What Is Your Will In Christ?

Some years ago, the Wendy's chain of  hamburger  restaurants ran a series of television commercials that some will remember with a chuckle. They featured a pair of ladies well  seasoned  by their accumulated years, with one of them on a seemingly endless quest for the perfect hamburger, humorously asking the famous question - "Where's the beef?" Any reminiscent chuckles aside, my quest and question here concerns another definition of the word "Beef"... From vocabulary.com: " beef Beef is meat from a cow. It's also a word for a complaint. If you have a beef with someone, you’re not sharing a steak, you have a gripe. Just don’t beef to a cow; her problems are worse. Beef is a type of meat from cattle. If you've ever had a hamburger, you've had beef. The word beef comes from the Old French word buef, which became the word for basically, cow meat. Beef is to cow as pork is to pig or mutton is to sheep. On the other hand, if you have a ...

My human triumphs and failures, both my pride and shame here, are of no true account in the reckoning of my eternal balance sheet,... save one endeavor. And that is the goal of becoming of an empty vessel surrendered to Christ - a clay jar, one worthy only by the grace of the true accountant, re-birthed to carry and become saturated by the Spirit of the Living God. He who made me is completely worthy of my surrender to His habitation... and I am made worthy only by the power of His purifying presence in me... So Lord, If I rise in my own assessment of myself, let me fall. And if I fall, I pray raise me up again to true life in you, free of myself - let my focus be on you. If it need be in order for me to become the vessel that your heart truly desires, break me down, grind me into dust and saturate me with living waters. I pray this so that I may once again be formed by the hands that love me, into a worthy vessel. Let the will in me that I once so selfishly clung to die to ma...

If the expanse of the universe has no end... how is that possible? It must end some where... but if it does have an end, what's beyond that? The limited mind has cause to wonder... Having had the opportunity to learn a little about our God in this lifetime and being driven to consider what I've learned of His nature, I'm bound to this train of thought: We've learned about and seen the complexities of God's creation over time, including those of our own intricate, temporary bodies. We've had the opportunity to explore mystery after deep mystery from the beginning time of man's creation, only to discover far more yet to explore. We've been privileged to be allowed to observe countless breath taking wonders and the amazing beauty of God's creativity both in the earth and the heavens above us... But we have no real idea what the future beyond this life holds for us as His children in any great detail. We know and believe unfailingly in what He...

It can be a hard thing when our Christian parents leave this life. The seeming finality of that separation can be something that we find ourselves wrestling with at times. It can leave one with a feeling similar to that of being abandoned in a vulnerable moment. After all, if grace has allowed it, we've known the steady comfort of their presence for many years. From the moment we were born we began to know them and came to know them well. And for years, grace allowing, they knew us better than anyone on the planet. Gone, just... gone. It's a word that we may try to put away out of our minds moving forward. It becomes a word that we can struggle with with varying intensity - sometimes overwhelmingly and seemingly out of the blue. It can come out of nowhere and come in a rush like a punch to your core, assaulting your emotions.  But from a higher, selfless perspective than one consumed with loss or emptiness, we might be forced to acknowledge equally with abundant gratitude....