His eye is on the sparrow...

This morning my devotional spoke on the subject of being still and knowing that God is God. We stay so busy in our lives with work, family, church activities, community activities, charities, recreational sports, working out, etc., etc., that I wonder if we really are too busy for God?!? We can be so busy doing "good" things that we can forget that God wants a relationship with us and that a relationship involves daily communication. It involves spending quality AND quantity time with each other. Most of us are not heading in a wrong spiritual direction or have no intentions of ignoring God, but when we don't take time every day to be still and know that He is God then we are ignoring our relationship. I include myself in this group! I worry and worry about everything when ultimately I just need to be still. When things are on track and running smooth I also just need to be still. My prayer today is that I midst all of the tasks ahead of me that I can be still and know that He is God. I will pray the same for you if you will pray the same for me. Blessings and peace.

Rumour has it...

...that my birthday is today. However this is false because after I turned 29 I stopped counting birthdays. So today I am still 29 with 6 years experience. Whose idea was it anyway to celebrate birthdays?!? Oh well, bring on the cake and ice cream!

An interesting thought came across my mind this morning as I was reading my devotional. Do I care more about the social injustices of this world more than I care about people committing their lives to Christ? Am I more concerned about helping repair someone's home than about whether or not they have heard about God's free gift of grace? Is it more important to me to meet the physical needs of others as opposed to their spiritual needs? Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that serving others is not important. It may take that initial serving of others to build a bond so that God's grace can be realized. What I am wondering is where do I focus more attention and importance. I love to serve others and do missions, but maybe I should be more intentional to show God's love in action and speak it in word.

So with that said I will pray that God reveals to me what my priorities actually are in hopes that they are the same as God's priorities for me. I pray that all of us will make God's priorities our own. I will pray for you, will you pray for me?

and yet He did it anyway!

This morning in my quiet time I read a excerpt from Oswald Chambers' book Conformed to His Image. The devotional book I am using is called Daily Thoughts for Disciples which is a collection of excerpts from the writings of Oswald Chambers paired with a scripture reference. Some mornings I really don't get what he is writing, but most mornings it hits me right where I live and this morning was no exception. The base scripture for this morning was John 2:25 (NLT), "No one needed to tell him what mankind is really like." Christ never got overly excited when one of his followers "got it". Nor did he show contempt or become defensive when He encountered those who were out to get him. Being fully God, Christ knew what was in their hearts, and yet he loved them the same. He knew what was ahead for Him, yet he stayed true to what God called Him to do. He knew that he would be totally abandoned, but His love for us never ended.

In my life and ministry I get so excited when I see people "get it" and then almost as soon as that happens the wind is knocked out of my sail by people that I perceive as out to get me. If I truly want to be an imitator of Christ, I need to learn to see, to love, to encourage people the way Christ sees them. This should be much easier for me because I truly don't know what is in a person's heart. My focus should be to remember that God's love is the same for everyone. I should rejoice when I see people "get it", but I should also rejoice when they don't because that's another opportunity for God to continue doing a work in me and then through me. I am so amazed at this great God I serve and I am overwhelmed by the love and grace that never runs out.

Your prayers for me to continue becoming the man God wants me to be are coveted. I love you with the love of the Lord!

My First Blog Entry

Well I am finally making my first of what could be many blog entries. I have been using Facebook and MySpace for sometime, but this is my first attempt at blogging. I hope you can manage to stand my rantings and ravings.

So this past week I got to know a character in the Bible a little more in-depth and realized that I could have written the book of Ecclesiastes had it not already been written. Growing up in church I have always known about King Solomon, but I never knew that he struggled with the same thoughts, feelings, emptiness, and search for meaning that I had for so many years. Everything Solomon tried to find peace, joy, contentment, happiness, and meaning/purpose for life was exactly the same thing I tried...or at least to the best of my resources since I am not a king.

Anyway, to make a long story short, both Solomon and I came to the same conclusion. However if I would have read his journal, which we commonly refer to as the book of Ecclesiastes, I might have been able to save myself many wasted years. I do want to conclude my first entry with a verse or two from Solomon's journal in hopes that it will help others in their own search for the missing piece to true peace, joy, contentment, happiness, and meaning/purpose in life.

"Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad." Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 (NLT)