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Showing posts from November, 2011

Are You Sure You Want an Open Heaven?

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God’s glory has been manifested through what appears to be gold dust and a glory cloud at Bethel Church in Redding, CA with increasing frequency since August. This post is not a debate whether you believe it or not and even if you don’t truth is not diminished by your lack of belief. The Bible says nothing is impossible with God and if God is in it, I want it. I have friends who have first-hand testimony of the phenomenon happening at Bethel Church. I want to experience it in my church, but lately, I’ve been wondering: are we prepared for it? Last week I was reading the book of Mark; I noticed something I hadn’t seen before in Mark 1:10 . It says when Jesus was baptized in water he saw heaven torn open. I was struck by the words torn open . It depicts violence and I had to look it up in my Greek Bible. The original word is schizo , which means to rend, divide, break and it denotes a violent action. Everyone wants the effects of an open heaven but are we ready for the violence to r

Advent - Hope

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Yesterday was the first day of Advent for 2011. According to the World English Dictionary the word advent is defined as:   an arrival or coming, especially one which is awaited. Many children will begin opening an Advent calendar on the first day of December as their countdown to presents. I love presents too (sure, it’s great to be the giver but I love receiving just as much), but Advent is much more than the countdown to opening presents. A true Advent season waits with anticipation of the Gift, which is Christ. Some churches celebrate Advent, others hardly acknowledge it. I’ve attended both types of churches but since I was 20, I’ve celebrated Advent through daily Bible readings, directed towards the 4 themes for each week of Advent – hope, joy, peace, love. Join the Kingdom Bloggers each day for a personal reflection on the week’s theme; included each day will be a Bible reading which will engage you into the theme of Advent as well. We welcome your comments and Christmas Adv

Top 10 Thankful List

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I had a migraine today; it started in the morning, about 7:30. As I laid in bed, I started thanking the Lord, not for the migraine but for things like the fact that it was happening today (Tuesday) and not any other day of this week when it would really inconvenience me. I thanked him that my Boy is old enough to help me by taking care of the dogs and the horses before school. I thanked him for neighbours that I can call to ask them to bring my Boy to school. I thanked him that I get “auras” that warn me before the migraine starts so I could quickly finish up some things before I had to lay down and I thanked him that on a scale of 1 to 10, it was only a 7 in severity. The peak of the migraine lasted only 4 hours, but the rest of the day, I feel what I describe as “fragile”, so I lay low and keep my activity and conversation to a minimum. In my introspective state, I began to think about all the things I’m thankful for. This wasn’t my post idea for Friday but I think it fits, see

Red Pill, Blue Bill - You Decide...

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Free will is a gift from God. Everyday every single person on the planet makes choices. Do you want toast or cereal for breakfast? Do you catch up on email now, later or never and say it was lost in cyber-space? Do you speed on the way to work, or not? Do you invite your married co-worker you’ve been flirting to lunch? Do you accept a co-worker’s invitation to lunch? Do you look at porn? Do you honor your spouse with kind words even though they forgot to pick up milk? Do you give a 10% tithe, or skim off the top for the designer handbag you’ve been wanting? Do you believe God and trust in him, or do you scheme and plan yourself? On Friday, I wrote a post about forced intimacy isn’t intimacy. God wants a relationship with us - that’s a given. He loved us even though we were separated from him because of a choice the first humans made, so God created a way through the death of his son, Jesus. The way to salvation is available but like the old adage, you can lead a horse to water, bu