Do kids have more going for them than just cuteness?

Salvation isn’t just for little kids or “weak” individuals — its just that sometimes they’re the only ones clear-sighted enough to acknowledge and receive the simple revelation of what they seek.

Heart-valve adjusting and other things I trust God for…

When I wake up in the morning I like to say good morning to God. It’s not that He needs me to say anything to Him, it’s that I need to say something to Him. I have a depressed day if I’m not talking to Him. If I’ve avoided or neglected Him all day, I end up looking back, ask myself, “What was that all about? What was the point?”

How can you live a life that’s all about Jesus without it being all about Jesus?

I don’t know. But I sure have tried. And one thing I’ve learned through the trying (and failing) is that only Jesus can make it all about Himself for me. I really don’t know where to start on that because it’s impossible for me to finish up on it being all about me.

You see, that program is so lodged deeply inside me that the thought of me disengaging it is ridiculous! I don’t know how to shut if off because every operation inside of me is a direct result of it.

Somehow God’s got to get me off this system and on to another one. It’s just that simple…and just that impossible if it’s up to me. But praise God it isn’t.

It’s impossible for me because it is a job that He was meant to do and only He has the equipment to do it. I don’t have the ability to turn off my internal motivators. And even if I could, it wouldn’t do me any good because I then wouldn’t be able to transport myself to another spirit pump. It just wouldn’t happen.

So, praise God He turns off the valves that connect me to one pump and fastens me to another. I just need to trust the Master’s hands. When it comes to my heart and the handling of valves through which life-support is supposed to pump, I have no other hope.

Could your Banking be more than a record of your own deposits and withdraws?

Do you want to know what God expects of you or what makes you acceptable in His sight? Do you feel like the universe is bearing down on your shoulders with a weight meant to crush you? Do you gasp for relief or just to gain another breath so you can manage to hold it up for another minute?

You may struggle with all these things, as I know I have, and do, but the reality is, it is a broken and ineffectual effort. Really, it affords us nothing and makes no real difference in how God sees us.

Sound harsh? Well, that depends on your sense of what true liberty is. Liberty is not being free to make your way to God, but recognizing that you’re free because God has made His way to you!

You do not have to consider a universe worth of divine expectations anymore. In Christ, the law’s impact on you has been reversed! All the debts of character and virtue you owed have been paid back. But, not only that, the sum times infinity has been paid back into your spiritual bank account.

There is no longer any need to fear God as the Banker you owe and must do a weak-kneed business with. His Son, Jesus, has resolved all the fees you owed and has signed Himself on to become the primary account holder of your “checking” and “savings”.

There is no fear anymore. The penalty has been paid beyond your greatest capacity to fail as a bank customer and the mess you make of deposits and withdraws is now under the capable management of your new Best Friend.

Now, this is not a ticket to run back out with a wad of petty cash and spend away. Consider the One who earned it for you and the purposes He has for its use. He has made you well-to-do to-do-well unto Him and others.

Think about it: This is not a harsh expectation, but a wonderful and lofty one. Wonderful, because you could not do better; lofty because only He in you can do what is better. May I encourage you to look into the matter He’s laid before you and see what it’s all about? Surely you will do no less than discover, and hopefully begin practicing, what banking is really all about!

 

Beauty ruminates in the dead places known as our souls

Real beauty transcends the captivity of bitterness and death

The beauty of the Christian life is that Life has come to we who were dead and without hope. There couldn’t be anything more beautiful than a God who is ever life-infusing and -reforming our warped spiritual corpses.

With that said, who can agree with me that they would rather be loved because they are inherently beautiful; recognized by God because they are naturally striking than be a recipient of all the above because God is these things though we are not.

It is a difficult case to adopt for most of us, but it is the case that represents the truest sense of who we are, who God is and what His plans are for us.

God did not save us so that He could make a brilliant show of who we are; for how can a description-defying God, who loves holiness and beauty, be satisfied with personally exalting the gore of sin and death that we represent without Him? No, as debasing as it is to us, He chose to save us so that He could make a statement about who He is that can be both seen and heard by the whole world for now and eternity.

What if we trusted the Hands that shape the elements of our lives?

Is your life a panorama of blue skies, a sea of calm waters? Is your life a plethora of disjointed principles, a confusion of problems?

To borrow a few questions from my brother: Do you think you’re on the mountain top or in the valley? Or, do you feel like you are skiing freely down the mountain into the valley, or like you are struggling up that mountain, sometimes feeling overwhelmed by the weighty pack on your shoulder and the incline yet to be scaled?

Are you missing the glories of your present season because it is hard, uncomfortable and inconsistent with the dreams that you have for yourself?

Yet, what if your life is more than what happens to you and how you perceive it? What if all of it really did make sense for the beauty it presents to anyone who can see God even in the subtleties we often dismiss in personal hardships and trials? What would we see if we pulled out and asked God to share with us His lens on our world?

Backdoorsman evangelist turns guide to the great outdoors!

My whole personality has been dictated by a fear of being judged and rejected/denied love and acceptance. My patterns in living have been for the self-seeking purpose of staying alive and keeping within the edges of boundaries that made it okay to be apart and unassociated with anyone who may appear dangerous to me.

Needless to say, this approach has not previously led me into contexts or subjects of conversation that enabled me to share my faith with anyone — unless I could be sure that I would not only be well-received but eagerly welcomed.

Yet all this time God has had in mind for me speaking to far more people about Him than this severely restricted group. I knew this in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t conceive of it being reality for me — at least any time soon.

Still, the sweetest reality of my existence is that God doesn’t live according to my poor vision and timetable. He has big purposes and the best possible means for bringing them about in my life.

