No strings attached with God
We as humans tend to put contingincies on everything. I will come if…. I will do that if…. even with God we tell Him we can do a certain thing for Him if….. please feel free to place your own excuses in the if blank, I have put my excuses in there in my mind. But God comes to you with no strings attached. He loves you unconditionally, He desires your presence as a parent desires to be near their child or a friend to be with their friend, God has no strings attached. He just wants you. You might say, “but He wants me to go to Church and pay tithes and spend time in prayer, those are strings attached.” No, God does not need you to do these things for Him to love you, He needs you to do these things so you learn to love Him and trust Him more. If you sinned right this second and in the same instant fell down and cried out to God do you think He would ignore you? No. He would come to your side anyway, because He loves you.
God requires things of us so we can go to Heaven, that is true, but He requires nothing of us for His love.
Valentine’s Day
Today is a day we celebrate love. Most people only bother to celebrate relationship love on Valentines but there are many different types of love, all of which deserve celebration. The most of which is the Fatherly, kingly love that comes through sacrifice. Jesus loves us more than we could fathom. He is also the only love most of us have who was willing to die for is. That is true love. When the ones you claim to love mean more to you than your very life. So you would, without question, sacrifice your life for their’s.
Today remember that the greatest love of all deserves some notice today too.
Selah
Do we forget the importance of Selah- rest and reflection on God?
We are all so very busy these days. We are rushing for this and rushing for that, the news is depressing and scary, life is crazy and the things that many of us used to make us feel at peace we just don’t have time for. We don’t even have time for God. But God gave us a day to rest and specific times to rest. You say ‘I know the day of rest, Sunday- but what are these times of rest?”
When reading your Bible, have you noticed where it says Selah? Do you know what that means? It means rest and reflect on God and what you just read. Selah is a time of rest. You can stress and rush and worry all you like but it won’t change anything. But time with God will heal you, it will help you focus, it will even help clear your mind and drive your fears away. We need to take time of Selah. We need to not forfeit running to the safe arms of God, it’s the only place you can truly rest.
Faith fall
Faith fall
Everyone talks about taking a leap of faith, just jump and see what happens. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, in fact if you feel God drawing you into something and it seems crazy it may very well take a leap of faith to go where you are being led. The part we forget is that a leap signifies a fall. You aren’t going to jump and discover you can fly, you will begin to be taken by gravity eventually and that can be scary. The rush of air as it tears at your skin and is deafening your ears, the knowledge that the ground will hurt when you hit it and suddenly you stop trusting that God is going to catch you when you reach where He is waiting and you start to flap, trying to catch something- anything that will stop your decent until finally your hand grabs a ledge and you pull yourself up onto that ledge, catch your breath and look around. The ledge is nice, it’s safe, you could stay on this ledge happily and now you feel that maybe the ledge was God’s plan after all, not the foggy abyss below you. Too many of us take the leap of faith only to wind up catching ourselves on a ledge, if God wanted you there He would have put you there Himself, but you grabbed for that ledge, you clawed your way up there. A true leap of faith means wrapping your hands around your body and falling until God catches you, but now you are comfortable where you have caught yourself, so what do you do? Do you feel called to fall again and leave your ledge? Does your faith yearn to move past where you mind says you should stay? Maybe then it’s time to jump again, and this time, keep your hands in your pockets and let God catch you and put you where He wants you.
Where does the money in the bucket go?🤔
Where does the money in the bucket go?🤔
Once again I saw a person who decided to complain about the 10% tithe that is asked for in Church, they stated- as so many do- that God is only after your money. I then realized for the first time that most people probably don’t know where the money from their tithe goes and that that is why they get so upset about it. In truth I did not know myself until until my family took a temporary position as the pastoral staff of a small country church that presently boasts a whopping ten people. We used to be bigger but over the past two years several people passed away and others moved and that left us a little barren- we are praying for more people to come so our church can be a larger community again so if you wish to join us in that prayer we thank you. Let us start with the most commonly misunderstood thing about churches, churches are NOT funded by the government. I don’t know if they were at one time, but they are not these days- at least none of the churches my friends, family or I am in connection with are. All the money the church has comes from tithe and donation. Where does that money go? To the rental or ownership of the church building and land, to taxes (yes churches have to pay taxes too), to heating and cooling the building, to hydro and electricity, to the staff (if the church has a staff), to missions, to random people in need that church is asked to help, to the insurance company and if there is any money left that goes to paying the pastor- who often has a second job because he or she doesn’t make very much unless he has a crowd of several thousand in attendance, yet he or she went to college from anywhere between four to eight years like most people with a degree so they would make much more than they do if they had a different job, but they aren’t in it for the money, they are in it because they love people.
Why do you not simply go to online only church services and save money? Great question, I know pastors who have done that. Do you want to know where your tithe goes at a church like that?
To- wait for it- insurance, and licensing, to site rental or ownership, to missions and the random person in need that the church is asked to help, to taxes, to paying the filming squad and the website managers, to the renewal of your domain name which your site requires, to the cost of air time, and last but not least to your pastor.
