I love to express what I feel called to say. Writing helps me to open up my heart and do that. I hope that what I write helps you in some way. I hope it makes you think, encourages you, or inspires you. If it challenges you or if you disagree, I hope you know that I respect your right to have a different point of view.
If “Christ in you” Is true about you That means you Are a Christ-carrier And you take The ever-living Jesus Wherever you go.”
When we begin To let the risen Jesus Continually radiate From deep with us And to no longer accommodate The world’s corruption, We’ll experience A glorious disruption, An inner Holy Spirit eruption That will demonstrate Heaven Both within us and around us.
When you choose A direction And doors close That’s not rejection. It’s God’s protection.
Christ-followers are called to live life on earth according to God’s terms and plans, not according to our own. Jesus wants to personally train and empower us to live by His presence and ability, allowing Him to continuously and freely direct us from within, and not to live by our own self-effort.
Instead of trying to understand Him, God wants us to ever trust and rely on His nearness and reality — “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” When you fully and truly believe that you have God’s protection, you feel no need for self-protection.
Let the Bible filter your thoughts, feelings, desires, and culture. The reverse doesn’t work to produce inner peace very well.
Several months ago, God spoke clearly in my heart words that I didn’t want to hear: “Try less; trust more.” I’ve always been a person of great effort and persistence, so it is difficult to lay my energy down and to obey what I’ve been told.
It’s an oxymoron. I find myself trying more to try less when in reality I’m called to die to myself instead of using my own abilities to strive for self-improvement. If I were truly humble, I wouldn’t stress out and mumble and think that my growth is all up to me. Instead, in simple humility, I’d let go, believe, trust, rely on, focus on, and surrender to God’s presence and power in my life.
God wants me to let Him grow the fruit of the Spirit in me, not a spirit of self-reliance. Instead, my impatience choaks out the patience (and other eight dimensions of the fruit of the Spirit) that He wants to grow and develop in me. Lord, help me be Your spiritual garden, not my self-improvement factory.
Here are some more Pensées that are coming to me as I write (in the order that they come):
It’s not easy To receive Truth that you Don’t want To believe.
Heart-felt gratitude grows with the awareness that you receive more than you give — that you’re given more than you earn.
Humans evaluate each other’s choices, opinions, and actions. Instead of demanding that people stop judging us, perhaps we should develop the inner security to lean from and grow thru their judgment.
The thoughts that you receive, welcome, and allow to remain in your mind will eventually grow into feelings and desires.
Grace is the gift to be able to receive what you haven’t earned as your heart overflows with humility and gratitude.
Every single breath is a gift to be grateful for.
Something that grows your inner strength is a much greater gift than something that merely gives you short-term pleasure.
If we take time to look God is as obvious An architect for a skyscraper And an author for a book.
When we ask for what we want with no regard for what we really need, we’re asking for trouble.
When we decide To let our pride Be our inside guide It won’t let us reside In security and peace.
If I continually feel compelled to tell myself that I’m okay, then I’m not.
Thoughts you receive Can quickly deceive Verify their validity Before you believe.
Grace is the undeserved and priceless gift of God’s great mercy and lavish forgiveness that overwhelms and forever changes a human heart.
Learn to receive Wisdom from your wounds And you’ll soon Begin to sing Happy tunes.
If you think that you’re worthy of God’s grace, you’ve received a counterfeit version of it.
Jesus, teach me How to be a field Where the fruit Of the Spirit can flourish.
Abundant fruit Of God’s Spirit Can’t grow Inside me Until I allow Jesus and His Rivers of living water To freely flow And irrigate me From within.
The fruit of God’s Spirit Is a slow grow. It doesn’t come from What you know About God But from letting His presence Continually cultivate and hoe Your heart.
God designed your life to be a fruitful faith farm. Try not to turn it into an overrun weed field. Today, life weeds and forbidden fruit overflow with deceptive appeal, false advertising and misleading marketing. Those who consume them seldom love their after taste and outcomes.
