Ministering reconciliation...

Recently, I felt the need to cancel my facebook.... cancel? why? are you mad? Most of those types of scenarios came into my mind. As I sat with my wife, thinking about life and enjoying just being still, I got up to go and check my facebook without ever really thinking. My wife asked what I was doing. "Checking facebook...again." Really? after checking it 2 other times in the span of an hour. What have I become? I am a social guy, I love to have conversations with people and keep up with them. But in my endeavor to keep up with them, I never really got to know them. I knew them from facebook. I am not saying that I didn't know people, sure, most of them I had worked with, or knew from high school or what have you, but what kind of relationship did I have with them? Most of them have never seen the inside of my house, let alone know where I live. Most of them really don't know what is going on week to week in my life, let alone really care. So why spend so much time ...

So at OCC we started to do a 21 day fast. Fasting is a great thing! It helps us to set aside our carnal desires and allows us to focus more on God. Over the last few years, I have gotten out of the habit of fasting. Thank God for grace, because even though Fasting is NOT a commandment Jesus, or even a commandment in the old testament, I believe that its a good principle to help us draw closer to God. As I have set aside time, praying, reading my bible more, asking God to reveal himself to me, God made me aware of a scripture in Matthew 26. Let me set the scene for you: Jesus is in Jerusalem teaching. Days, maybe less than that, from this point is His brutal death on the Cross. As He is ministering, about 2 days before passover, a woman came in. While they ate, she began anoint Him with some expensive perfume. His disciples protested saying "That's Criminal!This could have been sold for a lot and the money handed out to the poor" (Matt. 26:9 The Msg). Jesus rebukes them...

Did I pull you in? Are you reading? I am not talking about me, or anyone close to me today. I am talking about a trend I have noticed in Christianity. Revelation 12:10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. Pastor Nick Lembo, a new friend of mine, brought this up to me and it got me thinking... If the "accuser of our brothers" is doing a lot more than just accusing. The devil is a liar, a thief and a master of twisting deception. If you read in Genesis 3 about how he acted towards Eve, we have an interesting thing happen. Satan comes to Eve as a Snake, he was lying about who he really was (something he still does today by the way). Why would he be so near the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil? God just gave me a little more insight. Sometimes the ...