QUESTIONS

This morning I woke up (as I sometimes do) with a number of questions running through my mind.  They concerned various areas in my life and covered different types of issues from leadership to relationships, financial to family focused.  As I prepared to take them before the Lord to try to resolve them, I believe I heard Him say, "My son.  Do not worry about the answers.  Sometimes the questions are what are important."

What do you think He meant by that? 

L-I-F-E, LIFE!

L-I-F-E, LIFE!

LIFE! The word itself seems filled with energy. Just thinking about it invigorates. But what is this thing we call Life? Surely, it is a mystery. If you ask a child how we can tell something is alive they will say something like, “it moves.” or “ it can grow”. But many things in nature appear to be alive and yet are not: leaves can move with the wind, crystals can grow and change shape. But somehow we can eventually tell , can't we, when something is truly alive. How? Often by how it (yes) moves, grows and interacts with what's around it. But isn't there something deeper to every living being? A (bear with me) life force that animates it and is its essence?

The Word says “in Him was life...”. The One through Whom the Father created all life is life, in its essence. True life is both a reflection and an embodiment of who He is. No wonder Life is something mysterious: “for who has known the mind of the Lord...”. We cannot know or understand everything about life, anymore than we can know all about Him.

Yet life itself is a never-ending quest to receive more life! Life has its paths and ways (Acts 2:28) and He is ever willing to show them to us.  What a joy!  Are you in Him?! Truly?  He is life.  There is no true life apart from life in Him.  Why waste a moment trying to find life from some where other than its only source?!  Come to Him.  Come to Life!

THIS MESSY MARVEL

Every day all things are different yet, deep down, ever the same!
The world is crashing to a halt and rushing to a new beginning.
Hope is rising; despair is mounting. Our lives are growing....
and ebbing away. We know more but are sure of less. Both darkness and light are clearer,
yet we live in the grey. We can feel more--both joy and pain. An expanding horizon of possiblities beckons and, as we move toward it, responsiblities hem us in like a nipping sheep dog his herd.
Yet, somehow, through it all, life continues, purposeful, moving toward His inexorable ends. The enemy of our souls would prove his power to contol;
the One who is over all asks us to trust that He is .

Without Faith

WITHOUT FAITH...

Faith. One of the Big Three of 1 Cor 13:13. So much has been written and spoken about faith. You'd think we'd have it down by now! All true believers want to please God, to be His friend, and make Him smile! The only way to do this is with faith (Heb 11:6).

The good news is that God gives us our faith and helps it develop (Heb 12:2). We help the process by listening to the Word (Rom 10:17), acting on it (James 2:17) and sharing our faith with others (Philemon 6, Amp).

Faith is a spirit (2 Cor 4:13) and a thing of the Spirit. Only to spiritual folk does the life of faith make any sense (1 Cor 2:14). (You're believing for something that you don't have from Someone that you can't see...?!)   The reason faith can't be "nailed down" is because it flows out of our relationship with the Father (like everything else in a believer's life!). The closer we are to Him, the more we will be filled with His spirit of faith. That is why whenever the Lord appeared fear (the opposite of faith in God) and doubt were dispelled.

I recently read the testimony of a man who claims to have had an extended conversation with the Lord in a vision. While being greatly enheartened by being in His presence, he mentioned that the experience brought him to a realization of how many areas of his life he was not living in faith in.

The point is not to finger point or to compare ourselves with one another. It is simply to be encouraged that there is so much more! God has amazing areas of living-faith that we have not even dreamed of (1 Cor 2:9).  If we ask and seek and listen He will reveal.

　

COURAGE

[L., the heart.] Bravery; intrepidity; that quality of mind which enables men to encounter danger and difficulties with firmness, or without fear or depression of spirits; valor; boldness; resolution. (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

Western Civilization was founded by men of courage. Men who could cry “Give me liberty or give me death” and back the words up with their lives.

Courage was the quality prized above all others by the Ancient Greeks. Spartan mothers told their sons to “come back with your shield (i.e. never run away from the battle) or on it (i.e. dead).”

The word comes from the Latin for “the heart” which may explain why it is so central to Christian character. The Word of God mentions lack of it (cowardliness) as being the foremost quality which will send people to hell (Rev 21:8)

Courage can take many forms and the need for it grows through life. Courage to be oneself. Courage to do what's right. Courage to make a difficult decision.

Kipling sums it up the type of live characterized by courage in his classic poem, If...:

IF you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Courage is what every man, boy, woman and girl need to succeed in this world.

Courage is at the heart of being a man after God's own heart, a follower of the Lion of Judah.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous...

for the LORD your God will be with you ....”

Joshua 1:9

Courage.

RENEWED INTO...

2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Rom 12:2a (NIV)

What does it be to be re-newed? Some of the definitions in Webster's 1828 dictionary include: to make new, to make again, to restore to a former state, to begin again. That got me thinking...what state were our minds in that we might be made into anew?

In Matthew 18:3 the Lord said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. “ All of us acted like children at one time (we were children, after all...!). We acted that way because we thought that way.

Now I know some of you are already thinking, but Paul said, that he left childish ways behind him as well he (and we) should. But the words of the Lord stand: we must become like little children.... (I believe that the entering into the Kingdom that Jesus was referring to was not only referring to going to heaven when we die. It was talking about experiencing heaven here on earth!)

Think about it: who are the happiest people you know (generally). Isn't it children?! They know and have the least, yet they experience life the most...! Without going into a side path about how possessions don't add to our true lives, I want to mention that I asked a good friend who has a spiritual gift of teaching why is it that we emphasize knowledge so much (does anyone need to be reminded that we live in the “Information Age”). ? This was a genuine question on my part; I wanted to know why I felt it necessary to spend so much of my time learning.... His response surprised me, given his gifting. He agreed that knowledge is overrated. The Word says that Knowledge puffs up while Love builds up. He also noted that much of what we “learn” we soon forget. (In contrast, I'm reminded of the phrase, that a good (i.e. kind) deed is never forgotten...).

Next time I'll share what I think it is about children how children think and act that is so essential in living in God's presence here on earth....

Freedom

“F-R-E-E-D-O-M ! ! !”,

was William Wallace's final word in the movie, Braveheart. Nothing is dearer to many souls than the right to be free. Right now, in many countries of the world, people are rising up and demanding freedom from oppressive regimes.

Every believer has been granted two primary freedoms: freedom from sin and freedom to love (Gal 6:22; 5:13). These are both part of the mystery of God's ways; the natural man thinks of “doing whatever I want” and “treating others however I feel like treating them” as freedom. In His Kingdom, doing what we ought to do for both God and man brings true freedom.

I heard a minister on the radio say, “self deception is the easiest thing to fall into..., and the hardest thing to recognize....”. A well-known believer with a world-wide ministry is said to have found his true calling in his 80's (in ministering to children in Africa...).

After ministering with native ministers in Southern Africa, leading home groups, serving on a church-planting team in Central Asia, and working in the medical field (to name a few), I, too, am finally coming into my calling—to “Lead Groups of Children to Spread Revival”.