What Happens Today

God, misrepresented God gets very serious about what people say about Him. Sentences that start with, "God thinks," or "God says," or "God is," carry a lot of weight behind them; especially when spoken by those considered to be representatives of the faith. But why is God so serious about being accurately represented? Why is an authentic and pure portrayal of who He is so important? Because God misrepresented is simply an idol.  When God is said to be "like this" and He really isn't "like that", we form an idol in our thoughts through our words and into our doctrines and either drive people away from Him or draw people into idol worship. And this isn't a rare happening. God is misrepresented far too often. In one way or another, at one time or another, we've all fallen short and offered to those around us a poor reflection of who He truly is. I know I have. I confess that I have. And in one way or another, and at one ti...

When God goes shopping For Father's Day, my wife got me a shirt that has the words, "bought with a price" written in Biblical Greek on it. I've been attempting to learn Greek, so it was an appropriate gift. My neighbor, who is Greek read the shirt. I asked her if she knew what it meant. She was having a difficult time trying to put into English what the words meant in Greek. She finally made an attempt, "something like shopping." Funny, we were heading into the grocery store as we were having this discussion. What a way to look at this act of God, I thought to myself. God went shopping and He bought us. The scripture says that He chose us, sought us out, not the other way around. You could say, the patron bought the bagel of his choice, the bagel didn't choose the patron. So God, in a sense, went shopping and He purchased us - at the very high cost of His Son's blood.  This speaks to His great commitment and to His unfathomable wisdom and ways....

That annoying person you're going to spend the rest of eternity with I can remember a preacher (or two) saying in church something to the effect of, "you'd better love the person sitting next to you because you're going to spend the rest of eternity with them."  In one sense, I agree - we will spend eternity with our fellow believers. But in another sense, (I'd say the truly important sense), I strongly disagree with the implication of that statement.  John, the apostle of Jesus, the one close to His heart, wrote, "But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." The believer you are sitting next to in church is nothing like the person you will spend eternity next to worshiping God with. We shall be like Him; all of us. Think about it.  All of the things in us and about us, broken by sin - our annoying idiosyncrasies, our nasty habits, our rotten attitudes will be blown off of us as we are transformed...

It's OK to be honest. In fact, honest words spoken with an attitude of trust show real faith. Confessing the truth does not make one without faith -  I believed, even when I spoke: "I am greatly afflicted"  or as the Amplified version puts it,  I believed [and clung to my God] when I said,  “I am greatly afflicted.” Paul echoed these words in regards to his own sufferings -  Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak ... We despair, we are perplexed. Paul confessed these things in the spirit of faith. I have a cold, I'm feeling depressed, I'm afraid. Those who are honest among us will admit to these things, not because we lack faith, but because our faith rests not in our words or declarations, but in the God who raised Jesus from the dead. That is where our faith must rest. I was visiting with a sweet, elderly believer recently. She's often said...

Signs M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed a film called, "Signs" which was released in 2002. The backstory of the movie was around a priest who had lost his wife and his faith. As the story progresses we see events come together that would eventually restore this priest's faith and seem to indicate that the miraculous can happen in life. In the movie, evidence after evidence pointed to (I'll say) God working things together to guide and prove himself to this priest. Thus the title, "Signs". That's my synopsis of the movie anyways - if you've seen it, you may have gotten something totally different out of it! Signs can be used to indicate the presence of something existing. They can also be used to point to or explain something. Signs are an important part of the Christian life - please let me explain. We do not follow signs - that can lead to disappointment and deception. Our faith is not in the miraculous, or in the wonders, or in the signs....

Unlocking the Heart of God As the tribe of Israel was preparing to enter the promised land, a census was taken at the command of the Lord to count those who would be eligible for war; every male twenty years and older. An army was being built, and the land was being divided and given to the tribes of Israel - the more warriors, the more land; the fewer warriors, the smaller the portion. You could say, the inheritance was divided according to the strength of each tribe.  Zelophehad, from the tribe of Manasseh, had five daughters - not eligible for inheritance, not eligible for war. I wonder how Zelophehad felt having only girls during a time and in a culture where sons were the desired gender. I wonder if his feelings had anything to do with the fact that he named one of his daughters Noah. Maybe not. But maybe.  When Zelophehad died, his daughters were left with nothing; they were not qualified for an inheritance because they were not sons. So what did Noah and her sist...

What if I told you that all of your debts had been cancelled? That speeding ticket, the monthly car loan that never seems to go away, the seemingly insurmountable thirty year mortgage; erased, forgotten, taken off the books. No more debt. What would that feel like? What would you do? Buy another house, borrow more money - or treasure the freedom freshly bestowed upon you? Many of us dream of having more money. Increase supply, decrease debt. But what if the possibility of debt was no more? Try to envision a place, a world, or let's call it a dynamic, where debt and abundance swap. Debt becomes little and provision goes through the roof. Placed upon us are legal demands, law and consequence. We incur debt because of legal demand. The law demands that if you speed, you pay a fine. If you charge an item at the store, you pay for it, sometimes with interest. Steal, murder, commit adultery; some debts are heavier than others and some of the fines we pay are not just monetary. But what i...