Friday, September 3, 2010
New Blog & Website coming soon!!!
...You can still order shirts from this blog, although all new posts will be sent to my new blog and pending website (prafetic.wordpress.com).
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Ever Worshipped Christ while watching Labron?
Seldom do I watch sports. In fact it has been years since I actually sat down and watched an entire game from beginning to end. I have nothing against sports or anyone who watches sports religiously; I am not “too spiritual” to watch a ball game as some may believe. I just prefer doing something else more edifying. Today I was watching the news and the sports highlights were filled with Labron’s usual showcase of just embarrassing opponents even while injured. When ever I see Labron who for his age is simply a phenom, and others alike who have these extraordinary abilities in the realm of sports I think about how man has always exalted other men (& woman) for their abilities as opposed to exalting the God (Christ) who gave them their abilities. Labron, Jordan, Sareena, Woods… they all wouldn’t be able to do what they do unless God gave them the power & ability. Of course they will never attribute their ability solely to Christ alone but rather their own ambition, passion, or training. One of my favorite scriptures in the Bible is Psalm 39:5-6 which says, “Behold, you have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing in Your sight; Surely man at his best is a mere breath. Selah. Surely every man walks about as a phantom; Surely they make an uproar for nothing: He amasses riches and does not know who will gather them (NASV). If you know anything about the character and the attributes of God you will know He is a Jealous God, and His glory He will give to none other because He is that worthy and awesome above everything that is visible and invisible, in heaven or on earth (Isa 42:12, Exodus 20:5). I believe one of the reasons why God can care less about who wins the Super Bowl is because men exalt and worship players and athletes because they can do something.. run fast, shoot a ball through a hoop, jump high, hit a ball, catch a ball… yet they have no power or ability to do anything apart from God. If God took away their breath, they would be nothing. All God has to do is allow one particular bone to break in a certain area of the body, one single vertebra to shift slightly, and their career will be over. It has happened before in the lives of many athletes. And not only athletes but child prodigies, scholars, theologians, musicians, actors, doctors, architects, engineers, inventors, business men, even pastors… and they are exalted and lifted high, but what about God who created them? If we are amazed at their abilities why aren’t we more amazed at the God who created them and gave them their abilities? The Bible from the beginning reveals mans inclination for idolatry and the Apostle Paul makes it clear when he says in Romans, “ Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is bless for ever (Rom. 1:24-25). Amen. This is what people are doing. People wear shoes with these athletes names on it, jerseys.. what they are doing is exalting the athlete. Have you ever begun to worship God in praise while watching Michael Jordan or Labron? While watching them do what they do have you sat in front of the television and said, “Look how awesome God is; look at how God has strengthen his legs to jump like that. God you are awesome, God you are so worthy?” I believe God is grieved when He does not receive glory, praise, and worship for all that He does.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
You & The World...
I believe that when you are able to detach yourself from this world (when the world no longer has a grip on your heart, able to influence); God will exalt you to a place in Him beyond anything you could imagine. The old writers use to speak about the Christian now being to ‘high for this world’, the world is now beneath us. Nothing in this world should satisfy us, should steal our attention away from Christ. My favorite quote of all time is, “Any conversation that hath not Christ as it’s theme, is absurd” (St. Bernard).
Friday, March 5, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Facebook is a god.