Your life overflows with the fruit of your own doing. If you aren’t happy with it change what you’re doing.
I want to be a fruit basket of God’s Spirit. Then people can “taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Christianity is about “Christ in you.” To experience its fruit in your life it something Christ needs to continually be experienced in your daily life, not just lectured about on Sunday. “The hope of glory” isn’t you in church. It’s “Christ in you.”When God touches your heart, and His tears begin to flow don’t hold back His rivers of living water.
Most of what you find in your personal “produce section” has been produced by your choices and behaviors.It’s the fruit of your actions and reactions.When you plant bad seeds in your life, you’ll grow a lot of bad fruit.However, today’s common nonsense says that you can plant seeds of self-destruction and never have to face their harvest.
Branches loaded with the fruit of God’s spirit bow low. They don’t rise up with pride. Apart from Jesus and His living water, we might grow lemons but we’re unable to produce the fruit of the Spirit.
The further you get from the tree of life, the less good fruit you will have in your heart.Awareness of God is the fruit of observation. Nature and your own inner being reveal His reality.
The fruit of the Christian life is that “Christ is formed in you.” God’s purpose for Christ-followers is that we “be conformed to the image of his Son.” True Christ-followers are the people continually “press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
I’ve noticed that many people who vigorously resist the fruit of being influenced by God, eagerly embrace the fruit of the influence of other people’s destructive behaviors.The fruit having a religious expert lecture you about God is greatly inferior to the fruit of experience Him for yourself.
Self-love goes up and down but God’s love never fails. Which love will you trust? In this spiritually dry world, the fruit of God’s Spirit can be irrigated by reading the Bible with an open humble heart.
To successfully navigate Your way thru life And cultivate Well being You’ll need to subjugate Some of your feelings And desires.
Trees and bushes Are known by What they produce: An apple orchard, A grape vineyard A peach plantation. A blueberry patch, A lemon grove, A Mulberry tree, A tumble weed, A thornbush. What kind are you?
The sun at night Though out of sight Still shines. The same with The Son of God.
The art Of walking with God Requires an honest, Surrendered, And open heart.
Approaching God With a big head And small heart Isn’t the way To start Seeking Him.
I’ve noticed that many people who resist being influenced by God, eagerly embrace the influence of people’s destructive attitudes and behaviors. Way is that?
Religion tends to formalize God and utilize Him to promote an organizational structure. I prefer to let Him revitalize me from the inside out.When you feel distant from God take that as constructive feedback telling you to come to Him with less pride and more humility.
The intricate complexities of nature make a Creator obvious. Nominal religion tries to placate God. Agnosticism ignores God. Atheism denies God. Mysticism seeks to have experiences with God. Pharisee-ism demands outward adherence to rules about God. Scholasticism tries to understand and explain God. But the Bible says, “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”
I like to enjoy God throughout the day–to continually stay aware of and surrender to His presence ever working inside of me.In a society that chooses to ignore God, I continually yearn to know Him better.
The only fully satisfying solution for the human need for companionship is ongoing heart-to-heart interaction with the living God.When God is avoided and kept at a distance the primary reason’s not unbelief but an unwillingness to be accountable.By presenting God as an impersonal force, pantheism tries to avoid being accountable to the living, personal, and interactive God.
Most human attitudes toward God reject His omnipresence and keep Him at a distance as “someone in the great somewhere.”Any desire that doesn’t lead to God is a distraction from following the living Jesus.
Too often sermons are quickly forgotten religious speeches that produce no fruit. However, Spirit-led Christ-followers radiate His presence and love wherever they go.As long as you’re on the planet, it’s never too late to approach God with a humble, open, and honest heart.
It doesn't require
Wisdom or faith
To be inflamed
By the fire
Of evil desire.
That's why
We need accountability
To our conscience
And to God.
Desires and feelings Don’t determine reality But often Deceitfully twist it And make truth Their casualty.
Our culture seems to be obsessed with teaching us to live according to our desires instead of according to moral and ethical principles, but that doesn’t seem to be producing the vibrant mental health that most people would like to have.Instead of following rationality or science society is training people to follow and identify themselves by their illogical desires.
