Month: June 2008

Everywhere I turn I see it, you would too if you chose to be conscious of it.  When I choose, I look around as I wait at the stop lights, or in the line at the grocery store, or walking down the street.  I’ll look at the faces of the people and in almost everyone of them I don’t see joy.  I see desperation, sadness, stress, brokenness, pain.  It is ugly and very very sad. 

I am convinced that there is just as much brokenness and hurting in the confines of our church body as there is in all humanity who don’t know Jesus.  We have an all powerful, all majestic, all all King. And yet we, the church, live in just a portion of that power and majesty.  Many, many live in the brokenness, never fully alive, never fully empowered, never fully His. 

I’ll do the same thing at church as I do in our world.  Just take a moment to arrive early, sit down or stand back and just watch.  Watch as your church family walks through the doors.  You’ll see it.  Broken, hopeless, anxious, STUCK people.  We the people of GOD, we the ones who are part of the team that wins in the end, we the ones that have access to the very throne room of God and yet we live life paralyzed.  We live as though our circumstances are our destiny.  We live forsaking the hope afforded us in the cross.  We cease living as royalty, as joint heirs to the throne. 

WAKE UP!  Please wake up, please see what I see and then make the choice to LIVE life, to be full of the hope and then SHARE IT WITH OTHERS.  They desperately need the hope you will find!  Seek the Kingdom of God first!

Paul learned it and you can to…

Philippians 4:11b ..for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.

Philippians 4:12b…I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

Philippians 4:13…I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

THE SECRET…draw on Christ’s power for strength.  Learn to rely on God’s promises, which means you have to know what they are, which means you have to be in His Word(the bible).  You have to know Truth.  Truth will set you free.  Truth will bring contentment in all circumstances.

I can’t leave this without giving you more from what Paul wrote in Philippians.  He told us what to think on.  The battlefield is really in our mind..it carries us away to the places where anxiety resides, where depression is found, where anger and sadness dwell.  So take captive your mind and practice Philippians 4:8–

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things

So my well if full, full of living water, full of what Jesus needed to fill it with for His good work.  I am just a vessel, the keeper of the well.  It is my responsibility to keep the well uncontaminated, to keep the well full.  I have to be the available and responsible to keep the well in good working order.  It is simple really, we just don’t usually make it priority until we realize the well is nearing empty, the alarm is going off, or the water went bad.  It is then that we do the maintenance.  I’ve learned to ‘top off’ the well Daily, to keep it free of debris, to keep it primed and ready for use because when my Jesus comes to draw from the well He has placed inside of me, I have a part to play.  I have a responsibility, in order to be a prepared participant in building His Kingdom.  We have to be prepared.

So, I removed the protective lid covering the well, to expose the places that need to be filled.  We(Jesus and I),you see we(you and I) don’t have to tend the well alone.  Jesus is always waiting for us to come and tend the well, He’s always there, He always knows what the well needs and how to do it, He just needs us to go to Him as He waits by the well).  Anyway, We(Jesus and I) then took an assessment of the water, there were definitely some impurities.  Contaminated water can be caused by unforgiveness or unrepented sin.  So I allowed God’s word to examine my heart and reveal the places that needed to be cleansed in order for the water to be pure. 

I forgive…..

Please forgive me Lord for…. 

and in an instant I am clean, so simple yet so hard.  Just confess and instantly because of the blood of Jesus washed pure as snow, clean, new, forgiven..ahhhhhh.

Now simply bask in the grace, in the understanding of forgiveness, in the precious presence of the Holy Spirit.

dribble, dribble, drop, drop, stream, steady stream, running water, full, fuller, overflowing.  Full

Filling the well, so important, so necessary, our part in His plan!