Get your Fill

Imagine that you have set down to a very large table that was piled high from end to end with a feast for thanksgiving dinner. Not too hard to imagine with the date so close to Thanksgiving. You pull up your chair to a table struggling to hold all of the turkey and dressing, potatoes, bread, carrot cake, pumpkin pie, vegetables, and anything else you can think of. Your host tells you to take your fill of anything you see.

Thank you very much you say. I think I will have half a cranberry.
Your astonished friend nearly chokes on a candied yam and replies,
'Please have all you would like. That's why I invited you! You're hungry, and here is everything you need to get full.'

'Thank you so very much,' you say. 'Perhaps I will have a sip of water.'
That’s Crazy! Who would ever act like that? If it were us, we'd gobble up so much food they'd have to use a bulldozer to move us out.

Why is it, then, that when it comes to getting full spiritually, we settle for a half a cranberry? What is it that we are putting in our lives that keeps us continually so full of Christ that we can only stand maybe a service or two at church a week?

You find all the time people trying to convince us that we need to go and do this, or we need to be a part of this program, or get our kids involved in this activity. All of these things in themselves are not bad things but anytime you are ask to take part in something that is going to draw your attention further away from God then that one thing becomes a stumbling block for you. That one thing starts filling you instead of what should be our top priority God.
The extent to which you need something else to fill you full is the extent to which you find Christ non-filling. If you find Christ non-filling, then you have found something in contradiction of Scripture, which says that in Christ all the fullness of Deity resides in bodily form.

We've got to decide, is it true that in Christ we have all that we need? Do we really not have to go and fill ourselves with things of this world to be satisfied?
Beware! Scripture declares that in Christ is all fullness, and if you are related to him, you have been given all fullness. We don't need something super-added, extra-plus to Christ. What we need is to daily discover all that we already have in him.

How much have you eaten off of Christ's banquet table? How full are you?"

Plan A or Plan B

Sometimes even the best laid out plans don’t work out the way we want them to. Think about your dreams as a child as to what you thought you would grow up to be. You dreamed about being a doctor, fireman, policeman, or other jobs and you planned it out. This plan became your plan A and how you wanted to live your life. You spent time deciding how you would accomplish it, but things got in the way and it just didn’t work out and now your living plan B. Sometimes we can look at our plans that have crumbled before us and it feels like failure. However that doesn’t mean that God is absent in your struggles for your plans. So many times Plan “B” is the plan that God has for us and we don’t even know it.

God is in control of us if we allow him to be and that is the biggest fear for most of us. Giving up the control and the power we have for our own lives. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had a burning bush that we used to talked to God. You would wake up, pour a cup of coffee, step out onto my porch, look to the left and say, “So what’s on the agenda for today Lord?” The bush in the planter would light up, and God would give you your list complete with boxes for checking upon completion.

What I have begun to realize is that he did give me and you a burning bush, We just can’t see the bush through the forest. Too many things, are obscuring our view and confusing our hearing, but the bush was there all along. Things like bills, homework, practice, and test to study for block Our hearing. Then add meetings, entertainment, other commitments, and our day is full enough without the bush! When a crisis strips us, the tree’s get cleared and We can see the bush. When are we going to Wake up and discover that Our career experiences, schooling, and training are useless to use unless we learn how to thin the trees. One thing I do know, is that God is in the business of writing our resumes. And he makes sure that we have the experience and expertise required to fulfill the purpose of His will, not ours…
Let’s answer these three questions:

Who’s in control? What do we have to offer? Who needs our help?

Blurry Vision

A nice Saturday Morning my family and I were all packed in the car headed out on a trip. We had been gone from the house a total of 5 minutes and I already felt as if this trip was going to be a success. The kids were all buckled in and the bags were all packed and Lori and I felt confident that we had not forgotten a thing we needed for this 4 day mini-vacation (Thank is a success within itself). We had planned the trip, prepared ourselves and the kids, and our vision was clear we were going to have a blast. Three seconds latter things changed. We were driving directly in the sun and I made the mistake of pushing the windshield wiper fluid button. You wouldn’t think something as harmless windshield cleaner would be a problem. The window was nasty and I wanted to be able to see better and I thought this was my best option. Little did I know that window cleaning fluid and direct sunlight just don’t mix and my vision for the road suddenly became so distorted that I had to bring the car to a complete halt. As I was drying the window off on the side of the road and I realized that even though we had a vision of what the trip was to be and had spent time planning and preparing, right then and there we could have had a wreck and everything would have changed. I know my vision is important but at that moment having the right vision meant everything.

