Love the unlovable!

A great majority of my life has been used to judge others.  To look at the bad guy (in my eyes) and say how dare he. 

I have also spent a great of my life observing others doing the same thing and think if he would just simply talk with him and not throw spears they might find resolve and not just tangle back and forth over nothing.  It's a battle in my own heart between knowing whats good and actually doing it.

Funny thing is that when i have come into to contact with those poeple personally i sit and talk with them, sometimes for hours, why?  Because when i begin to look at someone the way i know Jesus looks at them my perspective on life, people, and judgement change.  Jesus always attracted the worst people (samaritan woman with multiple partners, adulterous woman about to be stoned, Zaccheus the tax collector, and more.)

I guess it's a maturity thing as a man trying to follow Christ and look intnently as He does atthe situation.
There's alot of people that need an example of Christ love.

brokeness!

2 Samuel 11-12:
David does something that should have never happened.  He was in a place he should ahve never been.  Matter of fact he should have been at war.  It was spring time and everyone else was gone.

Psalms 51:
Do you see over a year later how broken david was.  The things that happened brought him to a spot where everyone of use needs to be with God. He was so miserable up until he became broken, hince Psalms 51.

The question you have to ask yourself, does God let you remeber your sin.  Answer, yes.  I know it says as far as the east is from the west, but that's you being forgiven, not you forgetting.  Remeber David was broken after a year later.  He lets you remember so you don't do it again.  

Why Haiti?

Missions trips are being made by the day.  Donations by the minute, and God is still being praised by the moment.  This has not even begun to find resolve, but what haiti needs mroe than anythign is prayer for a God who loves to move and to make Himself known more than ever. 

I realize more than ever in this stage of my life that from the rubble and devistation, God reveals Himself and hundreds if not thousands more find Him.  The fact is is that Haiti is majority a black magic, witch craft, and vodoo worshiping society.  So does God want to change that, oh yeah!

successful, admired by others, and being prosperous...

We are never more vulnerable to sin than when we are successful, admired by others, and prosperous, as King David tragically discovered.

I have learned that satan no longer attacks just me directly.  He goes for my home.  He knows that work is booming then i go home and hope for a joyous and peaceful time with my wife, so he goes after her all day knowing that she may not be sharing in that same joy as I.  He's incredibly merceless.

Being admired by others is sometimes dangerous as well.  for some it builds a big head,  others a distraction, and others pride.  Maybe what's worse is the possibility it take glory from God.  Some can take it though and be fine.  David learned the hard way.

A big one for me as a High school pastor is when my ministry is really excelling, he seems to hit the parents of my high school young adults.  The most common thing i hear is your grounded from church, (WHAT)!  This leads to students being mad at parents and then comes strife in the family and there comes family falling away form the Lord because they think all that church stuff is to blame.

David did great things, by learning hard facts.

Unity is awesome!!!

Food for thought!

"But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?" I answer, 'What if He knows Prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need - the need of Himself?' Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer. So begins a communion, a taking with God, a coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases. We must ask that we may receive: but that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God's end in making us pray, for He could give us everything without that: to bring His child to his knee, God withholds that man may ask."


- George MacDonald

It's gonna cost you!

I heard a line that said "I'll take the Jesus that gives me a car, house, and a bank account."  He was making mention of the dangers of the prosperity gospel.

He has a good point!  There will be times of prosperity in ones life, but the bible does not state that we will somehow be materially, or monatarally blessed in this life.  Spiritually yes!  If we were to be so blessed in this life then what Peter writes in his first apistle contradicts prosperity.  He claims that an inheritance will come.  we know an inheritance is for the future.  It doesn't necessarily show up now.

It's a dangerous thought to think well that's why Jesus came so where's mine.  He has called that you pick up a cross and follow Him.  Way out the details of what that cost then present a valid arguement of prosperity and the gospel.

When you cling on to the things of this world you automatically degrade that which comes in the next, JESUS.  

Peter's sent men out who knew this well which is why today there are many churches in Asia.  It wasn't prosperity that drew them to the field, but Jesus.