God asks for tithes, not for Himself, but for His church- literally. Tithes keeps the building standing, the hungry family in apartment building C fed, a roof (however humble) over your pastor’s head, it pays for you to watch your favorite minister speak for free on youtube, it pays for the new well in small country’s poorer section, your tithe doesn’t go into a piggy bank that God empties for candy every weekend, it goes to the people, to the community, to the coffee and sugar you take for granted in the lobby of your church. That’s why we tithe. For the people who choose not to, that’s your right, but please stop fussing at those of us who love God and our Church and want to give to keeping our building heated, that’s our right.
Pain
Stormie Omartan once said that after a dear friend of hers had died she came to a point in her grief where no one wanted to talk about it anymore because she had gone beyond the acceptable time of mourning. That’s ridiculous. Not how she felt but the fact that people treated her that way, and you want to know something? It’s true. I recall feeling that way after one of my friends passed away, my mom felt that way after her mother died, eventually people want you to move on, not for your sake, but because they are done hearing you talk about it. Come on people! Grief has no time limit. You will move on and then a sound or a smell will send you right back into it, and you know what? That’s okay. That is totally okay! When you are ready to move on you will, don’t feel rushed by other people, this pain is yours and they can never understand it nor can they feel it for you and of they could wear that pain for you they probably couldn’t bear it. But there is someone who can bear the pain for you, who understands it and has felt it too, His name is Jesus and He never grows tired of hearing you cry and mourn over loss, He never gets irritated when you bring up your agony, He will listen forever if you want Him to, because He loves you more than anyone else, and He will lift your pain and heal you. And if the pain comes back He will lift it again.
More
More
We all want to be more. More than we are at this moment, more than we dreamed we would be, more than enough. And it is not easy. All you can do is what is in front of you at this moment. Striving to be the best YOU you can be is not a bad thing, but the person you are right now might be the person you are meant to be. God often has to remind us to be still and to trust in Him, when things are not progressing or going the way you expected, when you are not reaching beyond your own expectations it can be hard to calm down and remind yourself that you are okay as you. God will grow you when He feels you are ready to grow. Trees don’t complain when they are a few branches short of how large the wished to be or when they have a smaller ring count than the tree next to them, they simply grow in God’s time and that is what we have to do. Wait on the Lord. Be still and know that I am God- Psalm: 46:10
Drenched
Drenched
We as humans tend to used descriptive language often. We say things we have built or roads we have taken are drenched with our sweat or our tears. When we redid our house I often said it was coated in my blood from the two or three minor scrapes I received while working on it. Drenched, coated. What if our lives were drenched and coated, not with blood, sweat and tears, but with prayer? What difference would we see? I once heard a mission planter say that he truly saw the difference come when he began to pray. He worked on his own for awhile, but then he started to coat everything in prayer and that was when things began to happen. My grandpa is a prayer, no matter what we do, before we do it he prays. It may take time but in a bit you see that exact prayer come true and crazy things that shouldn’t be possible start to happen. I used to think it was because he is a retired pastor and God just hears pastors better, but I found out after trying his technique that it is simply because he pours himself into a thirty second prayer before doing anything. His weakness in the moment gave God room to show His strength, so grandpa eventually got to a place where instead of becoming stuck and needing God to bail him out, he just handed it all over to God in the beginning and watched God work. If we drench our days, familys, selves with prayer we will see things begin to change. It may take time, but it will happen.
Wandering souls
Wandering souls
Little bright lights floating in hollow shells. Searching for a true connection. Is hope in the number on your friends list? Is Faith in the stars or the sun? Is love in a box or a crate on your door step? Where does the light go to find home? How does the shell become filled? It sees another light and reaches for it but it flutters away in fear. You see, most soul lights are afraid of eachother. They fear being known, being seen, being exposed, they fear growing too bright and being criticized so they flee from eachother. They flee and stay dim. But there is a soul light that reaches relentlessly, the original light that refuses to give up. It sees the little soul light reaching for someone to love and it runs to it, wrapping the dimming light in it’s own exuberant glow the original light causes the wandering soul light to grow bigger and burn brighter. Faith, hope, love and happiness all resides in the light that empowers the soul light. Some dim lights flee from the blaze, others see it and draw near and are caught by it and begin to burn brighter themselves. The light continues to spread and to refuse to give up. It’s bold and bright and warm and takes in all the lights that draw to it, filling their shells with light until the whole being glows.
You know that soul lights are us, that the original light is Jesus, and that the bright burning soul lights are the Christians. Without Him we all remain dim, but with God we can burn brightly and fill this world with joy and light and hope through Jesus.
Burn on little soul light and don’t give up.
He isn’t flying away
Jesus isn’t a little bird trying to fly away from you, He’s a man who is there for you to trust and lean on- a solid rock on which to stand. He’s not fluttering by and have to try to catch Him, He’s standing there with His arms open ready to embrace you.
If you know nothing else about the Bible but the fact that God sent His son to earth as a human baby to be stripped, beaten, spit upon and killed by the people He loves so much; if you know that a man tempted by sin but pure enough not to fall into it died and took the keys out of the devil’s hand and freed the captives from hell and ascended to Heaven, and you know that He is waiting for you to come to Him so Heaven can be yours too, then you know the greatest grace, mercy and miracle in the whole book. He wants you so come to Him.
Carried in the cross 