Look at Nehemiah 1 and we can find some answer about what we can do when we lose God’s vision for our lives. There's a great prayer there that God was so impressed with that He put it in the Bible. And it's a real-life model of what the ultimate purpose of prayer is. Obviously, our purpose is to get whatever we're praying about, but God's purpose is to give us His vision.

Nehemiah has a heavy burden on his heart. It's the news that God's people and God's city are a mess. And it drives him to his knees for weeks of praying about it. I don't know what's weighing heavy on your heart right now, but I hope it's driven you to your knees. Maybe like Nehemiah, you feel powerless to solve this one. Then you'll be interested in how he ends up praying after initially focusing on the situation. Praying about the situation changes how he looks at almost everything. After heavy duty praying, he's seeing things much more clearly - through God's vision. And that's what the ultimate purpose of praying is, not getting an answer, but getting God's perspective - which often leads to the answer.

It's that burden on your heart that gets you to praying. But if you will persist before God, you will notice your vision starting to clear up. The Divine Ophthalmologist will be giving you glasses to see Him, and yourself, and the people around you, and the real issues, and your next step as you've never seen them before. When you go to your knees, you get God's glasses. And suddenly, things look so much clearer!

In Him,
Joe

Do you smell that?

Sometimes that can be a good question like when you walk into the house and your mom has just pulled a chocolate cake from the oven. Other times the question of smell is not such a good thing like when you open the refrigerator and something has gone bad? Either way when we smell things we react.

There is a new company that seems to be taking over the market using the power of scents to get people to open their wallets and pull out their check books. The scents they use are very strong and for the most part I would say the company is on to something that appeals to most people. I have developed a love/hate relationship with the company and their ability to rule my nose. There have been several times when I have walked into the house and after a few seconds my mouth waters from the smell of homemade blueberry muffins or the smell of fresh fruit only to be completely disappointed when I have tracked down the scents source. For sitting where there should be a hot pastry, cake, or bowl of fresh cut fruit there is a small warmer full of liquid wax. Even though it might be tempting due to the intensity of the smell I would never sample the wax like I might if it was frosting from a cake. So you can see my dilemma with these fake smells! I can think of another time when a fake smell created a problem for someone.

Genesis 27 (read the whole chapter)
27 So he went to him and kissed him. When Isaac caught the smell of his clothes, he blessed him and said,
"Ah, the smell of my son
is like the smell of a field
that the LORD has blessed.

Jacob saw himself in a desperate moment. He feared losing his father’s blessings to his brother Esau. He chose to be fake using his brother name, his brother’s clothes, and even his brother’s SMELL. A fake smell is what took any doubt his father might have had about Jacob being anyone other than Esau. We read this chapter in disbelief we are easy to judge Jacob for being a fake person especially to his father. How often are we fake in order to profit from so much less than this.
In desperate moments we have all at some point used fake attitudes, love, actions, and maybe even a fake smell in order to profit something. Being fake in its simplest form is a lie and although we all know being fake is not what God wants from us it can be easy sin to slip into for personal gain.

This week focus on being real and not fake. Show true love in your attitude and in your actions as you meet and encourage people to live a life for Christ.

In Him,
Joe

Keeping your Focus

You might not know this but I love to hunt. I don’t really care what it is I’m hunting for I just want to be out spending time outdoors and hunting for game. The problem is a lot of times no matter what planning and preparing I have done in order to be successful hunting I sometimes lose my focus and miss my target.

Not too long ago I decided to go deer hunting early in the morning. I arrived at my prepared location and with layers of clothes bundled up for warmth I waited for the sun to rise in hopes of seeing a nice buck. As I waited patiently in the dark my body was telling me how tired I was and I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke it was about an hour past sunrise and I was extremely aggravated with myself for falling asleep. I open my eyes wide and began searching the area for any deer that might have slipped in while I was getting some shut eye. There were no deer but there was a red fox about 50 yards from where I was sitting. I began to watch the fox as he was hunting some prey himself. It was extremely interesting to watch him. He was a skilled hunter and after sometime he was able to catch his prey and ran off with it. I once again notice that I had been focused so much on the fox that I had missed any opportunity of seeing a deer. Packing up that morning I knew that the main reason I was unable to be successful was I didn’t keep my focus on the target. At that point it didn’t matter that I had spent weeks finding the perfect spot to hunt, that I had spent hours on setting up a camouflage ground blind so that I wouldn’t be seen, that I had made sure to sight my gun in, and do all the other preparation. It was all lost due to me not staying focused on the task at hand.