My desires don’t determine what’s good or bad — what’s right or wrong. Sometimes the things I want are morally wrong.If I make the strength and/or persistence of a desire my justification for obeying it, I admit that I’m its slave.
The first place I need to fight to overcome evil is within my own heart. Reality should always trump my desires!
Here’s an example: It’s irrational that society views a human fetus as either precious or disposable based solely on the desire of the mother. When prenatal human life is illogically seen as disposable no human life is safe.
Here’s another one: People have a right to practice gender denial. They are free to ignore biology and believe their desires and feelings instead, but they don’t have a right to impose their irrational denial on society.
Selfish desire Isn’t a map Or an app That leads To happiness. It’s a trap That needs To be handled carefully So that it doesn’t Enslave you for life.
What we call self-love is often Self-destruction in disguise, Denying and distorting reality To gratify our desires.
True pastor appreciation Brings us to the realization That to pastor Is to facilitate demonstrations Of the presence, power, and love Of the risen Jesus, Not just to give talks about Him.
October is Pastor Appreciation Month. It’s a great time for you to appreciate the joy of pastoring by encouraging and helping other people to daily follow and obey the living Jesus.I appreciate the professional pastors who haven’t settled into routine and haven’t given up their passion for the fire of God to fall.
Most professional pastors start out loving Jesus and wanting to lead people to Him, but their zeal is often drowned out by the demands and expectations of the religious system. To stop being the pastor of an institutional church isn’t to quit the ministry. Ministry is proclaiming Christ and serving others in the name of Jesus. All Christ-followers are called to be in the ministry wherever they are.
The Bible calls Jesus both the Great and the Chief Shepherd. As under shepherds, people who pastor need to train and disciple people how to daily hear the voice of the ever-living Jesus and do what He says.
Someone who pastors (helps others to follow Jesus) is a pastor whether paid for it or not.The 50+ New Testament one another commands show that all Christ-followers are called and ordained (set apart) to minister to one another.
Team Jesus needs coaches, not just lecturers — people who will train and disciple others to daily follow and obey the risen Jesus. Too often those called to be coaches in the body of Christ have surrendered their calling and become instead weekly lecturers and local church CEOs.
Some Christ-followers are hiring Christian coaches to train and disciple them. That’s the function of pastoring. Let’s freely pastor one another.Anytime you help someone to follow and obey Jesus more closely you are engaging in the ministry of pastoring.
Jesus came to start a fire — to fill His followers with passionate love for Him. To pastor is to stir up that fire in people, not to make them passively dependent on religious meetings. Pastoring is to make faithful and passionate disciples of Christ, not to perform for passive church spectators.
Jesus always has more for us. That’s why we are called to follow Him and be led by the Spirit. Like Peter and John said: “We must obey God rather than men.” Step out and start pastoring today!
It’s Pastor Appreciation Month. I appreciate everyone who pastors (who helps people daily follow and obey the ever-living Jesus)!
As a Pharisee, Nicodemus preferred predictable, programmed, and rigid religion, but Jesus told him that God’s Spirit is unpredictable like the wind. (See John chapter three.) Religiously satisfying the flesh (our human desires and our need to look good before God and people) isn’t enough.
We need to come alive to and to fully enter into a new kind of life, the unpredictable and free flowing life of the Spirit. Paul said: “Those who are led by the Spirit by the Spirit are the children of God.”
Courageously experiencing the unpredictable joy of being led by God’s Spirit throughout the day will awaken you to ongoing, childlike exuberance and faith! It’s not enough to just rock the boat a bit. (That can deceitfully rock you to sleep.) Instead, lay down your pride, daily step out onto the water, and walk in the Spirit.
A predictable church service misrepresents the creative way God wants to lead us by His Spirit. When church attempts to program God, it quenches the Holy Spirit. He can’t be programmed!The rigid predictability of church neglects to prepare us for the unpredictability of life.
