You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2011.
i’ll say it again, love when God encourages you with something in the inbox…
Reinvention Required by Steven Furtick
If you really walk with Jesus you will be in a constant state of reinvention.
If you can receive this, and are willing to participate in it, congratulations. You’re in for a lifetime of increasing conformity to the character of Christ. And God will supply all of the raw material for the required renovations.
If you aren’t into that sort of thing-if you’re determined to stay stuck in the ways of yesterday-you won’t make it very far toward God’s goal for your life. You’ll also get sick of yourself more and more each time you resist the transforming
work of God’s Spirit. It’s a losing proposition from every perspective.
Are you willing to pray today: God, make me over, and over, and over…?
As many times as it takes?
And whatever it costs?
this year for me has and is being a process of reinvention and change. i am still heading towards an unknown direction but confident and secure that God has the blueprints. my job is to trust and surrender. and be transformed. God has brought into my life several books about Jacob – at the start of the year i got a prophetic word that as Jacob wrestled with God and had a rebranding so likewise was i. i have been acutely aware of the change and changes and the process. praying for clarity in this journey.
youversion bible reading plan with joyce meyer today:
Whatever you’re facing in life, or whatever is coming in your future, God has already given you the faith for it. It may not look like it, and you may not feel like you have what it takes to overcome, but faith in God isn’t based on our circumstances or how we feel.
The enemy would like for you to believe that you don’t have a chance in life, that you’re too weak, too poor, too whatever. But God has a different view of you. God sees you through the eyes of love. He sees not what you can be, but what He has invested in you, not what you or others may see.
Seeing yourself the way God sees you leads to a life of overwhelming victory.
But it takes faith. You can’t just hear that God loves you and sees you as His child, you have to believe it. It takes faith to move forward and overcome the challenges of life. And faith does you no good if you don’t know how to release it. You have to release your faith in order for it to work.
We release faith through our words, actions and, of course, through prayer. It’s up to us to act.
First John 4:4 is a scripture we quote a lot, and almost anytime I say this verse in a church or meeting, everybody claps and cheers. But how many people really believe that "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world?"
The truth is, the One in you is greater and He loves you. So stretch your faith today and see yourself the way God sees you. It doesn’t matter what the enemy wants you to see or how things might look. Our faith overcomes through the One who lives in us!
it is so good to remember (more than just “oh i remember now” but to bring to mind and to dwell upon it and live by it) what God says – He has an answer for all our questions and doubts and fears… just as the who i am in Christ list reminds us of who God has created us to be and all the work He is and has done in us this below list is a fab counter for our thinking. sometimes our thinking stinks – we doubt God, we forget who He is, we lose sight of Him… instead of fixing our eyes upon Him and finding faith and hope in His words…
You say: “It’s Impossible”
God says: All things are possible (Luke 18:27)
You say: “I’m too tired”
God says: I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28-30)
You say: “Nobody really loves me”
God says: I love you (John 3:16 & John 3:34)
You say: “I can’t go on”
God says: My grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9 & John 3:34)
You say: “I can’t figure things out”
God says: I will direct your steps (Proverbs 3:5-6)
You say: “I can’t do it”
God says: You can do all things (Philippians 4:13)
You say: “I’m not able”
God says: I am able (2 Corinthians 9:8)
You say: “It’s not worth it”
God says: It will be worth it (Romans 8:28)
You say: “I can’t forgive myself”
God says: I forgive you (1 John 1:9 & Romans 8:1)
You say: “I can’t manage”
God says: I will supply all your needs (Philippians 4:19)
You say: “I’m afraid”
God says: I have not give you a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7)
You say: “I’m always worried and frustrated”
God says: Cast all your cares on ME (1 Peter 5:7)
You say: “I’m not smart enough”
God says: I give you wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:30)
You say: “I feel all alone”
God says: I will never leave you or forsake you (Hebrews 13:5)
a quiet nap with my girl this arvo
finishing a good book
listening to a good preach
feeling the Holy Spirit breathe into me as i listen to worship
fresh strawberries
pikelets
this is my simple pleasure in the midst of the pox
not so simple pleasure – i just got a tweet to say i won a @LOrealParisNZ L’Oréal Paris NZ Gift Pack! a lovely friend nominated me by tweet earlier in the week #shesworthit – feeling really blest – i love unexpected things like this… they warm my heart and give me joy! a courier will be arriving sometime in the week with a bag of goodies for me! how exciting!
