It's about time

Finally I have gotton back to blogging. It's been way too long for sure but it's amazing how the enemy wants nothing more than the separation from you and His Word. It's very obvious to me as I look back over the couple of months it attacks and breaks your leg's in this epic race of Life. Let's be honest it's pretty hard to run a race with broken leg's so if he can take that away it's easy to attack a immobile enemy.
With that said I'm going to be blogging about James in the upcoming series which is what I've been studying....let me say it's pretty intense. Today, however I'm going to be looking at a simple verse in the book of Psalms.

"Know that the Lord Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture."
Psalm 100:3

God created us!! How amazing and exciting is that? Were talking about the God who created such things as the sunset the sunrise and oh yea.....everything. It's awesome and should be something that we can rejoice in on a daily basis. I recently purchased a Swiffer Sweeper mop thing and it was a very wise investment. It's handy that's for sure but the company that made it included instructions. Who read's instructions? I guess the Swiffer people forgot that I'm a man and I don't need instruction but I do forgive them. Anyway, I tried for awhile and then as disappointing as it is to admit I had to consult.....yes the instructions they accidentally put in there not knowing a man was buying this particular Swiffer. Now where am I going with this? I rarely know but this time I do, God has done the same thing the Swiffer people did.
The Lord has given us instructions to live properly and we can choose to obey them or try it our way. God created us and included the Bible as an instruction manual now the choice is our....consult....or control things and take it in to our hands.....

Go

" Now the Lord said to Abraham,

" Go forth from your country, and your relatives and from your father's house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation,and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."

So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him;..... "

-Genesis 12:1-4a

God speaks to Abram in a powerful way here in Genesis. He tells Abram to leave everything he knows everything thats familiar and everything that he's worked his life for in this verse. God ask's Abram to give up what he had and move from a place of "safety and stability" to what God was going to put in his life. Giving up what he saw for what he couldn't! We did the same thing when we trusted Christ as our Savior. We give up living this life for ourselves and start living it for Christ who bought us at a price and our bodies and lives are here to worship Him.(1 Corinthians 6:17-20) Abram's response is what I want us to see most of all though. God speaks and then Abram obeys! He moves! God made the first move he asked Abram to give up the life he saw and go for the life he could give him....if he in return made a move.

Accepting Christ is a free gift and we can never do anything to deserve it, we can never forget that and thats not what I'm talking about. When we accept that free gift we enter into a relationship with him. We become part of Christ's Bride in a relationship. Are our lives reflecting that we are in a relationship with Christ and we are his bride? Every relationship we have takes maintenance to grow and it's not always easy. Sometimes we will go through hardship and sometimes we will experience exciting happiness but through it all, through this relationship we know one thing.....we belong to God. God made the first move and he often does in our lives....now we need to move towards him with our lives.

It's time for Movement.

Movement

"Draw Near to God and He will draw near to you...."

James 4:8

God is longing for us to make a move toward him. God desires a relationship with us so much that he sent his only Son to die for us. He turned his face away from his Son on the cross. We as Christians may loose everything we have but we won't have that. He made the first move! He sent his son! What is our move? If we say we "believe" what does that look like? Is it not surrender of our entire life to the God who sent his Son to die for us? Do I call you Lord Lord but not do what you say (Luke 6:46)? Do we honor you with our lips but our hearts are far from you(Mttw 15:8)? What moves in our lives are we making?

The balls in our court the move is our's. Not moving is making a move (Mttw 12:30).

It's time for Movement.

Desire to Feel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-ily4yJLjs

" So the Spirit lifted me up and took me away; and I went embittered in the rage of my spirit, and the hand of the Lord was strong on me."

