Noah's Ark in the News

 link here.

The story did not have to surface now. A boat-shaped ridge in eastern Turkey, drilled again, talked about again, sitting on the front of the news while the world goes on eating, marrying, buying, building. That is the picture Jesus already named. The days of Noah were not marked by people pausing life because judgment felt close. They were marked by people who would not hear, right up to the day the door shut.

To a world in rebellion, the word in the story is plain. Genesis does not describe a generation that was merely busy. It describes a generation whose every intention had turned, an earth filled with violence, a corruption so settled that God grieved that he had made man. Noah was a preacher of righteousness in that generation, and the preaching did not land. They did not know until the flood came and took them all away. Peter later says the scoffers’ whole argument is continuity: all things continue as they were. A headline about the ark does not interrupt that argument for most people. It gets scrolled past between other stories. That indifference is the warning. The account is not a myth tucked in a children’s book. It is a record of a door that closed, and of a world that kept its appointments until it did.

To the church, the same story cuts the other way. Noah was not excused from the generation he lived in. He was distinguished inside it. He moved with reverent fear. He built what he was told to build while the building still looked foolish. He condemned the world by believing God, not by winning the argument in the street. Hebrews says the ark was prepared by faith. The church is not called to be fascinated by the formation. She is called to be the witness who still treats the word as live, while everyone else treats the day as ordinary.

That is the statement. A world in rebellion is being reminded that judgment is not canceled by normal life. A church is being reminded that she is either inside the obedience Noah walked in, or she is eating and drinking with the generation that would not hear. The news did not create that divide. It held the old story up where both can see it.

Noah's ark in the news today is both a warning to this world and encouragement to the Church. The story of Noah is one of obedience during a long delay, not "today the world ends." This story, Noah and the Ark in the news is evidence that the Lord is watching, He is acting, His plans and agendas are at work and this splash across the news cycle is a wake up call to everyone.

It is time to do our job. He saved the best for last means alot of things but one of those meanings we can nail down with certainty here is the best version of ourself needs to be manifesting in these last days. Our best self, the best version of us is required to do the assignment each of us has from the Lord. Jesus spent 90% of His life on earth in relative obscurity as a humble carpenter then in the last 3 years went to petal to the metal, 100%, getting everything done that needed to be done.

None of us knows how much time this world has left. None of us was promised we get to wake up tomorrow either. What we have is right here, right now, do our job and do it now. Hopefully you get the idea. We do not know how much time is left but we do know there is not enough time for us to waste any of it. This is why the complacency of the past needs to stay in the past. We are redeeming the time.

Please join with your brother in praying over the prayer targets today.

Glory to God

grace and peace

First Love

 Pop quiz today, what is this walk on earth all about?  Answer?  Its a LOVE story.  Which brings us to something that has been often repeated over time but the Spirit of the Lord is pressing on it again this morning.  Here is the angle on it today:

It is Revelation 2:4, in the letter to the church in Ephesus. The wording is “left,” “forsaken,” or “abandoned,” not “lost.” “Lost your first love” is the way people usually say it.

King James: “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.”

New American Standard: “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”

English Standard: “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.”

The line sits right after He has already named their works, labor, patience, and endurance (Revelation 2:2–3). Then He tells them to remember from where they have fallen, repent, and do the first works, or He will remove their lampstand (Revelation 2:5).

People can still be "working" after the love has gone cold.  That is the warning here.  Remember 1 Cor 13, a person can have a faith that moves mountains, give all their money to the poor, and give our body over to hardship, none of that matters without love.

He comes first.  Our personal, one on one, intimate relationship with Him comes first.  The "work" is a distant second.  So, the warning here is you can be doing the work.  In fact you could be working yourself to death and thinking "we're good" you and the Lord when in fact you would be wrong.  No love, no first love and your lampstand gets removed.

A lampstand is not a trophy for effort. In the vision, the lampstands are the churches, and He walks among them. The lamp is the witness set in His presence. To remove it from its place is to take away that church as a light before Him. That is not a bruised feeling. That is the end of the assignment.

How do we do this then? He tells us get back to the love we had at first. Fan the flame. Remember the love you had at first and why you had it. He died for us in love and mercy right? Pretty good reason to stay in love? He promises a hope and a future, He crowns us with love and compassion, goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our life. Does that help fan the flame?

Today's post is not a beat down its a reminder to put first things first. We are working on a post doctorate degree now in Christianity. We are getting to where the rubber meets the road, where things really matter. Love is the doctoral thesis, it is how we graduate. It is also the first class we take as a freshman. It is the beginning and the end. We must become and remain experts of agape (God's) decision based love.

