Seek First The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness

  3 times a day   Daniel 6:10 Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days.   Quick context for this verse for those not familiar.  Men who were jealous of Daniel and his position in the kingdom had tricked king Darius into making a law that for thirty days people could only pray to the king or else be thrown into the lion’s den.     Key points from this verse.  Regardless of the law Daniel stayed devoted to the Lord.  Daniel didn’t start praying 3 times a day because of this law.  This was his custom since his early days.  He prayed 3 times a day in obedience to God’s Word.  Psalm 55:17 “Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, And He shall hear my voice.” (t...

  A thought on communion. The definition for communion is Fellowship; intercourse between two persons or more; interchange of transactions, or offices; a state of giving and receiving; agreement; concord. Sadly, like so many things, the church has lost sight of what communion is and instead has been watered it down to a religious tradition that we hurry through like it is an afterthought. Just from simply looking at the definition of the word this is something that should be serious and not be done in a rush. When Jesus instituted this it was from a part of the passover feast. I picture a lot more time being involved especially after His death and resurrection. The memories and the contemplation of what the elements represented. There is so much more that can said but I will pause here. Blessings

  120 Years Genesis 6:3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” From Genesis 6:3 we see that God limits the life span of humanity to 120 years. Why do we settle for living for less than this? Deuteronomy 34:7 sums up Moses life as follows: Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died. His eyes were not dim nor his natural vigor diminished. Why can’t we have the same, especially if we are in Christ? Could it be that we lack vision for living this long the Bible says in Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he? Is it that we only have vision for a much shorter life and so we succumb to death earlier than we could if we just had a longer vision? We have all heard of people who die shortly after retirement. Many speculate this is because they didn’t have anything left to give them purpose for living. Could it be...

  The IF.   From what I have observed there is a great lack of understanding or just plain misunderstanding of this simple 2 letter word, if, when it comes to God and His working in our lives. When it comes to if it is very much a powerful word that we must properly understand so that we can receive all that God has for us as His people.   The first thing we must understand about if is that the if is never on God’s part.  He has already done His part. His will is clear and established and in Jesus it is finished.  The believer’s mindset and prayers should never be “if God…..” because there is no “if God”.  To pray “God if it is Your will” prayers is to declare ignorance of God’s Word or unbelief in what God’s Word says.  The good news is that we don’t have to stay in ignorance or unbelief.  We can dig into His Word and be changed. Before praying a what if prayer would it not be more effective to search God’s Word, fin...

  An Honest Confession   Philippians 1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete  it  until the day of Jesus Christ;   I have a confession to share with you.  Many times, in my life, and something that I still battle from time to time, I have taken the mindset that I could make happen in my life what only God could accomplish.  God would put something into my heart and I would accept it, get excited about it and start to run with it but at some point, I would get this attitude of “OK God, I got it from here” and then try to accomplish it by my strength. Guess how that turned out EVERY SINGLE TIME?  Yes, every single time there was failure.  How could it end any differently?  Me and my abilities doesn’t equal God and His abilities, EVER!  Honestly it is the height of arrogance, and ignorance, that I ever thought that I could complete something that ...

  The Arrogance of the Sin Hierarchy     In my Christian journey I have seen, and been guilty at times, of putting people’s sins in to a hierarchy.  In this hierarchy we classify sins from minor to major based upon our judgements of what is minor or major.  From this we place value upon people, their lives, and testimonies  If God doesn’t use a hierarchy, why do we?   Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—   We tend to forget that the sin that Adam committed was disobedience in eating fruit from a tree God said not to.  It wasn’t murder, sexual, addiction related, lying, cheating, blasphemy.  He ate some fruit, that’s it. From that one act sin and death and all its offspring of sickness, illness, poverty, and every evil vile thing.   Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection was to pay the price...

  In my unpacking of all the Lord showed, gave and taught me during my trip I keep coming back to these 2 verses.   Matthew 6:33But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.   For if I do anything else apart from what these verses instruct me to do I get out into my strength, my wisdom and my ability of provision which is not the place for me to be.  During this trip I saw and heard both the wonderful and the horrible.  I encountered things that from a natural perspective would make me run away and hide because there is no way I could add anything positive to keep what I experience going or to change the situation from the bad to the good.   If I see myself as anything more or less than a conduit, a branch, that He can move throug...