Posts

Showing posts from 2013

Increase Your Favour

Image
“The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” It’s a wonderful blessing. Moses was instructed to bless the Israelites with it, and in many believers’ gatherings we speak it over each other. I love the blessing but it creates a question: how do we make his face shine upon us and how do we turn the face of God to look at us? How do we increase in his favour? We have a lot of overnight guests in our home; many of them are strangers to us when they first arrive. Regardless of what we might (or might not) receive from our guests, we consider it a blessing to have an opportunity to host so many people from all around the world. From the onset, we choose to operate out of love. We love them all, but the ones who gain my favour are the guests who honour my Boy by engaging him and getting to know him to see the greatness I already see in him. I never get tired of

Relentless Love

Image
At the end of June my Chevrolet Malibu quite suddenly stopped working so we replaced it with a Hyundai Elantra. Until I started driving a Hyundai (and Elantra specifically) I hadn’t noticed how many other vehicles on the road are made by Hyundai. I notice them without even trying; they are everywhere, literally - over the summer I drove over 10,000km (6,000 miles) in some very remote areas and even there I saw a plethora of Hyundai vehicles. It’s like that: once your eyes are opened to a new reality, you see things you never saw before. Lately, I’ve been writing and contemplating the love of God. It’s infinite and I’ll never come to the end of it, and I’ve noticed my eyes are opened to a new reality [of love] and I see things differently. When I hear news about tragedy around the world, I’m more apt to notice God’s loving-kindness, even in the face of suffering. I’m particularly struck by his loving-kindness in the scriptures, especially the OT. Too many times I’ve e

Love Others Without Even Trying

Image
I grew up feeling entitled to God’s love, I mean, he’s God - he loves everyone. It’s a requirement, so you know...no big whoop. Except it is a big whoop, it’s the biggest whoop ever. There is nothing bigger or more amazing or impressive than his love. I hate to admit I was disdainful when well-meaning people encouraged me by saying, “God loves you.” I may not have voiced it, but I was thinking, “Duh, of course he loves me, tell me something I don’t know.” I was self-righteous in God’s love for me and it showed in my ministry to others. I served out of a heart of duty, rather than a choice to love. It was exactly how I viewed God’s love – as a duty, not a choice. I was wrong. God is love ( 1 John 4:8 ). It’s impossible to [truly] know God without coming face to face with the realization of his love.   God doesn’t love me, or anyone else, because of duty but because he is love. I could park on this truth and never come to the fullness of it for all eternity; my mind

In Need of a Culture Change

Image
If you were a fly on the wall at my house (or more likely a wolf spider in the corner), you’d think one member of our family believes the world is going to hell in a hand basket and it will only get worse and the other one is naively idealistic and thinks nothing is impossible for God. Spoiler alert: I’m the naive idealistic. My Man, a new believer, echoes the culture around us. Sadly, he also echoes a majority of Christians as well. By and large, most of us are in survival mode. We put in the time here on earth doing what we can to hold on and not get swept away by the current of defeat, and seismic social injustices until the day when we are whisked away to a heavenly refuge, far away from the troubles and problems of this world. It’s been a process for me – to change my way of thinking from “Get me out of here” mentality to understanding God’s desire for reality on the earth [now] is supposed to model the heavenly reality. I’m not being naive to place my faith and my