“I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.” Psalm 18:1

Have you ever tried to get a bone away from a dog? It’s not too easy, unless you have something better for him. Try offering a T-bone steak, and that dog will drop his bone like a bad habit.
In the same way, the writer of Hebrews tried to encourage the Jewish Christians, new believers who had a tendency to cling to the old customs of the Old Testament, to leave the dry bones of ceremonies and feast upon the delights of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s a lesson we all must appropriate in our lives. It can become comfortable for us to hold to our traditions, rather than try something new. But friend, there is no one and nothing that can compare with Jesus. You may learn to love Jesus better, but you can never love anything better than Jesus. Ask God to begin showing you the delights of a close relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

God Never Forgets

“You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book” (Psalm 56:8)

God has every one of your tears and mine in the bottle of His remembrance. God never forgets the pain that has crushed our dreams and broken our hearts. God keeps a complete record. A written document. A remembrance of the tears that filled our eyes and rolled down our cheeks. 
 In ancient history it was a sign of love and caring to collect tears in “bottle-like containers called lachrymatories.” Scientists have found that “tears contain more than thirty times the amount of manganese found in the blood. This suggests that tears may function to rid the body of certain toxins. Indeed, in seabirds such as cormorants and albatrosses, tear glands seem to serve this purpose; they are more powerful than the birds’ kidneys in ridding the body of toxic levels of salt. As I thought about the potential for cleansing as we release tears, I remembered words written by the Apostle John in Revelation where God assures us that in one of the most compassionate acts of love ever recorded in the Scriptures, He will “wipe every tear from our eyes.” Rev. 7: 17.

"Tears are the tips of those sorrows
we choose to let go.
And so, as I cry out to You, Lord,
I ask You to help me release
all that has been binding my heart.
As I feel yesterday’s sadness
running down today’s face,
my still moist eyes begin
to look forward to tomorrow.
And with Your grace,
I feel myself remembering
how to smile once again …”

Anne Calodich Fone

May the God who listens to our hearts and enters into our pain bless us and all who are in need with the comfort and quiet of His gentle presence, now and always. Amen.

God Made You Special!!

Sometimes we are like the dog in the children's story who found a bone. He was so proud of it. He picked it up and started home. On his way home he crossed a bridge over a river. As he crossed the bridge he stopped, as usual, to bark at the other dog that he always saw down in the water. This time as he looked down, he not only saw the same dog, but that dog had a bone in his mouth, too. What made... him mad was that the dog in the water had a bone that appeared to be bigger than the one he had in his mouth. Therefore, he opened his mouth to bark at the other dog and lost his bone.
It is ok to better ourselves if we are not satisfied with where we are at in life. In fact, we should always be growing in our journey with Christ. But, we shouldn’t be measuring ourselves against others. God made you special and you cannot be compared to anyone else.
For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving.
(1 Timothy 4.4 NRSV)

 

Independence! Really?

Look where our “independence” has gotten us. Our nation is in debt. No economist or printing press will deliver us. "There is a way that seems right unto a person but the ends thereof are the ways of death. "Thinking we are too smart for the need of Divine direction has put us into a place that we cannot get ourselves out of without Divine intervention."The modern metaphors of independence: “If you want it done right, do it yourself,” “Pick yourself up by your own bootstraps,” “I am a self-made man,” etc., were not the attitude of our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. We knew we were doomed without Divine intervention. "The government publicly declared days of prayer and fasting. "They had the "Thursday Lectures in Boston, where the local clergy was called to exhort and teach those elected “ministers of God for justice” how to govern according to the principles of Almighty God as found in His Word. "This was not a nation with a theme song, “I’ll do it my way.” Where did we go..what happened...we evidently have dropped the ball somewhere. "The Biblical mandate to provide for your own, to be diligent, self-governing and assume personal responsibility made Americans willing to take chances, work hard and reap the fruits of their labor. Self-government is impossible without dependence upon Holy Spirit. We cannot even live up to our own standards, let alone those of God, without the Holy Spirit. Biblical self-government is not self-discipline, time management or success skills. Christian self-government is allowing the Fruit of the Spirit to manifest in our lives. As a nation we have walked in the flesh too long and that has attracted a spirit of mammon. Not walking in the Spirit has resulted in a nation of wounded and damaged people. When they say that they cannot work, do not condemn them. Even though they appear able-bodied, they are not able because they have so many soul wounds. "The spiritual battle has left many marred who don’t even know that they are in a spiritual war. "They are literally “the walking wounded.” It is easy to blame these social problems on civil government, on the system, on the politicians, on the rich, the poor, the immigrants, the education system, the bankers, the legal system, global warming or whatever is in fashion. As long as we look outside of ourselves for someone to blame, we live in victim mode and are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

 

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

God Has an awesome plan to radically and outrageously bless us, but to fully enjoy His plan we must radically and outrageously obey. We need god's help to stay on the pathway to His blessings. Ask Him to deal with you firmly if there are any areas in your life that are displeasing with Him, and when He does, respond with prompt and complete obedience. God puts His Holy Spirit in us to lead us to perfect peace. If we are listening to Him, we will make wise decisions and enjoy His peace. Many things are permissible, but not necessarily good for us, and that it is unwise for us to allow anything to become a controlling factor in our lives. There are many things we can do, but they would not be the best choice nor would they produce the best result. Paul said that we should choose and prize the most excellent of things (Philippians 1:10) God isn't going to give us a divine word about every single move we make. but he does give us His word and His wisdom and He expects us to live by it. Excellent choices produce excellent rewards.. Don't settle for anything less!! "Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims." "didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body." (1Corinthians 6)