Remember, "doing the work" is great but it counts for nothing without the personal one on one, first love time with Him just you and Him building loving relationship. Everything else is built on that.

We are dearly loved children. Keep the faith.

Please join with your brother in praying over the prayer targets today.

Glory to God

grace and peace

Coming Back To God

Ps 32

8I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

9Do not be like the horse or the mule,

which have no understanding

but must be controlled by bit and bridle

or they will not come to you. 

This idea right here ^^^ is at the heart of what the Spirit of the Lord has been getting at, or pointing to alot recently.  This world, the enemy, everything is competing for your attention.  We need to get our attention back to our Creator.  This attention recalibration is not a one time thing, it is a constant thing, a process.  Life by its nature requires a variety of different things from us, which requires our attention to land in many different places through the course of a day.  That is fine as long as within that day we have taking pit stops along the way to re-center (over and over) and re-focus (over and over) on the Lord our God.

The faster events in life move, the more frequent our pitstops need to be.  Think of NASCAR, go too many laps on a set of tires without taking a pit stop and you are going to have problems.

The Lord our God is giving us what we need, when we need it.  Right now it appears we are refocusing on fundamentals.  In order to get higher order tasks right, we must get fundamentals right.  A house is built from the foundation up.  The foundation must be laid correctly for the rest of the house to sit correctly on that foundation.  You get the idea.

We are dearly loved children ♡

Please join with your brother in praying over the prayer targets today.

Glory to God

grace and peace

The Purpose of Life

 According to the Christian Bible, the purpose of life is to know God, love Him, reflect His character, and live for His glory.

It is not framed as a single slogan. It runs through the whole story, from creation to the end of the age.

Made for God

People are made in the image of God, to represent Him in the world and to live in relationship with Him (Genesis 1:26–28). Isaiah says God formed His people for His glory (Isaiah 43:7). Paul later says all things were created through Christ and for Christ (Colossians 1:16). Life is not self-owned. It is received, and it points back to the One who gave it.

The Westminster tradition summarized this as glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. That line is not a Bible verse, but it tracks texts like Psalm 16:11, where fullness of joy is found in God’s presence, and John 17:3, where Jesus defines eternal life as knowing the Father and the Son He sent.

The whole duty

Ecclesiastes spends most of its length showing that work, pleasure, wisdom, and wealth do not hold as a final purpose on their own. Its closing word is direct: fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of a person (Ecclesiastes 12:13). “Fear” here means reverent awe, not terror. It is the posture of someone who knows who God is.

Micah puts the same idea in everyday terms: do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8).

Love as the center

When Jesus is asked for the greatest commandment, He does not name a career, an achievement, or a feeling. He names love for God with the whole heart, soul, and mind, and love for neighbor as oneself. On these, He says, hang all the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:37–40). Purpose is relational before it is productive.

The New Testament then ties that love to Christ. People are saved by grace, not by earning a purpose, and then created in Christ Jesus for good works God prepared beforehand (Ephesians 2:8–10). The aim of those works is not self-display. It is conformity to the image of the Son (Romans 8:29) and a life that makes God known.

Seeking and finding

Paul tells the Athenians that God sets the times and places of human life so that people might seek Him and find Him, though He is not far from anyone (Acts 17:26–28). In Him we live and move and have our being. The search is answered, in the Christian reading, in Jesus: the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).

So the biblical picture is layered, not competing. You exist because God made you for Himself. You are meant to know Him, love Him, love the people He puts near you, walk in His ways, and let your ordinary life point back to His glory. Everything else, work, rest, family, joy, even suffering, sits inside that.

The Path Ahead

 We are a month or so away from the mid term elections and according to the "odds" the democrats are likely to take over both the house and senate.  What does that mean for us?  Not much, the Kingdom of God does not advance based on which political party controls what, and where.  There are two important signs along the road ahead, one of them is Love.  Yep, that "optional" word from traditional establishment churchianity.  Nothing moves in the Kingdom of God without Love.  Go re-read 1 Cor 13, and 1 John 4 second half of the chapter.  Love is the whole enchilada.  We are to be operating according to our operating system which in software terms is faith, hope, love, joy and peace.  That is how we are to advance against the darkness in this world.

And two, coming back over and over again to our Lord Jesus Christ.  We put Him back up on the throne daily in our life.  Yes, He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and nobody can change that but we can change who is Lord of our life.  The Kingdom of God is where Jesus sits on the throne.  If that is inside of us, then indeed the Kingdom of God lives within us.

