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.
Christmas Mary Gave Birth to Christ. Now the world says Merry Christmas But doesn’t see Lord Jesus Christ Who came to save People from sins. Look beyond the Gifts and food and Decorations. Take time to say, Happy birthday, Jesus! (Matthew 1:21)
Eight days later Simple Simeon Was Spirit-led To hold Jesus In his own arms. Then Simeon said By the Spirit, This child’s a light, Revelation For all people. He will reveal And deeply heal The inner thoughts Of multitudes. (Luke 2:25-35)
Christmas reminds Us to wake up And to notice Revelation That comes through Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)
Be creative This Christmas Day. Find a fresh way To adore Christ And to hear what He has to say! (John 10:27)
Wake up to Jesus! If the risen Jesus isn’t your Savior, your Lord, and the literal Master and Head of your daily life, then your Christmas is decapitated.
There are so many influences in life. Much of those influences occur because of birth — who we are born to and in what culture and part of the world we are born and raised in. However, there is an influence that transcends all of that.
True Christianity is so much more than religious institutionalism! In a world filled with people who believe in a religion because they were born and raised in that religion, shouldn’t there be a better reason to believe or not believe than where you were born and how you were raised? Yes!
Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens who were born and raised in atheism have personally encountered the living Jesus and given their lives to follow and obey Him. Multitudes of Iranians who were surrounded by Islam since birth have met the risen Jesus and been transformed into passionate Christ-followers by His presence and power. I once spent three months in India and met many Hindus who had been radically changed and empowered by Jesus.
In all three of those countries (and many more nations) it’s dangerous to change your religion. It can even get you killed. I even knew a young man in India who was stoned to death at a well in a village because he was telling people about Jesus.
I grew up in a nonreligious family, yet from my earliest memories I believed in God and interacted with Him. My parents were confounded by my faith. When I was about 11, they took me to a Presbyterian church, and I was enrolled in a new member class. After a few weeks I was sprinkled with water and made an official church member. That led me to believe that I was a Christian.
A few years later during a church service this thought came to my mind. “If you were born a Hindu what would you be today?” As I thought about it, I realized that I would have been a Hindu. Immediately the thought came to me, “Why do you think you are a Christian?” I suddenly realized that I had no legitimate reason to believe that I was a Christian.
At that point I rejected Christianity and the teachings of the Bible. However, my logical mind couldn’t dispose of the idea of some sort of Creator. It made no sense to me to believe that everything that exists is the result of nothing more than time and chance.
About two years later I met some people who talked about Jesus like they knew Him personally. I could see that they had something I didn’t. In an instant Jesus became more real to me than my physical environment.
Every day since then Jesus has been my best friend who is always working in and through me from my innermost being. The more I listen to and obey Him the closer He aligns me with the Bible and its theology and the more I’m moved beyond the rigid control and traditions of the institutional Christianity that surrounds me.
Thank You, Jesus. I can never express to You enough gratitude for all You have done and are doing in and around me.
(For more of my journey, google my book: “Beyond Church — An Invitation to Experience the Lost Word of the Bible — Ekkllesia.”)
I’m always searching for Spirit-led, tenderhearted Christian community that clearly demonstrates (1 Corinthians 2:4) the reality of Immanuel — God with us. (Matthew 1:23) It’s rare and it’s fragile. Even when you find it, it can quickly vanish. I most recently found it in Heredia Province in Costa Rica. Ernie and I just returned from three months in an environment of openheartedness, hunger for more of Jesus, humility, and caring. It’s called Vida220 Discipleship School and it’s truly amazing. (Google Vidanet.)
“The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.” (1 Corinthians 4:20) It’s not religious routine, rituals, and rules but “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans14:17)
Seek first the kingdom, inner government of God, and His right living, not just another church service and sermon. (Matthew 6:33). When people have a form of godliness but deny it’s power, have nothing to do with them. (2 Timothy 3:5) “Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (James 1:22)
Participating in God’s presence is much more powerful than a programmed religious presentation. A humble heart-felt flow of faith is much more powerful than a hardened formal facade.
Let God the Holy Spirit make and keep you pregnant with His presence so that His power and reality can ever grow in your heart. (Colossians 1:27) Let Him produce and release His fruit (Galatians 5:22-23) to always flow from within you as rivers of living water. (John 7:38-39) Let Jesus continually rescue and keep you from sin. (Matthew 1:21)
Train yourself to rely On the firm reality And presence of God’s love, Not on pie in the sky. There is no need to try To find an alibi So that you can deny The bad things that you’ve done. Christ knowing all your sin Loved you enough to die So He could nullify All of your guilty shame. Depend on the supply Of God’s unending love. (Romans 5:8)
Every day and every year keep Jesus first in your life. Christians need to gather in the love and the name of Jesus, (Matthew 18:20) not to put their attention on a preacher and his name. (Philippians 2:9)
Preachers who name “ministries” after themselves proclaim the wrong name. No name but Jesus can bring salvation. (Acts 4:12)
Don’t align yourself with a preacher’s name. (1 Corinthians 3:1-4) Listen to and obey the risen Jesus instead. (John 10:27)
When Christians talk, they should glorify the name of the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:31) not a preacher’s name. (Romans 10:13)Everything Christians say and do should be done in the name of Jesus. (Colossians 3:17)
Love is true success. Without love we’re just making noise. Without love success status symbols mean nothing. No matter what we accomplish in life, without love it profits us nothing when we’re dead.
Love is the proof of God’s presence. Nobody has seen God with their physical eyes; but when we tenderly love people in both words and actions, God is living and working in and through us. (1 John 4:12)
True love is supernatural. It comes from God not from us. (1 John 4:10) God is love. People who don’t experience and surrender to God’s deeply moving, genuine love for people, don’t really know who God is. (1 John 4:7-8)
God’s love is everlasting. (Psalm 136:26) It never ends. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:7) Will you let God persistently love people through you?