Ezekiel 2:14

This part of scripture is during Ezekiel's call. God showed up and met with Ezekiel right when he was supposed to be getting to do his priestly duties but he was carted off in the exile at 25ish. God shows up in an amazing way to Ezekiel thats blows me away and commissions him to tell his word to the exiles. He sees all these things and God says to tell them what ever he tell's Ezekiel. He's leaving the presence of God and this verse is what is said of Ezekiel as he's leaving. The first time I read this I had a hard time with it and wondered what was going on. He was "embittered in the rage of his spirit"? What does that mean? It can't be good right? What it's telling us though is that Ezekiel felt the way God felt about the situation regarding the House of Israel. God had Ezekiel feeling the way he felt........

I want that.....I need that......I desire to feel how God feels about things in my life and in my walk with him. I want my heart to break and cry out at the things that break his heart and I want to rejoice and be overjoyed at the things that put a smile on his face. I'm at the point in my life where doors are being opened to me and I don't know which ones to go through but it is getting clearer and clearer the more I walk. This is something that struck me and just put me into a place where I fell down before God and had to have a gut check. Is this what I want? If so what am I doing so I can have it? Is it a priority in my life to feel the way he feels? Not only does it need to be but I long for it to be.

Standing up with care,

"Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliever us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up."

Daniel 3:16-18

Godly men standing up for what God had said. A perfect picture of how things should be done in my life and in ours as Believers. These men talked to the King as a man who held the position. They showed respect even in the face of death. I can't even always maintain a certain level of respect when my ideas are opposed! We need to take this to heart I think. We as Believers need to be standing up for things God told us to stand up for in a culture that is longing to assimilate into what everyone else is doing. We ARE called to live a life that sticks out to a dark world but as that light we need to be careful with how we do it. What a great passage with a lot of things to mull over but I think it's so important how these men responded. They respectfully answer in the face of death acknowledging the outcome of their actions may end in death. We as Believers need to realize that when we face something just because we stand up for God doesn't mean we don't have to face whatever the consequences are that result from it. Here it was death and they accepted the punishment with respect to the King because he was the King! God saves these men but the thing is he didn't have to! If God allowed them to die it wouldn't change what these men where doing! We need to remember the way we as believers handle ourselves and our lives may be the only "bible" they see in a day, a week, a month or year for that matter. The way we handle authority in our life does matter! Their action of standing up against what God had said not to do in a respectful way fully accepting the consequences is something we as believers who live in America very well could face in the future. Right now it costs us nothing but that is not guaranteed and when our faith starts to cost us something will we still be standing firm fully accepting the consequences in a respectful manner worthy of our father?

Father your a good God. Your a good God because you define what good is and this world does not. No matter what the situation we face we have to remember as believers greater is He who is in you than he who is in this world John says. Father I know the end of this tapestry and story your telling and it excites me that you choose to use people in places all over the world in your plan when you don't have to. I pray that we walk with care as Psalm 15 says so that when you want to use us as tools we are sharp and ready even when it gets messy and not what we expect. Let us represent and stand for what you stand for and hurt for what you hurt for handling ourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ as Phillipains 1:27 says.

Hello God.

The Priests and the Levites purified themselves; they also purified the people the gates and the wall.

-Nehemiah 12:30

As a believer I want nothing more than to meet with God and have a relationship with him. I love the fact that I get to communicate with him and worship him in my life at no cost to me. At the same time when I meet with God the creator of the universe I should be preparing much much more than I am. I want to be ready to meet with him and that involves a choice on my part to take the crap that I have in this world that has attached itself to me throughout the week and shake it off before I meet with him. I need to get myself ready to meet with God more than I am and its something that I want to do because my relationship with God is the most important thing being in this world has to offer.

Nehemiah!

Today we started doing the book of Nehemiah and I must say I think it's probably my favorite book of the bible so far. As a guy that is looking into a career choice of leadership in the church this book is like a leadership handbook as Pastor Randy put it. Not only does it excite me at learning and trying to put these things to practice in my life but it challenges me to strive even more so in my walk and relationship with the Lord. Every book is unique in it's own way and has it's own something that I love but Nehemiah is probably going to be my favorite and most used section of the Bible . In the words of my friend Brian Keogh " Nehemiah man!".