..In the lives of many true Christians, Facebook is a god. They spend more time on Facebook than they do studying the Word of God, more than they do communing with God in prayer. Before they go to sleep they say, "Good night FB", or when they wake up in the morning, "Good Morning FB", as if Facebook is a person (a god)..... as soon as they leave church (& in church) they are on Facebook... The enemy is very subtle. You must always guard yourself. As John said it explicitly, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen (1 John 5:21)
Waiting... & Praying
...While my family and I were waiting almost an hour to be seating at a restaurant on Valentines day the Holy Spirit reminded me that if one desires to spend more time with Christ in prayer, we have the opportunity during these idol moments when our minds can wonder impatiently. Instead of texting, playing a game.... You can simply close your eyes, bow your head.. and talk to Christ during that time. We often complain about the fact that we have little time to study His Word & commune with Him in prayer. People may look at you funny or think you are sleeping... But the Father will enjoy that extra time spent with you. But honestly, this is an area in which we must discipline ourselves in.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Father's Bargain (Awesome Read)
This is amazing! I heard it the first time through my favorite preacher of all time (Paul Washer). The way John imagines & articulates this conversation between the Son & Father is wonderful. I had to put it near my desk at work; I read it at least once a day. It just makes you want to worship Christ all the more for what He has done for us. I hope all who read it are blessed by it. I need to purchase this entire book.
Introduction: Here you may suppose the Father to say when driving his bargain with Christ for you.
Father: “My Son, here is a company of poor miserable souls, that have utterly undone themselves, and now lie open to my justice! Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them: What shall be done for these souls?
Son: “O Father, such is my love to, and pity for them, that rather than they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their guarantee; bring in all thy bills, that I may see what they owe thee; Lord, bring them all in, that there may be no after-reckonings with them. At my hand shall you require it. I will rather choose to suffer their wrath than they should suffer it: upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt.”
Father: “But, my Son, if thou undertake for them, thou must reckon to pay the last mite, expect no abatement; if I spare them, I will not spare thee.”
Son: “Content Father, let it be so; charge it all upon me, I am able to discharge it: and though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures, I am content to undertake it.
Introduction: Here you may suppose the Father to say when driving his bargain with Christ for you.
Father: “My Son, here is a company of poor miserable souls, that have utterly undone themselves, and now lie open to my justice! Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them: What shall be done for these souls?
Son: “O Father, such is my love to, and pity for them, that rather than they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their guarantee; bring in all thy bills, that I may see what they owe thee; Lord, bring them all in, that there may be no after-reckonings with them. At my hand shall you require it. I will rather choose to suffer their wrath than they should suffer it: upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt.”
Father: “But, my Son, if thou undertake for them, thou must reckon to pay the last mite, expect no abatement; if I spare them, I will not spare thee.”
Son: “Content Father, let it be so; charge it all upon me, I am able to discharge it: and though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures, I am content to undertake it.
..We Found Another Way To Breathe
I watched a fish one time lay on its side immobilized, gasping for oxygen until after a couple minutes it stopped. From the moment that fish was born it lived totally submerged under water because it was created to do so. The anatomy of a fish is built to survive only under water. Outside of the presence of water it slowly dies.
Thought we have been created for Him, created to worship Christ, created to exalt Him with every ounce of our being, created to abide in His presence, We’ve developed an artificial respiratory system which allows us to breath and live outside of His presence.
A fish will know when it leaves it’s source of life; yet we can leave out the presence of God and not know it because it has no effect on our lives. Some can go days without talking with the Lord, hours without even thinking about Him. Reading His Word has become a chore; yet we loose ourselves in sitcoms, reality shows, and websites; time seems to just disappear when we are away from the Father doing what we enjoy; yet time seems to go so slow when we are in His presence. Like that fish, when I am away from Him (not talking to Him, not meditating on His Word) something shouldn’t feel right. If I go five minutes and not say so much as, “Lord, I love you!” I should start gasping for air because He is my source of life.
