Don’t you just love the way Jesus was straightforward with His words? He wasn’t bragging when He said, “I am the light of the world” or when He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”. He was simply stating the facts. As the Son of God, He had come to bring light and life to our dark world.

I read these words awhile back: “Brush your mind with God’s word…It will help prevent truth decay”. I smiled as I read those words and then got to thinking about it. We live in a world of ‘truth decay’. We’ve replaced hand-shakes with pages of legal protection. Our world lacks trust, which fills many with fear and hopelessness.

The world’s chaos and challenges must drive us to God’s word. We do need to brush our mind, bathe our hearts, and sit and soak in God’s Holy Word. Let’s join the Psalmist and declare: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forevermore”.

Walking in the Light,

Jim Grams

In Church, we often talk about serving. We use Jesus washing the disciples feet as an example, and Paul, also, who often called himself a servant. That same Paul, wrote the following words: “Serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command. Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Serving in love sounds so simple, so right and so spiritual. In reality, serving others goes against all the selfish bones in our body. I love to plant my aging, tired bones in my recliner and let Charlotte serve me. Serving is work, unselfish, and obedience to God. Let me challenge you today to look around and find someone you can serve. Do it in love and do it in the Name of Jesus! You will make a difference in your world.

There are so many things I intend to do and all of these things bring so much joy, but my good intentions often go undone. This trait often leaves me filled with regret because I knew I wanted to accomplish a task but just got too busy.

Let me illustrate.

Yesterday I was talking with my friend Mack Larry. He was preparing to teach the Romania team about evangelism and I was cleaning up a little when, to my horror, I ran across a Starbucks box. I knew this box and I knew that inside this box was a delicious chocolate cupcake that I was given for my birthday four days earlier. I remember receiving the cupcake and feeling so special. It was in a cute little box, which made me feel like I had just found treasure! I was filled with anticipation, that glorious moment when I would open the box in private and devour the gift. Instead, life got busy and I moved on and the intention to eat the cupcake was left as only a good intention.

I know there is a deep spiritual truth in this story.

Alas, I will leave the meaning of the Parable of the Stale Cupcake up to you.

All of us have experienced a broken heart at one time or another. As children, our hearts were broken in relatively simple ways; we experienced the death of our beloved hamster, our best friend suddenly chose a new friend to play with, our favorite toy broke. As teens, our hearts were tender toward our self image and the opposite sex and emotions were fragile. As adults, our hearts are tested through the trials of life and many times our hearts seem shattered, irreparable, or crushed in the depth of our soul. We can agree with the psalmist when he wrote, “I am poor and needy. My heart is wounded deep down inside me.” Psalm 109:22

What do you do when your heart is broken . . .When your boss side steps the promotion rightfully due you – When your spouse has given you bad news – When the diagnosis isn’t what you had hoped for – When you can’t make the mortgage payment once again – When your dreams have crumbled – When life happens?

Your body and heart may grow weak, yet God is your strength for your heart. He is everything you will ever need. (Psalm 73:26) God stands ready to help those who need it! (Psalm 109:31) I love that truth. God is not sitting back, easily distracted, overwhelmed by your brokenness. Rather, He stands ready to help you in your need. What do you need? You need God to repair the damage and mend the broken pieces of your heart.

“When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.” Barbara Bloom  Aggrandize means to make great or greater in power, wealth, rank, or honor – to enhance the power, reputation or position of. The broken object is repaired with a precious substance which enhances its strength and purpose. And in the Japanese culture, the repair (the evidence of the brokenness) magnifies the beauty of the object.

In your brokenness, give God permission and freedom to put your heart back together. He is ready to do so with every resource available in heaven at His disposal. As His Spirit and Truth is used to fill in the damage, you will become even more beautiful and valuable to Him. Your brokenness doesn’t scare God at all, in fact, His desire is to bring people into your life, bring Truth to your heart, and bring praise to your lips to help repair the damage. Don’t minimize His power. Don’t diminish His authority. Exalt His power in your life and become the beautiful person He has intended you to be.

“Some of you set sail in big ships; you put to sea to do business in faraway ports.  Out at sea you saw God in action, saw his breathtaking ways with the ocean: With a word he called up the wind–an ocean storm, towering waves! You shot high in the sky, then the bottom dropped out; your hearts were stuck in your throats. You were spun like a top, you reeled like a drunk, you didn’t know which end was up. Then you called out to God in your desperate condition; he got you out in the nick of time. He quieted the wind down to a whisper, put a muzzle on all the big waves. And you were so glad when the storm died down, and led you safely back to harbor. So thank God for his marvelous love, for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.” From Psalm 107 in The Message

That’s what God gives us…He quiets the storms in our lives to a whisper and leads us to a perfectly safe harbor. He puts us at rest in safety so we can look up and Praise His Name!

I Love God,

Jim

Isaiah wrote…”Who out there fears God, actually listens to the voice of his servant? For anyone out there who doesn’t know where you’re going, Here’s what: Trust in God. Lean on your God!” Isaiah 50:10 The Message We don’t need to be afraid of the world’s darkness or their confusion. Putting our total trust in God and leaning hard on Him will carry us through whatever the world throws at us! That is a certainty. Let’s just Trust HIM!