When we know our identity before we jump into activity, we don’t have to guess how to handle the vicious lies of the enemy. Because in God we are loved, accepted, and whole. Oh, may this statement straight from God be inscribed, engraved, and tattooed in the most permanent of ways on our hearts: “Well pleased … well pleased … well pleased.” Lysa TerKeurst
Why is it so important to spend time with Jesus every day? Because He will give us the exact instruction and comfort we need to handle all He sees coming our way—how to act and, even more challenging, how to react in every situation. It is the perfect measure of His peace, packaged up just for us. With great expectation, we can stick it in our pocket and carry it with us. Lysa TerKeurst
in your presence God, we find hope
in your presence we find life and love
all we need is found with you.
when i am with you i know you are with me
and i never walk alone
so i turn my eyes
towards you
gazing with trust and surrender
knowing you are with me and i am never alone
i walk not by sight but with faith in you
your presence gives me hope
your presence gives me peace
with you i am found and am complete and whole
in your presence God, i find all the answers
in your presence its okay not to know
i will trust you all my days
i will walk and obey
your presence gives me life and hope
it is where i know i belong
poem by me
in reading around you sometimes stumble across a post or a blog that just so resonates with who you are and what you think… even though you haven’t written it it could come from your own pen… and this such post that i am shouting out to so does that for me….
Your Life Is Your Ministry is a post at the wonderful blog The God Hungry which i read frequently!
"My life is my ministry and my ministry is my life. I am called to live out of my own authentic life in Christ. This speaks volumes as to who I am called to be before Christ and the world.
I am not called to live a transformed life because it looks good on my resume or because it makes a difference in the quality of my preaching/teaching. I am not interested in spiritual transformation because this seems to be the thing to do if I am going to stay current. The point of a transformed life is not to get me somewhere in my work with a church.
The reality? Every man and woman in Christ is called to live out of an authentic life in Christ. This life is my ministry. My ministry is my life. This morning as you are at home with your family, your ministry is already happening. As you go to work, your ministry is already being lived out. Your ministry is happening wherever and whenever you live and are present in another’s life."
see why i like it?
i totally believe that as we live our lives we are called to be demonstrations of the love of God to those around us. we are demonstrating His love in the ordinary events of life as well as the extraordinary. ministry can be defined so narrowly – as preaching, or worship leading or something like that, but our whole life is ministry – ministering God’s love and grace to those around us. serving our friends and family and strangers.
practically this can be making a meal for a family with sick kids, or mowing your neighbours lawn because they’ve broken their leg… or because the grass is long. it can be sending a "thinking of you, how you doing?" email to a friend you haven’t seen in a while, or even a smile to the check out chick at the supermarket you shop at. or learning her name. simple things.
we need to remember that God doesn’t use us on Sunday from 10-12 only. but every day and every moment. with our children. with our workmates. with our families. with our friends. be a demonstration. be a minister. serve God!
Deck the halls with boughs of holly… It is Christmas Time! I love Christmas. There is the joy of giving and getting, the wonder in a child’s (no matter how old they are!) face as they open their gifts. I love the content tiredness at the end of the day, belly and heart full with good things.
We all know that there is more to Christmas than the surface shows – presents, a tree and good times. There is The Reason For The Season. The Christ in Christmas. Society has “dumbed down” Christmas, taken the real meaning out of the season, turning it into a excuse for a commercial celebration. Jesus is The Reason For Christmas. Without Jesus’ birth we don’t have Christmas, and more importantly we don’t have the Saviour of The World. The greatest gift our Great God could ever give humanity was given on this day over 2000 years ago. Jesus, Saviour of the World, was born.
Christmas begins the unfolding of the revelation of God’s love and salvation for all of us – it begins with a birth. Even the birth of Jesus and the events surrounding His birth give us a glimpse of how truly remarkable and world changing this birth was. Angels appear singing songs of great glory and gladness. They rejoiced at Jesus birth, knowing not only that He was the Saviour , bringing forgiveness and grace, but that He was God wrapped in flesh. Shepherds, told by the angels about His birth, came with open eyes and hearts to see the Saviour. Wise men, drawn by signs in the stars, visited Him bringing gifts of incredible wealth. They came to honour the King of the Jews, looking first in the palace before being led to the humble stable.
The thing to remember about Christmas is that it is just a beginning. Jesus doesn’t stay a baby in a manger. Jesus, Saviour of the World, grows up and becomes the young man who lived and died on the cross for us.
Jesus spent most of His life as a carpenter, working with His hands, lifting heavy beams of wood, using his whole body to craft yokes for oxen and furniture for homes. He was strong, fit and healthy. Jesus is a big brother, and shouldered responsibility for His family when His earthly father died. When Jesus walked this earth, He didn’t fit the expectations of the religious community, or even His own disciples. He didn’t demand an ornate tower to preach from. His friends were the most controversial fringe elements of society – tax collector’s, prostitutes, lepers… Jesus touched those that were classed as outcasts and untouchables. Equally He called to those that were community leaders, soldiers, the wealthy. Jesus didn’t look at the exterior, he looked at the heart and gave everyone the opportunity to follow Him.
