Ministering reconciliation...

James 3:3-10 3-5A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it! 5-6It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell. 7-10This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can't tame a tongue—it's never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth! 10-12My friends, this can't go on. A spring doesn't gush fresh water one day and bracki

Exposure to the Elements John 3:16-20 16-18"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. 19-21"This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won't come near it

Its interesting when you go back and listen to some of the things that I used to listen to, sermons etc, from people and bands that used to shape me. As I look at them now, I realize how shallow I was, how little I grew, how much God was wanting to grow up! So I did something silly, I listened to a podcast. As I listened to the person speak, their voice dripping with practiced sincerity, God quickly reminded me of something. "If you are going to be a minister of reconciliation, you need to start by reconciling your mind." What he meant was instead of being mad at the person, and/or making jokes or insults about the person, love them. You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’[a] and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies![b] Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. Matth

Paradox-a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. I have been on a quest to read through the message bible. I have done quite a lot of it already, but when I got to Psalms and Proverbs, something so profound struck me that I had to share. If you read Psalm 18:7-50 and into Chapter 19 in the message paraphrase, you'll see David talking about just how big God is. Two things hit me at the same time I was reading this set of verses. The first is just how huge God is. It says that when he steps down the earth literally doesn't have enough room for him, so it creates an abyss in the sea. But the next thought was all the promises that God gave us (me) regarding who we are. His children. Have you ever felt safe? Have you ever felt confident in someone else's ability to keep you together? This same huge, inexhaustibly large, infinitely complex God cares for us. I don't think the way you think. The