What Is Your Will In Christ?

Lord, Though I love my wife with great measure as a husband, let that love truly exist and be seen by her as something far greater. As I serve her in the manner that you've ordained, let the truth be and be recognized as it truly is...                                          ... that I serve You. By my serving You in obedience to Your word, You're serving her through me as the loving Father that You are - the one who dotes on His daughter. Through my obedience to You, my arms then become the loving arms of her Father to hold her, my hands the gentle touch of her creator...                                            ... as I serve You By my connection with Your heart, it becomes Your heart, through the means of this man, to warm hers and bring her joy. It becomes Y...

When I've lost true compassion for my fellow man, when I look at him in his rags and no longer recognize and have reverence for the value of a beloved child of the Most High God, I've lost my way. When I've become so brazen and fearless that just thinking about the God who created the universe and holds the power of life and death doesn't have the power to bring me to my knees, I've lost my way. When my gains in life in power, position or possessions become so valuable to me that I couldn't give them up in an instant to obey the God who made them possible in the first place, I've lost my way. When my own desires lead me down a path that knowingly conflicts with what the Judge Of The World has declared to be righteous, I've chosen to become willingly disobedient and defiant, so I've lost my way. When anything has more meaning, becomes more important, more valuable, seemingly more powerful - when I allow anything to come in conflict with conne...

Habakkuk 3:2 (NLT) "I have heard all about you, LORD . I am filled with awe by your amazing works. In this time of our deep need, help us again as you did in years gone by. And in your anger, remember your mercy." I've been occupied with a thought for some time that was magnified even greater by a message I heard from our pastor recently, and it troubles me for those who don't share it. We see things as we've become accustomed and not necessarily as they are. We exist in a state of "normalcy" in this world that doesn't seem to understand just how corrupt and broken that it really is. The world's standard for comparison to determine it's current state is based on a moving and ever changing platform of acceptable ideas, values and practices,...           ...but the standard that will judge the world has never changed. Even those who work to follow Christ are susceptible to an outlook that's flawed if the standard that they view a...

We encounter life's challenges one at a time. Sometimes they come at us slowly and sometimes it seems, in rapid succession. We conquer them... or sometimes we don't. But I don't think that it's our win / loss record in dealing with those challenges that the Lord is looking at. At every point in our lives, we make decisions and at every point of decision the truth of our heart's intention is exposed to the God who's watching. Deception, greed, lust, anger, drunkenness and many more are readily accessible options that the enemy makes available on the table for consideration at the moment of decision. The Lord's given us instruction to choose from His own table of options and yet we're also free to choose as we will. But make no mistake, choosing from the enemy's table of options comes at a price... Romans 1:28-32 (NLT) 28 "Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do thin...

What's come against me in life I once sometimes mourned and even resented- not recognizing it to be a potential treasure. But I eventually came to realize that most every opportunity for worldly struggle was in truth an experience that had the possible opportunity to bring me closer to the heart of my Creator if I looked up in an effort to glean what I could from a higher perspective. It was a view that I once did not see... As creatures far lesser than our Sovereign Creator and encased in sensitive, passing flesh, our focus may often be tempted to be shortsighted and more concerned with our own sensitivity. But in every experience, if we attempt to look at it with different eyes, there's often something to be gleaned from every passing experience that could bring us closer to a heart far greater than our own. If we find it, it's always worth the effort. For example, thinking about the joys we might experience, the concerns and the pains, as a mother or father doting ...

As a hopeful follower of Christ attempting to view the world from a higher perspective... You might scan the news headlines from any source, periodically looking for some sense that godly wisdom and moral standards have gained a slight foothold somewhere in the world - looking for some sign that there's reason to hope for a world caught in increasing moral decay to begin to change its course.     I think the odds are that you won't find it in any way that gives reason for any assurance that an overwhelming surge of godly morality is overtaking the hearts of the majority of human kind. Too many are willing to follow the path of their own hearts rather than choosing the discipline and submission to follow a path of obedience to Christ. This isn't new, it's an old slow spiral of individuals choosing to follow whatever they will other than what they were created for... But the fight for the souls of mankind isn't over, the battle's not lost... because our God...

In our busyness, time has a way of escaping our consciousness in its daily passing, but time is limited - it has a beginning and an end. In that fatal end is enclosed the hope of a beginning without time's future presence - a beginning without an end. The endless span of eternity, without limit, is the span that we were created with intention for. But that path to eternity has active requirement. Time is a bubble - a capsule set apart within eternity that Father God uses to to measure the span of a man's testing in an element created to try him. It's become a conspicuous microcosm that man's commonly come to view shortsightedly as his lifetime - a view completely void of the consideration of eternity's existence. But completely sovereign God is eternal and so are His perspective and His plan. God created man with the hopeful intention that he too would become eternal, a relative of God escaping the fatality of time's passing. But in His infallible wisdom,...

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....

There's a nagging sense that this life isn't all that it could be. It's a feeling that there's something more, that despite everything we've done and everything we've obtained, something somewhere is still missing. Maybe it's around the next corner or could be found in the next thing, relationship or experience...  Somewhere deep down in the heart of every person who hasn't yet found the answer and the truly satisfying, permanent resolution, there's a hole. There's still something missing and despite everything we've tried to fill it with, something's still not right. Like an itch begging to be scratched it motivates a reaction, but what reaction will satisfy - what resolution? What is it? The volume of that sense varies from person to person and for some it ebbs and flows as life goes on. For some it's quiet, like a continual, still small voice and for others it may rise to a level that brings them to crisis or just to do thing...

I've come across a number of people over time that have a distinct disdain for anything related to "religion". I don't condemn them - in fact depending on their interpretation and descriptions attached to the word, I might even agree with them... To some, the mention of Christianity in particular immediately conjures thoughts of a guilt ridden, ritualistic servitude and life of condemnation immersed in hypocrisy. Of course and still amazingly, the opposite is very true. But one has to wonder where these ideas and impressions come from. Were they given life by the example of someone claiming to live under the banner of Christ? Were they acrimonious conclusions drawn from viewing the scripted religion of past media presentations or over zealous and over acted presentation? Each case may present a different answer, but I cringe when I think about some of the potential possibilities.   I haven't found in scripture yet where Jesus made a habit of yelling and thre...

I'm a child of grace. I'm exceedingly grateful that the challenges, trials and self designated disasters that have been allowed in my life have not been greater... The total number of opportunities for what I would be tempted to consider greater harm in my life - the absolute terror of things that I don't even know that I've been protected from, are something I can only wonder about. I only know that the horror of what could have happened hasn't. I look across the days of my life and consider that I could have been encumbered with far greater physical suffering, heart rending horror and devastating loss - the potential totality of which I can't even know. Yet I here I am still, gratefully broken by the overwhelming mercy of God's grace. What I have suffered is nothing compared to what I might be worthy of. I stand before the Lord humbled under the magnitude of His power and greatness. I'm a tender blade of grass standing before the raw and devastati...

In the busy day to day struggles to get through what's become our self made grind, what we know has a tendency to become so common to us that we really don't give it much thought. For instance, we know that somewhere "God's watching". But we've known it for so long that we may have even become complacent with the idea. I tend to think that God alone is so big and so powerful that He can see each of us individually and continually at the same time. There may be others who watch and surmise the content of our thoughts, intentions and motives in a given moment, but God alone knows the truth - even better than we know ourselves. As He watches over mankind, God's not surprised. He knows and expects with perfect clarity, knowledge and wisdom. But what we might acknowledge even less than Father God's continually watchful eye are the countless multitude of His mighty angels waiting with Him and having witnessed it all from the beginning. What must they thi...