Jesus stood up for real truth, the truth that God was real and loved them and desired to be in relationship with them. He preached real love, real commitment to holy living and real commitment and relationship with God. He talked about eternity and the way to heaven, life and death, choices. This went against the grain of the religious leaders who had made “church” into a series of do this and don’t do that’s.
C.SW. Lewis, author of Mere Christianity and the Narnia Chronicles makes this statement, "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg–or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
Jesus Christ made a claim that was breathtaking in its audacity. Was He really God in the flesh? His message frightened the establishment of His day so much that they had Him executed on the cross.
Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, even making Himself the same as God. He said “before Abraham was, I AM.” “I AM” is a holy sacred name for God, the name that God himself gave Moses to share with the enslaved Jewish people as a sign of the power and reality of God and His promises. Jesus said I AM. He is saying I AM God. To say this He was either telling the truth, deluded and lying, or just plain lying out of a desire for power, fame and self glory, to deceive the people into believing in Him.
Jesus is the I Am, the one that the Jews were looking for through the ages, the Messiah, the Saviour. He is our Saviour too, the one who gave His life to pay the price for our sin so that we may know God both in this life and in all eternity. All of heaven rejoiced at His birth. They rejoiced at the very first Christmas, knowing that this was the beginning of a great adventure for mankind. The Hope of the world had arrived, He was born!
Harvest fields tend to be poor and difficult places. Harvesting is hard work where ever the field! You have to get dirty and involved. Sinners do not give honorariums. Discipleship is about one on one stuff! Jesus sent away the crowds in order to invest himself in the twelve. Revival is not about platforms and performances. It is about relationships, sacrifice and obedience. – Steve Hill
God’s Son has all the brightness of God’s own glory and is like him in every way. By his own mighty word, he holds the universe together. After the Son had washed away our sins, he sat down at the right side of the glorious God in heaven. Hebrews 1:3
I feel a bit unqualified to write an advent meditation – because I confess I don’t really know what Advent IS. I know that it exists and starts in decemberish and involves candles, wreathes, calendars, countdowns and special services in some churches. I grew up in a non Christian home, becoming a Christian at 16 in a pentecostal charismatic contemporary church which doesn’t celebrate feast days or lent or advent. So I did some googling…
The name Advent comes from the Latin words, advenire (to come to) & adventus (an arrival), and refers to Christ’s coming into this world. It celebrates and remembers that God came to earth as a man, to redeem mankind to himself. Christ is coming. He has come, and He will come again. This is the message, the heartbeat of Advent.
The interesting thing that I learned when googling about advent is that though it prepares for Christmas and celebrates the incarnation, the birth of Christ, it looks as this event as the starting point of redemption, of a life lived by Christ at ends at the cross and the price paid for our sin. Advent is bigger than just the nativity or December 25th – it celebrates these things and looks beyond to what is to come.
Advent isn’t about standing round a manger ooohing at a cute baby, but it is about recognizing the saviour has come and that the saviour sacrifices himself so we can be free from sin. Advent celebrates that God is with us. Advent celebrates that God made a way. Advent celebrates that Jesus came so we can come to God.
Advent is marked by a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing. There is a yearning for deliverance from the evils of the world, first expressed by Israelite slaves in Egypt as they cried out from their bitter oppression. It is the cry of those who have experienced the tyranny of injustice in a world under the curse of sin, and yet who have hope of deliverance by a God who has heard the cries of oppressed slaves and brought deliverance!
It is that hope, however faint at times, and that God, however distant He sometimes seems, which brings to the world the anticipation of a King who will rule with truth and justice and righteousness over His people and in His creation. It is that hope that once anticipated, and now anticipates anew, the reign of an Anointed One, a Messiah, who will bring peace and justice and righteousness to the world. The Voice
Advent is a season of preparation – and I don’t just mean Christmas shopping, decorating and feast cooking!
Advent serves as a season of reflection – where we can take the time (be it at church or at home with our family or in our own personal time with God) to really meditate and begin to appreciate the magnitude of Christmas. The magnitude of Jesus’ birth. The magnitude of “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (john 3:16). The magnitude of God made flesh, dwelling with us.
Advent is all about Christ, the King of Glory, the I AM coming. Arriving. God made flesh. Dwelling with us, that we might then dwell with him.
John 3:16-17 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
Advent links/ideas:
village church advent devotional
EArth mother monkeys advent ideas
how to be like jesus during advent – desiring god
Recent Comments