Thursday 27 October 2011

Monday 24 October 2011

A Thought About Abraham, Faith, You and Me.

Had a thought this morning, specifically about Abraham from the Bible...
Abraham stepped out in "blind" faith, he made lots of mistakes, yet God still blessed him.

What a challenge is this for us, because we know so much more about who God is and what He has done than Abraham, and we have God's Spirit living in us empowering us in all Truth and love!
Surely if Abraham can make such a big step of faith, "blindly", we can take usually far smaller steps of faith, while seeing!

You may not know where you are going or what you are going to do, but you can know the most important thing, rather the most important person: God!

If you are feeling weak in your faith or are having a hard time making a decision, I argue you to know God: dig deep into His word, spend time in prayer, fasting, worshiping, and just being silent before Him.

Amen.

Thursday 13 October 2011

The Good Shepherd, Seeing the Lord, Lectio Divina

This is my prayer for EVERYONE, that we would see Jesus seated upon the throne on high with His robe filling the temples. This is where the transformation of our mind and hearts lies, in the throne room of God, in knowing God, in humbling ourselves before Him, in PRAISING His mighty to save Name. Amen

http://www.thewarcollege.com/?p=1905

Wednesday 5 October 2011

The Love of the Lord is Strong, the Love of the Lord is Forever

In class we did an exercise called listening prayer.

I "heard" the voice of the Lord say "the love of the Lord is strong, the love of the Lord is forever."

Simple, yet profound, God is good like that.

My prayer:

Jesus, Father God, Holy Spirit - your love is strong, it can break through any walls that are built up in my mind and heart. It can break any chains that I am wrapped up in. Your love is SO MUCH stronger than the grip of the devil and all his demons combined.

Holy Spirit please make this a reality in my life, in me, through me and around me.

Jesus, I need to see and experience the strength of your love.

Please,

AND this community needs to experience the strength of your love. PLEASE.

Amen.

Forever FOREVER,

Never NEVER ending,

This is your great love for me (us).

Thank you Jesus, Father God, thank you Holy Spirit.

No matter what you will never stop fighting for us,

You will never ever give up on us,

You will purse us FOREVER and EVER.

Amen. 

Jesus this is an unfathomable truth, in the world we life in, we cannot understand an forever, never ending , no matter what love.

Please Holy Spirit continue to help me to understand and experience how deep, wide, long and tall is my Father's ;ove for me.

ALSO for this whole community, Jesus, we all need to understand and experince you strong never ending love.

Please Jesus reveal this love to the lost, broken and hurting people all around me… through me?

I can NOT do this. I can NOT love people anything even close to how you do.

I NEED your love.

I need YOU to love the lost, broken and hurting people through me with your BIG STRONG FOREVER NO MATTER WHAT LOVE.

Please.

Amen.

Sunday 2 October 2011

Just(ice) a Few Thoughts

Reading Isaiah 1: 5-18 yesterday I was struck with the following thoughts:

  • We are dying! As individuals and a society.
  • We are in deep trouble; bleeding all over the place.
  • Religion is  NOT the answer.
  • We need to choose to give up our evil ways (anything and everything that is in opposition to God's perfect ways. These include religion, judgments, drugs, sex slavery to name only a few)
  • We need to LEARN to do good. Doing good does not come naturally.
  • We need to SEEK justice. This is active. We need to be actively be searching out what are the injustice in our lives. Than we need to search out what justice look like, and we need to do it. Justice will not always be obvious, we need to be educating ourselves and others.
  • We need to be simply helping people, the oppressed, with food, shelter, and clothing. It doesn't end there on top of meeting peoples basic needs we need to be fighting for and defending the oppressed.

I read both justice (fighting the systemic issues) and mercy (meeting the individuals needs).
  • God is calling us in these verses to be ACTIVE in both justice and mercy.
  • These things do not come naturally or just fall into are laps.
  • We need to get off our butts and/or high horses and walk humbly, seek justice and love mercy (Micah 6:8).
  • We are called to both meet peoples practical needs and fight the systemic issues that contribute to the marginalization of people.
This is heavy. A lot of "we need to" which can be over whelming. So let me give you some hope:

The solution is to turn to God, which we can ALL do.
  • Everyone, believer and non believer, sinner and saint, need to turn to God.
  • We who are the Church we need to obey God, we need to learn to do good, walk humbly, seek justice and love mercy .
  • For you who do not yet know Jesus, you need to turn to God to receive His never ending love, grace, peace, forgiveness and new life.
  • And visa versa. I as a follower of Jesus need  to turn to God to receive His never ending love, grace, peace, forgiveness and new life. These who are not following Jesus need to learn to do good, walk humbly, seek justice and love mercy.

  • We are all in the same sinking boat (society). Only as WE ALL humble ourselves before God, pray, seek Him and  turn from are wicked ways will He heal our land (2 Chronicles 7:14).
  • This is done in community; when believers and non believers, rich and poor, black and white, old and young ALL come together.

No MORE "US" AND "THEM"!

This is a WE problem, and it needs to be a we solution.
  • Live in community.
  • Give up your wicked ways (religion and smoking crack)
  • Actively engage in justice and mercy.

How can YOU live in community?
What wicked ways do YOU need to give up?
What are some ways YOU can engage in both justice and mercy?