Jesus said many profound statements, but this one is very unique. He says to His Father, “I have glorified thee on earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was (John 17:4-5). He said glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. To Jesus the Father was His everything. He did only what the Father asked & desired. He obeyed His Father with perfect submission & excellence. He would often steal away from the crowd early in the morning just to sit with the Father and pray. He couldn’t survive without the Father. Have you ever done this? Have you ever had to just get away from everyone & everything and be with Him. Every moment He lived, He lived to glorify the Father. To be away from the Father was devastating, even for the purposes of redeeming humanity. At the exact moment He finished His work on earth He says to the Father I want everything to go back to the way it use to be, when it was just us (the Godhead). Remember when you first got saved and how zealous you were for God? Everything that came out of your mouth was,” God this, God that.. Christ this, Christ that.” Every service you sat on the front row, on time to prayer. You would spend hours in His Word and get lost in the pages of scripture. Everything else came second to your relationship with the Lord. But then something happened. The amazing thing about material things is that they get old fast, they become obsolete quickly, some thing else takes its place. Though God is awesome in every way, beyond our feble imaginations… in time, we treat Him as though He was a material possession that becomes obsolete, the trill is gone, the newness wears off…. We find another way to breathe; something else to look at.
While Jesus lived His sinless life on the earth He remained in the bosom of the Father, always in close proximity & communion. While on the cross Christ bore the sins of all humanity and for the first time in His life, God wasn’t there. He says at about the ninth hour, “E’li, E’li, La’-ma sa-bach’-tha-ni?” that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Something happened at the exact moment the sins of all humanity feel upon the Son. At that exact moment, for the first time in all of history, eternity.. God turned His face from the Son, and Jesus felt it. He knew at that moment He wasn’t close to the Father. He cries out for the Father and asks why have you forsaken me, yet He receives no answer. To be away from the Father, away from the only One most important.. He had no more strength, no more energy… It wasn’t the nails, the crown of thorns, the exhaustion or suffocation that causes him to breathe His last breath. He was no longer close to the Father. The weight of not feeling the presence of God. “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielding up the ghost” (Matt 27:50).
Thought we have been created for Him, created to worship Christ, created to exalt Him with every ounce of our being, created to abide in His presence, We’ve developed an artificial respiratory system which allows us to breath and live outside of His presence.
A fish will know when it leaves it’s source of life; yet we can leave out the presence of God and not know it because it has no effect on our lives. Some can go days without talking with the Lord, hours without even thinking about Him. Reading His Word has become a chore; yet we loose ourselves in sitcoms, reality shows, and websites; time seems to just disappear when we are away from the Father doing what we enjoy; yet time seems to go so slow when we are in His presence. Like that fish, when I am away from Him (not talking to Him, not meditating on His Word) something shouldn’t feel right. If I go five minutes and not say so much as, “Lord, I love you!” I should start gasping for air because He is my source of life.
Jesus said many profound statements, but this one is very unique. He says to His Father, “I have glorified thee on earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was (John 17:4-5). He said glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. To Jesus the Father was His everything. He did only what the Father asked & desired. He obeyed His Father with perfect submission & excellence. He would often steal away from the crowd early in the morning just to sit with the Father and pray. He couldn’t survive without the Father. Have you ever done this? Have you ever had to just get away from everyone & everything and be with Him. Every moment He lived, He lived to glorify the Father. To be away from the Father was devastating, even for the purposes of redeeming humanity. At the exact moment He finished His work on earth He says to the Father I want everything to go back to the way it use to be, when it was just us (the Godhead). Remember when you first got saved and how zealous you were for God? Everything that came out of your mouth was,” God this, God that.. Christ this, Christ that.” Every service you sat on the front row, on time to prayer. You would spend hours in His Word and get lost in the pages of scripture. Everything else came second to your relationship with the Lord. But then something happened. The amazing thing about material things is that they get old fast, they become obsolete quickly, some thing else takes its place. Though God is awesome in every way, beyond our feble imaginations… in time, we treat Him as though He was a material possession that becomes obsolete, the trill is gone, the newness wears off…. We find another way to breathe; something else to look at.
