MIND OF TRUTH

In Zachariah 4:10 the Word of the Lord comes to Zachariah saying "For who has despised the day of small things?..." As with all scripture, there is a direct meaning for the then and there context of the scripture, but there is also a here and now spiritual application. There is a great lesson for us to learn in the here and now from this simple question. Too often we discount or overlook small beginnings. We usually miss them completely because we are looking for what we want. If we want what God wants for our life, then we need to look for small beginnings. We need to allow those small seeds that He plants to find good soil and take root. When we read the Bible we will see this is God's pattern. Jesus is the best example of this. There was nothing smaller and more insignificant to the world than a poor Jewish baby born out of wedlock in a manger with the animals. Thats what man sees, but the Father sees Christ as being worthy to be exalted above all things. Jes

There is a place at the foot of the cross where we all must go. What does that place mean to you? Is it a place of salvation and forgiveness for you as you turn from a life of sin? Is it a place where you bring God your broken marriage and seek restoration and healing? Is it a place to pour out your heart before God about children who have strayed from the Lord? Do you express to Him all the anxieties and fears that fill your mind? Do you come to Him for the one thousandth time to lay down yet again the sin that so easily entangles you? Is the foot of the cross the inner chamber for you where you go to be alone with God and share the intimacies and wonders of who He is? Does the cross blaze with fire for you and ignite you heart with a desire to reach the lost? Do you come to cast all your cares there upon Him? Do you seek there in His shadow strength and a place of refuge? Are you longing to receive a peace that passes all understanding? Do you bring all the pieces of your

" But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Hebrews 11:6 (KJV) What a wonderful verse of promise from the Lord. This verse has meant a lot to me lately. At the end of each year, the Lord speaks to me and gives me direction for the coming year. In 2007, He is asking me to diligently seek Him through studying His Word and more times of intimacy with Him in prayer. God promises us that He will reward those who diligently seek Him. As I read Heb 11:6 this morning I thanked the Lord that He IS... I'm glad the writer of Hebrews did not finish that thought. Our God is so many things that one word could never describe. He is our exceedingly great reward, He is our shield and strong tower, He is our strength, He is our joy, He is our Savior. He is everything to us that He promised us He would be. Whatever our need, whatever our situation may be, Jesus i

I read a poem once about truth as a flame of fire that we shut up within our bones and it burns, but we cannot let it go, we cannot help but shut it up tight and make it our own. The truth calls to the very depths of our soul like deep calleth unto deep. I must answer His call, I must feel the pain and experience such joy that I have never know as I see my Savior who gave His all for me. I'm lost in His voice and lost in His love and I will be broken and wholly surrendered before my Lord Jesus! Read these words from the Vineyard worship song Sweetly Broken and let the Lord fill your heart with love for Him. SWEETLY BROKEN Jeremy Riddle To the cross I look, to the cross I cling Of it's suffering I do drink Of it's work I do sing For on it my Savior, both bruised and crushed Showed that God is love And God is just At the cross You beckon me You draw me gently to my knees, and I am Lost for words, so lost in love, I'm sweetly broken, wholly surrendered What a priceless

I have been very disturbed this past year at the amount of people I know personally who are struggling with their marriages, and I mean the ready to separate or have separated and divorced kind of problems, not just the normal not taking the trash out kind of problems. I sat the other day almost in tears with a letter in my hand from a lawyer concerning the marriage of very dear friends of mine, and I wondered how we (me included) in the church have gotten to a place where we have abandoned so many brothers and sisters to the point where they require assistance from the world to resolve their issues. Is our God lacking is some area or is His Word incomplete and unable to carry us through any difficulty? Do we serve the gods of the prophets of Baal who Elijah taunted that maybe their gods were far off or asleep? No! We serve a living God who has drawn near to us and loves us and will move on our behalf IF (that part is important!) IF we walk in His Word and yield to His commands.