Just recently I have been seeing how this is true in ways that are new to me. Everyday avenues of communication and socialization have taken on a greater purpose for me. God has put them before me, inviting me to let Him make of them nothing less than portals for presenting the gospel to the people around me. As wonderful as this experience is, this blessing didn’t come overnight; instead, it has come upon me slowly, as I have personally learned to let God come and inhabit every part of me — becoming everything I know and enjoy of existence.

I have learned who He is and how that identity plays into my life — how the character of God can become the very anchor of my soul and delight of my days. Because God has become accessible and extremely valuable to me through the continued work of certain trials, the burden for Him to be known by others has grown in heart.

To be honest, the catalyst to this “backdoorsman” evangelist becoming a guide to the great outdoors was nothing less than the love of God. This which comes from Him and runs back to Him. Love that makes us a drive-through along the way. A stream that must continually pour through us. The rushing, slowly corroding, and yet life-infusing waters which our heart terrain must embank. It is this everlasting flow running deep and wide within us that will not be able to be stilled or kept from overflowing to those who are still thirsty on the river’s edge.

Some things must be eclipsed to reveal others

Rare things can only appear at rare times and in rare places

Why can’t I see the clouds in my life as this beautiful?

Why can't I see the clouds in my life as this beautiful?

 

Thank God for His miracle mercy to we, the children He loves

Oh, thank God—he’s so good! His love never runs out.
All of you set free by God, tell the world!
Tell how he freed you from oppression,
Then rounded you up from all over the place,
from the four winds, from the seven seas.

Some of you wandered for years in the desert,
looking but not finding a good place to live,
Half-starved and parched with thirst,
staggering and stumbling, on the brink of exhaustion.
Then, in your desperate condition, you called out to God.
He got you out in the nick of time;
He put your feet on a wonderful road
that took you straight to a good place to live.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
He poured great draughts of water down parched throats;
the starved and hungry got plenty to eat.

Some of you were locked in a dark cell,
cruelly confined behind bars,
Punished for defying God’s Word,
for turning your back on the High God’s counsel—
A hard sentence, and your hearts so heavy,
and not a soul in sight to help.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He led you out of your dark, dark cell,
broke open the jail and led you out.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves;
He shattered the heavy jailhouse doors,
he snapped the prison bars like matchsticks!

Some of you were sick because you’d lived a bad life,
your bodies feeling the effects of your sin;
You couldn’t stand the sight of food,
so miserable you thought you’d be better off dead.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He spoke the word that healed you,
that pulled you back from the brink of death.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves;
Offer thanksgiving sacrifices,
tell the world what he’s done—sing it out!

Some of you set sail in big ships;
you put to sea to do business in faraway ports.
Out at sea you saw God in action,
saw his breathtaking ways with the ocean:
With a word he called up the wind—
an ocean storm, towering waves!
You shot high in the sky, then the bottom dropped out;
your hearts were stuck in your throats.
You were spun like a top, you reeled like a drunk,
you didn’t know which end was up.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He quieted the wind down to a whisper,
put a muzzle on all the big waves.
And you were so glad when the storm died down,
and he led you safely back to harbor.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
Lift high your praises when the people assemble,
shout Hallelujah when the elders meet!

God turned rivers into wasteland,
springs of water into sunbaked mud;
Luscious orchards became alkali flats
because of the evil of the people who lived there.
Then he changed wasteland into fresh pools of water,
arid earth into springs of water,
Brought in the hungry and settled them there;
they moved in—what a great place to live!
They sowed the fields, they planted vineyards,
they reaped a bountiful harvest.
He blessed them and they prospered greatly;
their herds of cattle never decreased.
But abuse and evil and trouble declined
as he heaped scorn on princes and sent them away.
He gave the poor a safe place to live,
treated their clans like well-cared-for sheep.

Good people see this and are glad;
bad people are speechless, stopped in their tracks.
If you are really wise, you’ll think this over—
it’s time you appreciated God

Psalm 107

How low is your spiritual battery?

Are you noticing an absense of "life"?

I tried using my iPod today, and couldn’t get anything out of it. It wouldn’t work — not even the screen would come on. Now, this has happened to me before, so I knew what to do. It’s not that it no longer operates — its just that the last time I used it I wore down all the battery power without realizing it. The simple solution — which I’m employing now — is to plug it into its power source and leave it alone (let it be still) until it is restored to its original grade of usefulness.

This is also the case for our spirits. They are our life-batteries that must be regularly powered up and kept in good working order. If you looked at your spirit at this moment, would you be able to discern whether your God-capacity — otherwise known as being spiritually on-charge — is full, low or essentially empty?

If you are like me, you may have no idea because you have been so busy and you have learned to rely on other things instead. My low-battery consciousness was dull regarding my iPod because I have gotten used to relying on the music and video streaming capabilities of other things. This worked fine for a while, that is, until the day that I needed it again. I wanted to check my contacts for a friend’s number, and had to wait till it was sufficiently charged. In this case the wait was too long.

One day, you may find yourself in that place. Your personal charge is insufficient, and there isn’t time to bring it up to serve you for the case that it is needed. Either you will face the end of your life here and have no life of your own with which to claim access to heaven, or you will face tragedy that doesn’t wait until you are firmly established in what you believe before it shakes you to your core.

I pray that when each of these days comes for you — as they surely will — that you will not be empty and ashamed. I would hope that you would be strong and healthy on the inside for whatever you face on the outside. Surely the time you have before you has been given that you might learn to diligently charge up and maintain this spirit which is your only access to Life and Love.