While Jesus lived His sinless life on the earth He remained in the bosom of the Father, always in close proximity & communion. While on the cross Christ bore the sins of all humanity and for the first time in His life, God wasn’t there. He says at about the ninth hour, “E’li, E’li, La’-ma sa-bach’-tha-ni?” that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Something happened at the exact moment the sins of all humanity feel upon the Son. At that exact moment, for the first time in all of history, eternity.. God turned His face from the Son, and Jesus felt it. He knew at that moment He wasn’t close to the Father. He cries out for the Father and asks why have you forsaken me, yet He receives no answer. To be away from the Father, away from the only One most important.. He had no more strength, no more energy… It wasn’t the nails, the crown of thorns, the exhaustion or suffocation that causes him to breathe His last breath. He was no longer close to the Father. The weight of not feeling the presence of God. “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielding up the ghost” (Matt 27:50).
Worship Interrupted
What is interrupting your worship?
Yesterday during Thursday night service something amazing happened. For almost the entire year I’ve been burdened by numerous things, nothing uncommon, the usual cares of life that everyone has been a victim of. Lately it has been the attempt to launch this clothing company that has plagued my mind and has caused me to loose sleep (amazing how I allow something so trivial to do this). Particularly it has been all the issues I’ve been having with the development if our official website. As the service began we all just began to worship; in the beginning it was a struggle because my thoughts were on this website (and not entirely on Christ). Prior to the service I was reviewing the site and I discovered some glitches with the online store. Initially it really upset me because I had plans to launch Prafetic this weekend. As the worship continued I had to fight through my thoughts; in the spirit it felt like I was trying to swim against the tide, or like I was trying to climb out of quick sand…. But after a while, after fighting for about fifteen minutes I broke through and I began to worship Christ; my mind was off everything else and solely on Him. Soon the presence of the Lord was so heavy in the place I had no choice but to fall to my knees in reverence and continue to worship my Savior…. and that is when the Lord began to speak to my heart. He began to simply talk with me about how my worship has been interrupted. Not necessarily during this service alone but in general, my life. One minute I find myself walking by faith with all focus & power; with an attitude that nothing can stop me in Christ, nothing can steal my joy and my peace… The next minute, literally two or three hours later I’m worrying about something; I’m asking God why is this happened? It is no coincidence that I asked my wife to pray that I would have consistency with my faith, with my trust in God to do everything that His Word says that He will do. So the Lord began to speak to me about how things were interrupting my worship towards Him. He began to say, “ If there is nothing to hard for Me, why are you worrying (Matt 18:14)? If nothing is impossible for me why are you worrying (Matt 19:26)? If the earth is Mine and everything in it, why do you worry (Psalm 24:1)? If I have promised to supply all of your needs why are you worrying (Phil 4:19)? If I have said you can move mountains, that you can have everything that you have spoken (Mark 11:23-24), that I will direct your path if you simply trust Me with all of your heart and lean not to your own understand (Prov 3:5-6)…. If I have promised that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for you (Prov 13:22), If I have promised my peace (John 14:27), my joy unspeakable (Psalm 16:11), my rest (Matt 11:28), why are you burdened?.... If I have said to you that righteous are never forsaken (Psalm 37:25), what is the problem? If I have said all things will work together for you good (Rom 8:28), why are you worrying about this website? Do you believe me? So much of my time has been spent (wasted) worrying and not believing.
