Ministering reconciliation...

  7-9 Just think—you don't need a thing, you've got it all! All God's gifts are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive on the scene for the Finale. And not only that, but God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that. ( 1 Corinthians 1:7-9 , The Message ) So it's been awhile since I blogged. I have been SO busy with work, school, and church. In a good way! God's been teaching me the difference between belief and knowledge, but that's not what I want to chat about today.. As you notice in the verse above, the part about "But God himself is right alongside you" I looked up that right alongside you bit, and its from the greek word "Pistos" 1) trusty, faithful a) of persons who show the...

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 ...

Philippians 4:19 And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. God has been reminding me a lot the last few weeks about how He supplies. In the words of my mother-in-law, "Where God guides, He provides." This has all been coming about over the last few weeks with a bit of a nasty situation in my finances. If you have been following my blog for awhile you may realize that the last year for me has been a bit crazy. I won't rehash here, so go back and read the post titled "Stirring the Pot." My life has been a hotbed of blindsides and unexpected stuff. It would be one thing if I was going around in my life and saying "when's the other shoe gonna drop?" I don't, and no Christian should, that is a reaction out of fear rather than faith. God called us to be people of faith. In my journey, God has been reminding me of simple truths that have been taught to me since the time I was a little baby. Bu...

John 12:23-25 23 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. So I had a conversation with a new friend, Pastor Nick Lembo, and he was telling me about how he as been increasingly aware of the cycle of death. Now, before you go off thinking he is really old, he's in his prime! (that's for you pastor Nick, hope it edifies you.) Well I was thinking and pondering what he shared with me and it kind of got "Stuck in my craw." I went back to a verse God reminded me of in John (see above) where Jesus says, "Its time," then says "unless the wheat falls to to the ground and DIES, it remains only a single seed" then he finishes by saying "whoever hates ...

In reading, and studying Acts with my friend Travis, I began realizing that when you stir the pot, all hell breaks loose. After saying that, I didn't realize what i was dealing with. God began stirring my pot last year. A lot. I went through leaving a church, the loss of a child, the one area that I had left was finances. I chose to no longer send my money to the Assemblies of God, as required by their by-laws. In so-doing, I sent a clear message to GOD that I was His man, all the way through. I stirred the pot by getting closer to God. Now I find out, after telling myself and Satan that my money is Gods, that I can't really afford school anymore, I owe $800 AFTER financial aid was paid, and now I am looking at an additional $4200 for the next year and a half to keep going. Where am I going with this... Acts 9:1 1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest Saul in this part of the story is doing w...