When I am aware of God’s presence, miraculous love begins to flow from deep within me as rivers of living water. (John 7:38-39) I delight to look around a room of people who are pouring out adoration directly to God. As I see their faces, regardless of their physical appearance, I feel God’s amazing love for them.
When I pray with strangers I meet (regardless of their political views, ethnicity, or behaviors) supernatural love for them comes pouring out of my heart and tears of compassion and concern often run down my cheeks. When I hear about hurting people, I sense some of God’s powerful love for them.
No thing can separate people from God’s love (Romans 8:38-39) yet no one is forced or coerced to receive and embrace His love. God the Father loved the people in this world so much that He sent Jesus, God the Son, that whoever would (John 3:16) abide in Christ’s love (John 15:9-10) by denying themselves, taking up their cross daily, and following Him (Luke 9:23) would have eternal life.
God the Holy Spirit wants to pour His love into your heart. (Romans 5:5) “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.” (1 Corinthians 14:1) God continually offers to fill you more and more with His Spirit. (1 John 4:13) Are you eagerly pursuing Him? Be filled with the Spirit! (Ephesians 5:18-20)
I am the happiest when I focus on what makes me happy. I maximize my happiness by focusing on “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Letting Jesus live in and through me makes me extremely happy! Learning to live closer and closer to Him throughout each day thrills me with joy. I highly recommend a lifestyle of loving and surrendering to Jesus.
All your life long, every moment of every day, God has more for you. Will you seek and receive the abundance of love, insight, and discernment that He has for you?
Knowledge alone (without love, insight, and discernment, that create a deep hunger and thirst for righteousness) informs the mind but cannot create a pure and blameless heart. True righteousness and blamelessness are a fruit that is produced by the risen Jesus Christ living in and through a person who is yielded to Him and continually relying on His death, resurrection, and indwelling presence. (Philippians 1:9-11)
Christianity’s not about merely accumulating more and more religious information. It’s about a lifetime of ongoing miraculous inner transformation. Ever increasing intimacy with and surrender to the living Jesus is the way to the very best life has to offer! (Revelation 3:20)
One of my greatest pleasures is spreading kindness and love. I enjoy distracting people from their burdens by helping them to smile and chuckle a bit and to experience some warm heartedness.
I’m a natural introvert, but I’ve discovered that It’s lots of fun to spread warm heartedness. I’ve learned that if I meet and greet people with friendliness, they usually respond with the same. Love shared spreads and grows.
It’s not enough to talk about and to know about love. Everywhere you go experience, enjoy, celebrate, and spread the beauty of love that’s outta this world.
Open your heart to enjoy and share the amazing healing power of God’s love. (1 Corinthians 4:20) Begin to train yourself to sow God’s love and to grow in God’s love until you overflow with God’s love and start to show God’s love everywhere you go. Jesus put it this way: “This is My command: Love each other.” (John 15:17)
“Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:8) Affection and sentiment that fail to endure come short of true love. Settle for nothing less in your thoughts, words, and behaviors than: patience, kindness, gratitude for other people’s blessings, humility, self-denial, freedom from anger, fully forgiving people, refusing to enjoy seeing evil, rejoicing in truth even when it’s uncomfortable, carrying people’s burdens, believing and hoping for the best for people, and demonstrating endurance that never gives up. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
Embrace the reality of what the Bible says in John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
You can’t eat your way to inner peace. The only way to truly find it is to step out from behind all your disguises.
God sees through all my disguises. He knows who I really am. Yet He loves me anyway. God invites me to continually turn aside from all rebellion and to let the risen Jesus heal me, lead me from within, (Colossians 1:27) and make me whole. What an amazing opportunity He offers all of us humans!
By Christ’s wounds we are offered true healing. “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has on Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:5-6) God invites us to come out of the darkness of our hiding places and “into His marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9) “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16).
Jesus is all around us. All we need to do is to watch and listen for Him and to open wide our heart to His presence and healing.
There is a very famous man who has personally impacted my life. I wrote the following short poem about him.
When Jesus is neglected Your heart is disconnected From His presence and power — Your thoughts are not corrected By God the Holy Spirit. Your life is not subjected To the will of the Father. When have you last detected Jesus’ presence in your life? Glory to God in the Highest! There’s great peace for those who Let their life be infected And every day directed By the risen Jesus Christ. Are you paying attention?
Jesus is present and active in the world today and brings great joy to all people who choose not to neglect Him. “O taste and see that the Lord is good!”
A blind mind thinks without insight. I try not to do that. I make it my goal to think God’s thoughts. I have found the best book for God’s thoughts is the Bible. It helps me connect with God the Holy Spirit and to think with insight.
It’s vital to love God with your mind, not just with your heart. (Matthew 22:37) To love God with your mind is to affectionally think about Him throughout each day. It is to set your mind on things above, not on earthy things. (Colossians 3:2)
To love God with your mind is to keep His commandments in all that you think. (John 14:15) It is to align your thoughts with God by bringing every thought captive and obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5) It is to think about what God wants you to think about. (Philippians 4:8)
To love God with your mind is to set is to set your mind on the things of the Spirit. (Romans 8:5-6) It is to refuse to be conformed to this world but instead to be transformed by letting God renew your mind so that you can accurately discern what the will of God is. (Romans 12:2) It is to seek, embrace, and obey God’s wisdom not mere human analysis and interpretation. (1 Corinthians 2:4-10)
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Fill Your Mind and Your Heart With Hope 