After the service the Spirit of the Lord continued to talk with me about how my worship is being interrupted. He began to tell me how before the fall nothing interrupted Adams worship towards God; there was constant communication, immediate obedience. After the fall it was interrupted and his worship was never the same, never as consistent as it was ordained to be. Through out His thirty-three years on earth nothing interrupted Jesus’ worship towards His Father; He didn’t allow anything to get in the way. God began to say to me that there is enough in His Word to keep me motivated, to keep me trusting, to keep me from wavering, to keep me from becoming burdened, to keep me forever loving Him and remaining focused on Him. Passages like, ‘I have loved thee with an ever lasting love, with loving kindness have I drawn thee (Jer 31:3).” Passages like, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered..blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin (Romans 4:7)”… Oh, passages like, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10)”… These passages and all the others are our sources, our endless wells of joy and happiness, ammunition we use to fight the demonic spirit of worry; but are we in His Word like we should be? And if we are in His Word like we should be do we believe His Word? I am learning that believing is more than saying, “I believe!” Actions, conduct, attitude, disposition accompany belief. If God said He has supplied all my needs I can be happy and joyful even though the bill is still outstanding and I have no money in my bank account simply because He said He would supply my needs. In my own life I can honestly say for the most part it has been the opposite. I say over and over again I believe but if you look at my face.. at my attitude, you wouldn’t believe I trust God. If I actually had the money in my hand you would see a different me. I say I believe God but I don’t act like I believe God. We don’t have to every worry again for the remainder of our life. Can you even wrap your mind around living a life where you never worry about anything, despite what happens? So many things interrupt our worship, but there is something about ‘worry’ that I believe hurts and offends God. It is so easy to worry and so hard to simply believe at times. People have worried themselves to the point of death. Jesus made a statement that I absolutely love and I believe He meant it to be a little humorous. He said, “Who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life (Matt 6:37)?” In other words, who by worrying can change anything. Worrying does not move God, faith moves God. He said without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). He said by faith all things are possible. And it’s a fight. Paul says, “Fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12)”. Jesus comforted Peter and said, “I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not (Luke 22:32)”.
When we get to heaven nothing is going to interrupt our worship and I believe even on earth Christ has the power to bring us to the place where nothing interrupts our worship; because when your worship is interrupted you are liable to offend and sin against your Savior. Faith is so valuable. God desires all of you… young person, adult, all of you… not just a part of you. He desires and deserves our full and undivided attention.
What is interrupting your worship?
Yesterday during Thursday night service something amazing happened. For almost the entire year I’ve been burdened by numerous things, nothing uncommon, the usual cares of life that everyone has been a victim of. Lately it has been the attempt to launch this clothing company that has plagued my mind and has caused me to loose sleep (amazing how I allow something so trivial to do this). Particularly it has been all the issues I’ve been having with the development if our official website. As the service began we all just began to worship; in the beginning it was a struggle because my thoughts were on this website (and not entirely on Christ). Prior to the service I was reviewing the site and I discovered some glitches with the online store. Initially it really upset me because I had plans to launch Prafetic this weekend. As the worship continued I had to fight through my thoughts; in the spirit it felt like I was trying to swim against the tide, or like I was trying to climb out of quick sand…. But after a while, after fighting for about fifteen minutes I broke through and I began to worship Christ; my mind was off everything else and solely on Him. Soon the presence of the Lord was so heavy in the place I had no choice but to fall to my knees in reverence and continue to worship my Savior…. and that is when the Lord began to speak to my heart. He began to simply talk with me about how my worship has been interrupted. Not necessarily during this service alone but in general, my life. One minute I find myself walking by faith with all focus & power; with an attitude that nothing can stop me in Christ, nothing can steal my joy and my peace… The next minute, literally two or three hours later I’m worrying about something; I’m asking God why is this happened? It is no coincidence that I asked my wife to pray that I would have consistency with my faith, with my trust in God to do everything that His Word says that He will do. So the Lord began to speak to me about how things were interrupting my worship towards Him. He began to say, “ If there is nothing to hard for Me, why are you worrying (Matt 18:14)? If nothing is impossible for me why are you worrying (Matt 19:26)? If the earth is Mine and everything in it, why do you worry (Psalm 24:1)? If I have promised to supply all of your needs why are you worrying (Phil 4:19)? If I have said you can move mountains, that you can have everything that you have spoken (Mark 11:23-24), that I will direct your path if you simply trust Me with all of your heart and lean not to your own understand (Prov 3:5-6)…. If I have promised that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for you (Prov 13:22), If I have promised my peace (John 14:27), my joy unspeakable (Psalm 16:11), my rest (Matt 11:28), why are you burdened?.... If I have said to you that righteous are never forsaken (Psalm 37:25), what is the problem? If I have said all things will work together for you good (Rom 8:28), why are you worrying about this website? Do you believe me? So much of my time has been spent (wasted) worrying and not believing.