Now, an important distinction about all of this it is not just nice sounding theology.  We are talking about brass tacks, rubber meets the road, the way things get done.  We are talking about being effective and efficient.  We are talking about putting a beat down on the darkness, pushing it back to the gates of hell.  Evil, wickedness and darkness responds to power, it could care less about the rest of the fluff. Our power is in doing business exactly precisely as our Lord God told us to.  Everything is done in Love and Light.  Not just any Love, His Love.  Not just any "light", His Light.  His Presence and Power cuts through everything.  We do things His way.  We seek first His Kingdom and His Righteousness.

We align and agree with Him in this world.  The Lord Jesus Christ is not pro Islam.  "Thy Kingdom come and Thy Will be done here on earth just as it is in Heaven" comes at the expense of Islam, communism and every other anti-Christian, anti-human ideology out there.  His Kingdom is His, He does not share it with "Allah" and make no mistake we see it in the current demon-crat party and around the world the enemy agenda is to advance both Islam and Communism.

What we do about this is align and agree with the Lord our God.  In doing this alignment we complete a kind of electrical circuit in the world.  We spread or empower or expand legally, spiritually the presence and power of the Kingdom of God on earth.  Both sides of the fight use human agreement and alignment to advance agendas on planet earth.  We die to ourselves day by day, giving the steering wheel of our body, soul, spirit, present, future and past to our God and King Jesus Christ.

Jesus has a plan.  Our Father in Heaven has a plan, and by the way He has read and studied and knows backward and forward every plot, plan, and agenda of the enemy in this world.  So, we give our selves over to Him, we do what our Commanding General says to do, and things work out as well as they can possibly work out.  We do our part.

In the days ahead we need to commit to the operating system of faith, hope and love and just as important we need to constantly, continually throughout our day, bring ourselves back to Him in thought and prayer.  All of us are in different situations.  How does one bring themself back constantly while at work?  We dont have to get down on a prayer mat in our cubicle three times a day or more but if you can great :).  Our thoughts can and are independent regardless of where we are physically.  We can pray wherever we are.  We can bring ourselves back to Jesus throughout our day and that is what will be required in the days ahead.

The faster things move, the more we need to "check in" with Jesus and our Father in prayer and communion.  Things are moving fast and getting faster which means more time and attention are needed on our "North Star" or guidance system which gets us to the target for which we were placed on this earth.  Our North Star or guidance system is the Holy Spirit of God.  We, each of us are here in this season for a reason.  We have a job to do.  Do your job.  Do your part.  If you have any confusion about any of this take it back to the Commander in Chief our Lord Jesus Christ and He will make it clear to you.

We are pushing ahead regardless of what happens in the political world.  We are praying over and about all things to include the politics and everything else.  Gone are the days of complacency.  We are here to work now, and we take nothing for granted.  We do not cede and inch of ground to the enemy, everything must be contested.  Give an inch and they will take a hundred miles, we have seen this with DEI and everything else the enemy tried to foist on us.

Faith, hope, love, joy and peace.  That is our operating system, we need to operate in it continually.  Seek first the Kingdom of God which means we are bringing the throne of Christ back to center stage over and over again in every part of our life.  Jesus gets the wheel and control over everything, we gladly take the passenger seat while He drives.  We do our part when, and where He tells us.  He says jump, we dont argue, we jump.  Maybe we ask "how high" but we get to jumping.

You get the idea.  Now is not the time for fear, or despair, or whatever.  The Church which is the Restrainer on earth is here now for a reason.  "Restraint" over evil has a job to do.  The Church has a job to do.  We are snatching souls from the fire while we hold back the powers of darkness.  "We" being predominantly the Spirit of God but with our agreement and alignment with Him.  His Kingdom come and His Will be done here on earth just as it is in Heaven.

Please join with your brother in praying over the prayer targets today.

Glory to God

grace and peace

Love is the Key

 Love is the great separator, the key to what Heaven is, how to get into Heaven, the beginning and end to the Bible, it also does something quite important.  It separates the Bible and Quran, Christianity and Islam in stark terms.  In the last days "they" will try to sell the idea that all the religions point to the same God.  We beg to differ.

The identity claim

1 John 4 does not list love as one attribute among many:

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
“God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” (1 John 4:16)

That is ontology. Know God, and you know love. Refuse love, and you do not know Him.

The Quran never says this about Allah. Al-Wadud (“the Affectionate”) appears twice, both times next to forgiveness, aimed at those who turn back. That is an action-name, not “Allah is love.” The 99 names include Mercy, Power, King, Compeller, Watcher. They do not include an identity statement parallel to 1 John 4:8.

