Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Belief, Believing, Doubt, Move Mountains
As we go through our everyday lives we can surely lose sight of anything we aren’t doing at the time. We just don’t feel God’s presence in our lives because we don’t really take the time to let Him in. Has anyone ever felt like they are far from God and are unsure that He’s even there? I feel kind of like that sometimes, and that can easily lead to doubts. And sometimes we think we can get closer to Him by just by prayer and bible reading, but if we do it without an attitude and knowledge that He really is there, listening to us, and wanting to speak to us, we aren’t going to get anywhere, because we’re trying to talk to and read about someone who isn’t real in our minds. It is especially hard when bible reading gets confusing because we don’t understand it, or something seems contradictory, but those are the times when we need to believe the most.
We can often find ourselves questioning God, and questioning His word, especially when our lives seem pretty out of our control. [article] When hard times come and we don’t understand where God is in all of it, we doubt His love, and God is love. What we all have to realize though is it’s okay to doubt. Jesus knew we would doubt, but He needs us to believe. Even in the great commission: the purpose and life verse of the church, it says that some doubted:
Mathew 28:16-20 “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
It is okay to doubt, we all doubt at one time or another, but the thing we cannot do is allow our doubts to change what we believe. We are all going to doubt, we aren’t always going to feel God’s presence all the time, but that’s okay, because God is drawing us back to Him and all we have to do is know He’s there. I mean really know He’s there, and since we can’t see Him directly, or hear Him directly, the only way to do that is through belief.
I challenge you to make God real in your lives, because you’re in His hands and He is holding you all the time. Make Him real and He will be, believe and you will see.
Jesus said it pretty nicely in Mark 11:23: “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.”
Go move mountains!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: God's Grace, Grace, Love, Sin, Volunteer
The hardest thing about life, is that it keeps on going. You have no time to relive or redo, the only “re” you’re left with is to rethink, which I do a ton of. I rethink whether or not my decision was a smart one, whether those harsh words were worth the pain they caused, and whether everything I do was what God would have wanted and a lot of times I come up short. One thing I have really been struggling with recently is accepting God’s grace. this may seem really silly but I have been observing Christians recently and I realize that this is something lots of them struggle with. I can readily recognize the Christians who have accepted and are embracing the gift of God’s grace. I so often find myself defining myself by the hours of volunteer work I do, the few nice words I can muster and the “show” that makes other Christians want to be as godly as me. I am thinking that God will love me more because of what I do. It is a horrible thing because it is forcing yourself to be stuck in that old testament mindset, one that paralyzes you with sacrifice’s and the need to always be perfect, which is underlining the whole reason Jesus died for our sins. I am mocking his death with my posed perfection, and that is maybe the hardest thing to grasp. God knows that we are going to make mistakes, he even knows what mistakes we are going to make. The thing to remember is not to forget.We cannot forget the justice of God and ignore that we have any guidelines or laws. But on the flip side we cannot forget that God’s grace covers everything we have ever done, we cannot live like we are good enough because it is when we get confident in our mortal selves that God is unable to use us.
“My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!”
-Ephesians 3:16-24 (The Message)
This passage addresses the idea that we cannot even understand his love, but we are told to try and grasp how high and deep and wide and long his love is. His love that never ends. The only way we can live full lives is to live through Jesus Christ who came to bring us lives to the fullest. The point is this, know God’s love, live in it and marvel in his grace, his grace that covers all our sin!