After the service the Spirit of the Lord continued to talk with me about how my worship is being interrupted. He began to tell me how before the fall nothing interrupted Adams worship towards God; there was constant communication, immediate obedience. After the fall it was interrupted and his worship was never the same, never as consistent as it was ordained to be. Through out His thirty-three years on earth nothing interrupted Jesus’ worship towards His Father; He didn’t allow anything to get in the way. God began to say to me that there is enough in His Word to keep me motivated, to keep me trusting, to keep me from wavering, to keep me from becoming burdened, to keep me forever loving Him and remaining focused on Him. Passages like, ‘I have loved thee with an ever lasting love, with loving kindness have I drawn thee (Jer 31:3).” Passages like, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered..blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin (Romans 4:7)”… Oh, passages like, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10)”… These passages and all the others are our sources, our endless wells of joy and happiness, ammunition we use to fight the demonic spirit of worry; but are we in His Word like we should be? And if we are in His Word like we should be do we believe His Word? I am learning that believing is more than saying, “I believe!” Actions, conduct, attitude, disposition accompany belief. If God said He has supplied all my needs I can be happy and joyful even though the bill is still outstanding and I have no money in my bank account simply because He said He would supply my needs. In my own life I can honestly say for the most part it has been the opposite. I say over and over again I believe but if you look at my face.. at my attitude, you wouldn’t believe I trust God. If I actually had the money in my hand you would see a different me. I say I believe God but I don’t act like I believe God. We don’t have to every worry again for the remainder of our life. Can you even wrap your mind around living a life where you never worry about anything, despite what happens? So many things interrupt our worship, but there is something about ‘worry’ that I believe hurts and offends God. It is so easy to worry and so hard to simply believe at times. People have worried themselves to the point of death. Jesus made a statement that I absolutely love and I believe He meant it to be a little humorous. He said, “Who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life (Matt 6:37)?” In other words, who by worrying can change anything. Worrying does not move God, faith moves God. He said without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). He said by faith all things are possible. And it’s a fight. Paul says, “Fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12)”. Jesus comforted Peter and said, “I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not (Luke 22:32)”.
When we get to heaven nothing is going to interrupt our worship and I believe even on earth Christ has the power to bring us to the place where nothing interrupts our worship; because when your worship is interrupted you are liable to offend and sin against your Savior. Faith is so valuable. God desires all of you… young person, adult, all of you… not just a part of you. He desires and deserves our full and undivided attention.
What is interrupting your worship?
Just thinking (In the Car, God's Mercy)
This morning as I was driving to work some thoughts came to mind about our relationship with God. We are in a relationship with a God who is omniscient. He is The God who knows everything about us. He knows our thoughts before you even think them. Before we were born He knew us. Every choice we make, every decision we make, God already knows before it happens. It is difficult for many to wrap their minds around the omniscience of God.
I began to imagine the relationship that I have with my daughter Makiyah. Although she is only two I can still use her in this illustration. Let’s say that similar to God I am omniscient in that I know everything about my daughter and everything she will ever do in her life in the same way that God knows everything about us. I know every decision she will make… So my daughter loves me.. She always says to me, “Daddy, I love you”… She is always thankful for all that I do for her, for providing for her, for giving her everything that she needs… She is always saying, “Daddy, I will obey what you say”… In everything that she says to me I simply respond back with, “I love you too hun”, “Yes, I will provide all of your needs hun,”….. Because I am omniscient I know that two weeks later, despite what my daughter says to me today at this moment, I know she will knowingly disobey me on Tuesday morning at 8:56am. I know that on Wednesday at 2:15 in the morning she is going to lie to me…. I know that on Friday, she is going to totally ignore me and focus on herself. But I don’t change. I don’t love her any less. And I don’t respond to her today based on what she will do in the future. I deal with her and correct her in the future.