So on the point you care about, there is no comparison. One book defines God as love. The other does not.

The act that defines the love

The Bible does not leave “God is love” as a slogan. It nails it to a death:

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)
“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…” (John 3:16)

The Quran rejects that whole structure. Allah has no son (112:3; 4:171). Jesus is a prophet, not the self-gift of God. There is no cross as divine self-giving. Forgiveness is by will, repentance, and scales—not by God bearing the cost.

You cannot map “the Father gave the Son” onto “Allah loves those who do good.” One is God moving toward enemies at His own expense. The other is God approving the obedient. Same English word. Different universe.

Beginning and end of the story

Biblically, love is not a mid-book theme. It frames the plot.

• Before the world: the Father loves the Son (John 17:24). Love is already there.
• Creation and covenant: God loves first (Deuteronomy 7:7–8; Jeremiah 31:3).
• Center: the cross.
• Church ethic: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)
• Judgment of gifts: 1 Corinthians 13. Tongues, prophecy, knowledge, sacrifice—nothing without love.
• End: a marriage, God dwelling with His people (Revelation 21).

1 Corinthians 13 is brutal about this. Faith and hope remain, “but the greatest of these is love.” If love is missing, the rest is noise.

The Quran’s spine is tawhid (God is one), submission, warning, and mercy to those who heed. That is a coherent book. It is not a love-story that climaxes in God dying for His enemies and then saying the whole religion is worthless without love.

Why “mercy” does not close the gap

Mercy in the Quran is real and large. “My mercy encompasses all things” (7:156). Almost every surah opens with the Merciful.

It still is not 1 John 4.

Mercy can be a king sparing subjects. Love, in the biblical sense, is the Father giving the Son. Mercy can feed the unbeliever in this life and still say “Allah does not love the unbelievers” (3:32). The Gospel says God loved the world when it was hostile, and the proof is blood.

Sequence stays reversed:

• Quran 3:31: if you love Allah and follow the messenger, Allah will love you.
• 1 John 4:19: we love because He first loved us.

That is the radical difference.” The Bible makes love the nature of God, the motive of redemption, the test of all religion, and the future of the world. The Quran does not. On those claims there is no comparison, and treating them as two dialects of one God-talk flattens both books.

A Monday Message

1 Thess3: 11Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. 12May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. 13May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.

1 Cor 13

1 John 4

John 3:16

16For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 

What is the most encouraging thing this nobody can write to you about today?  We live in a love story.  Once you see it and really take it in from 1 Cor 13, and 1 John 4, you see it everywhere.  Love, love, love.  Love is not a secondary "nice to have" Christianity item, it is THE item.  God is Love.  God=Love.  We love Him first and most of all, then we love each other.  This isn't complicated.  The world, and life and current events and all the other storms and seasons that blow by can be complicated but our walk with Him and each other is not.

We love.  And we see a contrast in other religions whose ideology is hate.  It brings things into sharp contrast so we can see clearly all day long.  A religious ideology that revolves around hate, hating, deception and deceiving is self explanatory.  That is what the enemy and this world would like to spread across America, and the world but we are having none of it.

Light drives out darkness so we must be light.  Real light, not theoretical or paper/administrative only in practice light.  We carry around in us the Kingdom of God, the throne of God on which our Lord Jesus Christ sits.  We step aside daily and allow Jesus to take the wheel.  He is at the wheel, at the helm and on the throne in our lives.  We offer ourselves as living sacrifices daily.  We give Him our bodies, souls, spirits, present, future and past.  All of us we give back to Him because He gave Himself for us first.  We yield these jars of clay for Him to shine His Life and Light into this dark world.

This world needs more Jesus.  It needs more good news which is the gospel.  It needs more love.  We, with the indwelling Spirit are all those things, sent to the world to work out the Will of our King, day by day.  Let us let our day start and finish with Love.  That is the big picture and it fractals all the way down to the micro picture.  God so loved the world.  He still loves, and so do we.  What is going to attract the unbeliever, and even the enemies of the Cross of Christ will be the love we have for our God, each other and for them.  It is not a feelings based love, it is decision based love, agape love.  We decide, we engage our willpower to love as He loves.  We join in partnership with Him, in agreement and alignment to love in this world and to work out all that He desires to do here.

Please join with your brother in praying over the prayer targets today.

