Seek First The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness

  The Ascension Today is celebrated as Ascension Day.  The book of Acts in chapter 1 verse 8 records the last words spoken by Jesus to His disciples as such: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”  We Pentecostals/Charismatics/Full Gospel people love to focus on the “shall receive power” part of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon a believer.  What we overlook or even misunderstand is the purpose for that power.  It is for being WITNESSES to the world around us.  Our purpose is not to hold up in our church buildings to impress one another with our Spiritual gifts.  It is to GO into all the world and make disciples of ALL nations.  The police don’t sit around the police stations waiting on the criminals to turn themselves in, the firemen don’t wait around the fireho...

  I had the great privilege of meeting with John Abbe this morning before work.  (Even though I got myself messed up and was about 30 minutes late John gave me much grace and waited for me. Thank you again John) We had a very interesting conversation about unity in the body of Christ.  As I have been meditating over this conversation  Ephesians 4:13 came to mind specifically the first part.   “ till we all  come to the unity  of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;”   There are several things that jump out to me now.  We come to unity.  Unity doesn’t just happen it is something that we come to.  It seems to me that this has the implication that unity has an aspect that is dependent upon us to choose.  I would say that many times where there isn’t unity it is because we haven’t made the choice...