I then began to think about our relationship with God in the same way… despite all of our worship… despite all we say on Sunday morning, despite how much we read, study, pray.. despite how many tears we shed.. despite how many times we repent…, despite all of our promises, God still loves us… knowing all the horrible things we will do the next day. We sometimes shout, cry, worship God zealously on Sunday morning… but on Monday we live as if we don’t even have a relationship with Him, or as if He can’t see all that we do. God doesn’t change; He still accepts our prayers, our worship, our thank you’s, out petitions.. He still blesses us, still protects us, knowing that we are not faithful… Knowing everything we will do, He doesn’t respond today based on tomorrow.
God’s mercy, His love is amazing. God can do this because He is God, and because He knows that we are in the process of perfection (sanctification). It will not be like this always. God Himself will see to it that we arrive to that place where we are consistently, habitually, doers of His Word…
Sunday, January 17, 2010
..JUST ME THINKING...
One thing that bothers me about us, about me.. Is how easily we forget. Take for example the calamity in Haiti. When catastrophic events like this occur, or when we hear stories of the under-ground church in countries where persecution is a daily occurrence.... or all that is occurring in Darfur, genocides.. for a moment we pause, it has our attention, we are emotional, zealous to do something; change our topic of conversations for a moment, but then after time… we forget and go back, business as usual, back to what we were doing, back to watching ball games, reality shows…. I was watching the news and one segment was all about Haiti, the next segment was all about an awards show; after a while the show still must go on. And we forget until something else happens.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The Reverse
Each day I am petitioning the Lord to bring me to this place in my life. It is a place where I no longer have to struggle to obey; but rather the struggle is to sin against God… All because the presence of God has so transformed me, and the Holy Spirit is so imminent and controlling my entire being; that I would have to excerpt effort, fight against myself violently in order to walk back into the prison of bondage that Christ released me from, and lock the door from the inside. I would no longer struggle with believing God for the impossible; but I would struggle convincing myself that God can’t do the impossible, and that He won’t answer my prayers; I would have to try to reason and rationalize my way through the notion that God can’t do it for this reason or that reason because I am so convinced of the power of God over all circumstances, His sovereignty, and Omnipotence. Instead of suddenly getting tired when I open up my Bible, I get tired when I turn on the television; I get tired and bored out of my mind reading blogs, talking on the phone, surfing websites. I can only spend hours drowned in God’s Word, studying, meditating; reciting, memorizing, catechizing myself; I read God’s Word and pray so much that people begin to think I have a problem; they begin to say that I am antisocial; they begin to run tests and see if it is healthy to pray so much, and read so much. I try to explain to them that I love Christ so much for who He is and what He has done for me that I must be with Him as much as I can; a moment without Him is grievous, because it was a moment I could have spent beholding the beauty of Christ. This is my prayer for my children; not that my daughter would graduate from college at the top of her class and work for a fortune 500 company; not that my son would be drafted out of high school and become an NBA All-Star; but that they would have a passion for Christ; that they would understand how much they have been forgiven; and allow that, and the beauty of Christ to propel their worship for the rest of their life. I see myself yelling up the stair to my daughter, “Makiyah, stop reading that Bible and go to sleep!” I hear her reply, “Dad, just one more hour pleaseeeeeeeeeee, I’ll wash the dishes and take out the trash for the rest of the week……”
The Reverse.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
.... After today's service, God is more real to me, and the presence of God is more real to me than anything I can see in this world. I really fell in love with Jesus today! Really in love. I said things to Him while on my face before Him that I never said to Him before. I'm convinced nothing in this world, nothing... Nothing material can compare... Better is one day in His presence (one second) than a thousand anywhere else. I realized this morning in a greater way the magnitude of Christ's sacrifice and how much I am forgiven. I understand now how people can go to church Sunday after Sunday and always leave out the same way they came in... Because they've never been in the presence of Christ... They've been in the presence of a good show, a good choir, a good preacher, a good sermon.. Good shouting, but not in the presence of Christ. ..
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