If your attitude and actions are taking your life in a direction you don’t want to go, change them! (Sin is deceitful. It can make you think you’re free while it holds you captive.)
Jesus didn’t demand that the Roman government make sin illegal. Instead, He told people to “repent” — to “go and sin no more.”
Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” not, “Blessed are those who love themselves.”It takes humility, self-restraint, and self-denial to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Pride puts self ahead of neighbor.
Self-love doesn’t show us what love is; Christ’s love does. It inspires and empowers us to lay down our life for our neighbor.
Our deep human need to be loved is only fulfilled when we open our heart to encounter God’s love which is greater than all our sin. We’ve been told that we need more self-love, but perhaps what we really need is to experience more of God’s love.
Because self-love is self-focused its easily deceptive. Because God’s love is Christ-focused, it leads us to truth and freedom.The second greatest commandment is often twisted to focus on self-love. Its intention, however, is to focus us on loving our neighbor.
Jesus loves me. I don’t need to focus on loving myself. His love is enough!Instead of trying to love yourself more, learn to experience and celebrate the amazing love that Jesus has for you.
The second greatest commandment is about neighbor-love, not self-love. It’s a command to love your neighbor more, not to love yourself more. Self-love is assumed. The focus on the 1st commandment is all out love for God; the 2nd is loving neighbors as much as you already do yourself.
If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t defend yourself or be offended if someone insults you.If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t get upset when you don’t get your way.If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t be so concerned about trying to make yourself happy.If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t spend money on things that make you feel better.If you didn’t already love yourself, you wouldn’t jump out of the way when you saw danger headed toward you.
Ongoing self-sedation often leads to degradation but self-surrenderto the ever-living Jesus leads to jubilation.Unless we know the depths of our sin, we won’t know the inexpressible glory of our salvation.
Being humbled is no fun. The more we focus on self-love the harder it is to obey the Bible command to humble yourself.
The closer I get to the Light of Christ the more I’m aware of my sin and the more I realize how amazing is His grace and love for me.Preachers should proclaim the risen Jesus to people who don’t know about Him and encourage those who do know Jesus to listen to Him more than to them.
“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.” ―C.S. Lewis. When you believe in Jesus you rely on Him every moment
Believing is trusting– Relying on someone So much that We comply With what they say.
If we aren’t Living in reliance On the risen Jesus, We’re living in defiance Of Him.
To believe In something Is to rely On it. To rely On Jesus To comply With His will.
My self-reliance Puts me in defiance Of God’s mercy And grace.
When I deeply consider My insufficient ability, My unreliability, And my emotional instability, I realize That it’s not wise To rely on Myself alone.
Belief in self Eventually collapses. Believe in Jesus Who never lapses.
Believing in Jesus isn’t as easy as we’ve been led to understand. It involves relying on Him instead of on self-effort. When you believe in a chair you trust it; you rely on it; you surrender to it. When you believe in Jeus, you do the same with Him. Faith isn’t just a declaration of belief. It’s an ongoing demonstration of belief.
The more we trust in self-effort, the less we have faith in and reliance on the ever-living Jesus.The more we believe in (rely on) self, the less we believe in (rely on) Jesus. “He must increase; I must decrease.”Rely on Jesus first — more than on self, church, preachers, government, media, or anything or anyone else!
Pride often causes us to believe in (trust in) self-effort more than we believe in (trust in) the risen Jesus.When we truly believe in Jesus, we trust Him and rely on Him throughout the day. Until we do that we haven’t fully believed.To say we believe in Jesus if we don’t trust and rely on Him is a lie. We may acknowledge His existence, but we don’t fully believe.
To fully rely on God’s grace, we must deeply realize that we are lost and hopeless without His mercy and forgiveness.Following the risen Jesus and following self are mutually exclusive. We can’t do both at the exact same moment.
To rely on myself more than I rely on the ever-living Jesus is a sin. Instead of trying to love yourself more, start loving your neighbor (and your enemy) as much as you already love yourself.
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 