June 1, 2012

Posted by Jim on June 1, 2012

In her little book ‘Jesus Calling’ Sarah Young writes:

“The Peace that I give you transcends your intellect. When most of your mental energy goes into efforts to figure things out, you are unable to receive this glorious gift. I look into your mind and see thoughts spinning round and round: going nowhere, accomplishing nothing. All the while, My Peace hovers over you, searching for a place to land.

Be still in My Presence, inviting me to control your thoughts…This is the most effective way to receive My Peace.”

Many of us search for Peace in various ways, it seems that usually we search by trying to work out the details of our life. Many a person has declared that “As soon as I get my life in order I’ll spend some time with Jesus.” And they go from problem to problem never seeming to get to the point of letting Jesus take control…and bring Peace.

Peace

Jim

May 26, 2012

Posted by Jim on May 26, 2012

My Bible reading this morning came from 1 John 4. It was the passage where John used the word Love over and over again.

⁷Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.⁹This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.¹⁰This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved usand sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.¹¹Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

¹³This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.

Love and God’s Spirit seem to go hand in hand. That’s a neat thought at Pentecost.

Peace

Jim

May 20, 2012

Posted by Jim on May 20, 2012

Dwight Moody said:

“You might as well ask a person to hear without ears, see without eyes, walk without feet, as to ask them to believe without giving them something to believe.”

What we believe speaks more loudly about our knowledge of God than what we don’t believe. What we don’t believe doesn’t adequately speak to people about the Good News of Jesus therefore when people hear what we don’t believe, those non-beliefs are written off as having no value. (Reference Moody’s quote above).

Spend some time thinking to yourself about what you do believe. Hold those beliefs up and let the full force of Jesus’ love fire at them. If questions arise maybe it would be good to look deeper to see if those beliefs in fact reflect Jesus.

This is a positive, Scriptural process of learning and growing in Christ not a put down to what we believe. We have to know what we believe (not just what we don’t believe) if we are to influence other people with the Good News of Jesus.

Peace

Jim

May 16, 2012

Posted by Jim on May 16, 2012

Bold statement here:

“Our views of God, that is, our opinions and beliefs about God sometimes overshadow God.”

By that I mean sometimes we let our dogmas stand stronger than we allow God to stand. I’m not sure why that is but I think it might have something to do with allowing our ideas and thoughts to be challenged. If one of the ideas we’ve based our life on turns out to be a little off, what might that mean to the rest of our ideas?

In other words, what happens if we subject our beliefs to God’s scrutiny and we find that we were wrong? What happens if God blasts away the foundation on which we built our beliefs and that foundation begins to crumble?

Some people think that if they got God wrong on one thing then everything else is questionable (I’ve heard statements along that line). But what I’ve found over time is that subjecting our beliefs to God’s scrutiny is holding them up and allowing God to take aim at them with his love. If God’s love crumbles the foundations those beliefs were built upon…so be it.

What I have found over time is that once God begins to increase we are very often humbled. It is usually when I am humbled that I hear God say, “Remember love is the greatest commandment.”

Peace

Jim

May 14, 2012

Posted by Jim on May 14, 2012

Dwight L. Moody writes:

“A good many people live on negations. They are always telling what they don’t believe.”

And then he said:

“One of the truest signs that a person is growing great is that God increases and they decrease.”

It seems sometimes easier to say what we don’t believe instead of what we do believe. People are sometimes compassionate about what they don’t believe…if only they were that passionate about what they do believe. From my own experience, concentrating on what we don’t believe seems to be the case when we cease to grow in our knowledge of God.

Religiously speaking, what we do believe (if we’re to say it with any conviction at all) requires that we grow in our knowledge of God as presented through Jesus.

As Moody noticed, the result is that God increases and we decrease.

Peace

Jim

May 11, 2012

Posted by Jim on May 11, 2012

C.S. Lewis writes:

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”

I have noticed over time that the hardest lessons learned seem to affect us in the most tender ways. How we grow through those experiences speaks to our integrity.

Just something to think about…

Jim

May 1, 2012

Posted by Jim on May 1, 2012

Brian Zahnd says:

“One second of the sun’s energy is equivalent to ten billion hydrogen bombs. (Personally, I think a sunrise is a better use of nuclear fusion than building bombs.)”

A sunrise speaks to me the promises of God to give good things to those who love him. Most of the time, the good things are insight, wisdom, beauty and love.

Look for the good things that God offers, look for them in the simple, the out of the ordinary. Remember that God may choose to speak from a gentle whisper…or the beauty of a sunrise.

Peace

Jim

April 28, 2012

Posted by Jim on April 28, 2012

If we truly want to follow Jesus, if we want to influence with a Godly influence, we allow Jesus to show us Godly ways of life. And if we’re looking we’ll be reminded of those ways of life by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, part of whose job it is to remind us of the teaching of Jesus John 14:26…

In fact Jesus made Living very clear by the way he lived his life, and when he died it was like the period at the end of the sentence…

“When the dust settled on Good Friday the shadow of the cross left a clear definition of the Godly ways of life as Jesus defined them:

Compassion kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and love. “

And by going and finding out what these things mean…we discover ways of life that mimic Jesus.

Peace

Jim

April 24, 2012

Posted by Jim on April 24, 2012

Last week I spent a lot of time thinking about Jesus telling his listeners on one occasion to “Go find out what this means…” (Matthew 9:12). And then Jesus told them what he wanted them to examine…mercy not sacrifice was the topic of that day.

That spoke to me because I can think of so many times that I have felt Jesus tell me to go find out what something means. We like for Jesus to tell us plainly, but Scripture suggests that usually answers are left up to our searching, we rarely get divine intervention. In his day, Jesus seemed to evade direct answers, instead he chose to send people off to think for themselves.

In my thinking it seems that Jesus sends us off to think for ourselves because there are so many facets, so many particular features to any one topic. That means that if we settle for an answer of some sort we generally stop looking at how the question affects other areas of our life.

So if Jesus says, “Go find out what this means, I desire humility not pride.” We find ways to enhance life, not stifle it.

Humility is not simply to be humiliated, I suppose it could be but being humiliated is not the way Jesus taught humility. Rather humility as Jesus taught is an attitude of putting others before ourselves. Likewise, pride has more than one meaning. We take pride in who we are, our children, our accomplishments and so on. But when our pride exceeds pointing to Jesus something is amiss.