More from Pilgrim's Progress... What do you seek? Ask anyone this question and you'll get many different answers. Some would say money, success, happiness, fulfillment in life, a good marriage, and on and on. We are all seeking something with our life. The thing we seek is the things deep down that we desire the most. If we profess to be a Christian, we would say right away that we seek the Lord and His will in our lives. But I have to be honest that I find very few who truly seek Him. To seek something with our whole life is to want it at the very core of our being. Everything we do and think about and say will somehow help us get what we desire. Many times we seek the same things everyone else does, but we use Christ as a way to get there. We have to come to a point where there is nothing else we seek but Christ. For me this has been a journey. A journey that starts with our honesty as we come before the Lord. In the quietness of our time alone with Him, we confe

I was listening to "Pilgrim's Progress" by John Bunyan today. You can download it on MP3 at ChristianAudio for free this month. Each month they offer a free audio book download. They are usually old, dry, and boring, but they're classics. You won't find any free books on 7 steps to finding your purpose or how to have your best life now, but you will find spiritual truth and if you take time to listen, the Holy Spirit will plant those truths deep in your heart. The Lord has spoken to me before about passages in "Pilgrim's Progress" and maybe I'll share those another time, but today I was struck by the intensity of this one passage in the opening chapter . After reading the book he had found, Christian was so overcome with grief and despair that he could no longer continue living as he had before. I pray that each of us, through the reading of the Word, would be so aware of our desperate need for God that everyday we would be moved to the p

Here are a few thoughts from Oswald Chambers on the Word . . . It is not the thing on which we spend most time that molds us, but the thing that exerts the greatest power. Five minutes with God and His word is worth more than all the rest of the day. The Bible is not the word of God to us unless we come to it through what Jesus Christ says. The Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, are all revelations of Jesus Christ. The context of the Bible is Our Lord himself, and until we are rightly related to Him, the Bible is no more to us than an ordinary book. We cannot know the Holy Scriptures by intellectual exercises. The key to our understanding of the Bible is not our intelligence, but our personal relationship to Jesus Christ (cf. John 5:39-40). ...We take much for granted, but nothing is ever ours until we have bought it by pain; a thing is worth just what it costs. Do we allow ourselves to be arrested when we read the Holy Scriptures? The vital relationship of the Christian to

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I added another quote to my favorite quotes list today. "Christ + Nothing" by Howard Hendricks. For me, thats all that needs to be said because Jesus is all I need. Of course we have many other needs in our life, but they will all be met through Christ if we allow Him to do so. It seems like such a simple concept, but we like to make it way more complicated. I told a friend last night that being a Christian (True follower of Jesus Christ for those of you who think Christian means something else) is the easiest thing in the world and its also the hardest thing in the world. Its easy because Christ has already paid the price for our freedom and He has given us His Word and His Holy Spirit. All that is left for us to do is to yield to Him. Just say yes to Jesus, thats it, but that can be the hardest thing in the world to do sometimes when the whole world, the enemy, others, and our own self is telling us to go in a different direction. The Bible tells us we only have

I was reminded today by a good friend that when the battle rages around us, we have nothing to fear when we walk with Jesus. John tells us (I John 4:18) that the perfect love of Christ casts out all our fears. That sounds good, but when we're in the midst of the storm, its difficult to focus on that truth. The bigger the battle, the more we fight and the harder we try to find our way out of it. The problem is that the battle is not ours, but the Lord's (II Chr. 20:15). Often, He is the one who leads us into that place just like Jesus was lead into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. God always gives us the weapons we need to overcome and they are mighty through God for the pulling down of strong holds (II Cor. 10:4), but we can't use those supernatural weapons when we keep trying to use the weapons that we think will get the job done. We have so many thoughts and plans and methods we use everyday to engage the battles we find ourselves in, but all we really need to do

One of the most essential things we must do to sustain our life as a believer and follower of Jesus Christ is to hear and obey the voice of God. I read an excerpt from Oswald Chambers and Jeremiah this morning that talks about this. " When conscience has been enlightened by the  Son of God being formed in me,  I have to make an effort to keep my conscience so sensitive that I obey that which I perceive to be God’s will. I have to be so keen in the scent of the Lord, so sensitive to the tiniest touch of His Spirit, that I know what I should do. If I keep my soul inwardly open to God, then when I come in contact with the affairs of life outside, I know immediately what I should do; if I do not, I am to blame. I should be living in such perfect sensitiveness to God, in such perfect sympathy with His Son that in every circumstance I am in,  the spirit of my mind is renewed, and I prove, i.e. make out, what is God’s will, the thing that is good, and acceptable, and perfect. "