Deuteronomy 4:29 "But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Why is it so easy to lose our focus? I remember a story in the bible where Peter was able to walk on water by faith, until he took his eyes off Jesus, looking at the storm around him instead. Not staying focused can cause us to take our eyes off the Lord. Maybe we lose our focus due to friends with the wrong intentions, rude people, unfair situations, or just life’s problems. People will either on purpose or innocently cause to stray from doing what God has called you to do. Remember that our lives here on this earth have a purpose to serve God and no one else. Our lives are not aimless, but they are to have a purpose and direction, and we are to stay focused on the purpose, running straight at that goal. Keep focused on the purpose for which God has created you.

We all want to be able to say like Paul, “I am running straight to the goal with purpose in every Step.” 1 Corinthians 9:26

In Him,
Joe

You are a Tool, What is your Job?

Many Christian people today are not living the successful lives that God intended for them because they have missed the purpose for their life.

Eph 2:10
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

If you are going to live successfully, you have to know what it is you are all about. What’s your job? What functionality do you have? You need to know the answers to those questions so that you as a tool are not used for something other than what you were created for. We all know that tools that are used for things that they were not created for run the risk of getting damaged.

The other day I was asked to hang a framed family photo on our living room wall by my wife. I of course oblige and went searching for a nail to use. Once I found the right size nail for this over sized picture frame I then started looking for a hammer. I looked for about five minutes and due to my laziness I decided that a medium size wrench would do the job for me (don’t get too self-righteous, you’ve done it too!). Sometimes being lazy causes us to use whatever is handy and not always what is right in order to get the job done.

With the wrench I knew I could get the nail in the wall, but I was not completely for sure how effective I was going to be with it. There’s a chance I could dent the wall, bend the nail, or scratch up the wrench.

Too many times Christians today are not functioning or flowing in the thing they were created for, and consequently, they are not effective. And sometime they two get hurt and damaged.

You do have a purpose. The bible tells us all that in Eph 2. This week pray that God shows you that purpose, and then develop the gifts God have given you to fulfill that purpose.

Are You Just Swinging the Handle?

As you look at your life today in honesty and transparency, you might say to yourself I have lost that edge I once had, that excitement, that fire, that spiritual passion I once had about Church and working for God.

If indeed you have lost your edge, how can you get it back?

2 Kings 6:4-5
4 And he went with them.
They went to the Jordan and began to cut down trees. 5 As one of them was cutting down a tree, the iron ax head fell into the water. "Oh, my lord," he cried out, "it was borrowed!"

This very thing happened to me one time. Well it wasn’t a borrowed ax but I lost the ax head.

Growing up we had a wood burning stove in our house for heat. I personally had a love/hate relationship with the stove. I loved the fact that it produced a great amount of heat on the cold winter days, but I hated when it was time to go and split wood. It always seemed that we would run out of wood at the most inopportune times. I would bundle up and go outside to find the ax and chop out a few pieces to bring back in. One time in particular I will never forget. I was aggravated because it was my turn again to go and chop wood in the cold and it seemed that everything that could go wrong did. I came down hard with the ax and halfway through my swing the ax head came off and went shoring through the air leaving a nice size whole in the side of the barn. I had never seen anything like that happen before. I was at a complete loss for words and stood staring at the whole.

Later on I learned that the only possible reason the ax head could have come off the handle was because it had not been taken care of properly. This must have been the case for the guy in 2 Kings 6 who lost the ax head. It’s a responsibility thing really. If you are going to own a tool such as an ax then you are responsible for keep the ax sharp and the head on the handle.

At this point it would have made no sense at all for this man to keep on chopping on trees with just a wooded handle would it? He would have made no progress at all.

A lot of time Christians can do the same thing today. You lose your cutting edge, and you are just going through the motions, making no progress at all.

You are chopping away with just a wooden handle!

The thought processes goes something like this. Well, I know I’m supposed to go to church, so I will go. As long as I stay looking busy and not in anyone’s way then nobody’s going to know the state my heart is in. The sad part is this can go on for days, weeks, or months, but some people have been doing this for years.

No progress, No Growth. They are just swinging the handle without an ax head.

If this is you, do not just keep swinging the ax handle. If you are not making progress, admit it. Until you are willing to face up to the fact that you have not been growing, you can never regain your spiritual edge.

In Him,
Joe