When Delilah finally got Samson to admit the real secret of his power, and had his hair cut off, his great strength left him. When he awoke from his sleep he thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” That phrase is followed by one of the most tragic verses in the Bible.

“….But he did not know that the Lord had left him.”

Yes…there is indeed a danger of having the Lord leave us. Some would argue with that statement. We are very safe in Christ as long as we are following and serving Him. But when we decide to disobey Him and continue down a path of rejecting Him…He leaves us.

Samson’s end was not pretty. The price for his sin was losing his Father’s presence. May I remind you today, as I remind myself, we must stay in God’s presence, doing God’s will, serving Him with all of our heart. Jesus said it so well. “Abide in me and I will abide in you.” We cannot serve God without His presence. He will not leave us unless we abandon Him.

Abiding in Christ,

Jim Grams

So a few days ago I found out I was going to have a visitor over to my house. Actually they invited themselves… and I knew it was their birthday. They gave me ample time to plan and plot, which I did and scowered the internet for a present worthy of their appearance. Also, I cleaned and showered and got everything super ready to go.

Just down the street from my house is plenty of shopping opportunities including Bed Bath and Beyond which is filled with thousands of wonderful products that you don’t need but could also fill your house with. I knew what I was getting. I was a little stressed because I was getting ready to spend almost a hundred dollars on this gift, but I had gotten over my frugalness and was on the way to my car when the phone rang. “Hey, it’s a long drive to your house and I only have a few hours in town so I was thinking maybe I’ll stop in next time.”

How often have I thought that cracking open my Bible right now would be good and I make the intention to do it but when it gets right down to it, I’m just not feeling it. It will be there next time.

When I was 13 years old, I gave my heart to Jesus. My family (which consisted of my single mom, sister, and I) had just gone through a transition of a move out of state; we lived in five different places in one year and I went to two different schools. I was in the pivotal year of eighth grade. During that time, we lived for most of the year with my aunt and her family who attended a small Nazarene church. There, my mom, sister, and I gave our hearts to Jesus. My mom met my step-dad and when all was said and done, we ended up moving right back to my home town in Covina, California – all in one year.

I didn’t know it then, but God was following hard after me. He gave me the desire to pursue Him. It wasn’t me that purposed to know God; it was God purposing to make Himself real to me so that I would live for Him. I heard my mom crying one night, during that transition year, and it broke my heart for her. I didn’t know God, yet I prayed for Him to make my mom happy. Happiness meant a relationship with Him! The pursuit was over; happiness and relationship all wrapped up in Jesus!

“We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit.” A.W. Tozer. In John chapter 6:44 we learn that no man can come to Jesus unless the Father who sent Jesus draws him. The Message says it this way, “The Father who sent me is in charge. He draws people to me – that’s the only way you’ll ever come. Only then do I do my work, putting people together, setting them on their feet, ready for the End.”

I want to be ready for the End! Don’t you? And because the Father is in charge of my life, He gets the credit for me knowing Him. For me to even have had the desire to pray to the Father meant that God gave me the impulse to pray. And the outworking of my faith was that I prayed, He answered, and the rest is His story to tell. We can say it like this – As we pursue Him, we are already in His hands. “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” Psalm 63:8. In The Messsage – “I hold on to you for dear life, and you hold me steady as a post.” Thus, the responsibility and our choice to follow hard after Him!

God has always been and will forever be. He knows each of us for eternity. This is hard for our minds to understand but understanding this truth (in the best way we can) will spur us on in the pursuit of Him who first loved us. We can trust our Father for every thing, need, desire, struggle, sadness, joy, and piece of our entire life. Our responsibility – hold on for dear life as His hand holds you!

Well, this is a bit long, like other writings of mine. Just started the first chapter of The Pursuit of God and this was my heart’s challenge to write. Guess going through this book is going to take longer than I thought! I’ve only read four paragraphs!!

From one follower to another – follow hard, my friend. God has already seen what tomorrow will bring. He holds you.

Laurie

I am sitting here and listening to the Newsboys singing the song “I am Free”. How is FREEDOM to operate in our lives?

2 Corinthians 3:17-18 (NLT)
17 For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

FREEDOM was given for the express purpose of reflecting HIS Image. Where He is welcome, FREEDOM is not only experienced, but expressed. I know a lot of people who are in prison and behind bars that are freer than most people living life. They have found that your outward situation does not have to dictate your INWARD PEACE, that how people label you does not define your true identity in Christ. True FREEDOM is not living like you want to, it is living like you should…it is living the way He wants us to.

The only thing GOD is ever satisfied with is Himself. That’s why our own righteousness is nothing more than filthy rags. The only way I can express the image of Christ, is by living in the freedom of Christ…this becomes a LIVING LETTER, a TESTIMONY and TROPHY of HIS GRACE for all the world to see…I’m in Him, and He’s in me…and by His power, I’ve been set free! FREE TO LOVE, FREE TO LAUGH, FREE TO LIVE…CHRIST IN ME.

LIVE FREE IN HIM TODAY!

Blessings,
Pastor Scott