Glory to God

grace and peace

33 Years

 Jesus was 33 years old when He died.  We talked about this recently but it bears repeating again.  He spent 90% of His earthly life waiting and preparing for the last 9-10%.  That is where believers all over the world are now.  How so?  If we are close to the rapture and time of Jacob's trouble, and if we are in the end times, and if "the end is near" and many believe all these to be true, then what else is true?  We, each one of us is on the tail end of our "ministry" here on earth.  It doesn't matter how long you lived, you are here on this earth in this season for a reason.

We are not trying to play pin that tail on the arrival date, we are not trying to predict anything.  We are trying to prepare and the Lord spent ample time on that subject in scripture.  He told this servant "I have saved best for last."  This servant believes that is a Word for all of us.  Best has been saved for last.  How this plays out takes many forms however one of those forms is the best version of you was saved for last.  The best, highest version of you is needed and required now and in the days ahead to do all the Lord God has planned on this earth for this season.

This world is in the process of a spiritual awakening and there is repentance and revival required in the Church.  A post was just added about the idea of course correction.  The Church must be in a constant state of "course correction" that is a constant alignment and realignment with Jesus Christ.  That is the process, not a bug.  This world, the enemy, the flesh, are all competing for our attention.  We make a decision right here, right now to constantly, consistently be giving our attention back to our Lord Jesus Christ.  We set "appointments" with Him.  Not just Feast days like Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, we set daily appointments with Him.  We bring our attention back to Him morning, noon and night:

PS 32

“I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.

Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.”

This also fits in nicely with "seek first the kingdom of God" and the greater overriding theme of Love in the Christian life.  "I will" is an engagement of willpower.  It is a decision making engine.  We are "deciding" for our Lord Jesus Christ a thousand million billion times.  This is not a "once saved always saved" "I made a decision for Christ twenty years ago" and now I do whatever I want and I'm still "saved" scenario.  It also ties in nicely with rapture watching and readiness.  This is an every day thing.  We are giving and regiving ourselves and our attention back to Him over and over and over again.  Its how you fly a plane, its how you steer a ship, and its how you drive a car.  Constant innumerable course corrections requiring mini inputs over a long period of time.

This post is about the last part, the best part which has been saved for last.  We have been called for this.  We have been prepared for this over a period of years now.  We may have years to go yet but we may also be right up against the exit, we have no idea and we do not need to predict.  We do need to actively prepare, day by day.  Like the wise virgins of Matt 25 we are constantly topping off our "oil" supply in preparation to both stay and wait, and leave at a moments notice.

All of this is very familiar territory for a soldier.  Soldiers train for war, or the big event on a daily basis while prepared at the same time to never do an actual day of fighting throughout an entire career.  Eyes on Christ, over and over.  The best saved for last requires the best version of you.  We, all of us are required to up our game.  We need to push on the boundaries of what makes us uncomfortable.  We need to begin the process of becoming comfortable being slightly uncomfortable because that is exactly what growth requires.  The days of complacency are behind us forever now, we burn the ships behind us and never look back.

Now we press forward in our walk with the Lord our God and King.  This will not be boring :)

Please join with your brother in praying over the prayer targets today.

Glory to God

grace and peace

Course Correction

 You already know the first word from that night on the water. Keep your eyes on Jesus, not on the storm. That word is still true. It has not grown old. It has not lost its edge. But there is another word living inside the same story, and it needs to be said without shame. You will have to look again. Not once. Not after you finally get your life in order. Again and again, for as long as you live in a world that will not stop reaching for your attention.

That is not a defect in your faith. That is the shape of a living walk.

A pilot does not leave the runway, lock the yoke in one position, and call that trust. From the first minute to the last, the hands keep moving. A little left. A little right. Nose up. Nose down. Corrections so small that no one in the cabin ever claps for them. Those corrections are not evidence that the pilot is unqualified. They are how the plane stays on course. Take them away and the flight does not become more spiritual. It becomes a wreck.

You do not have to fly a plane to understand this. Get in a car and drive an ordinary road. Even a short trip asks your hands to keep working. Tiny turns. Quiet recoveries. You do not pull over in disgrace because the wheel moved again. You do not call those turns hypocrisy. You steer. That is what driving is.

It is the same with your journey in Christ.

The aim is not a mood you lock in at sunrise. The aim is a Person. Jesus Himself. To walk with Him is to keep bringing your attention back to Him. Over and over. A thousand times. A million times. As many times as the storm, and life, and this world, and your own thoughts try to take the wheel. They will try. They are not neutral. They compete for the one thing that decides the weather inside you. Your gaze.

Peter stepped onto the water because Jesus said Come. For a stretch of steps the word of Christ was enough to hold a man where men do not walk. Then he saw the wind. The wind had been there the whole time. The water had been there the whole time. The sinking did not begin when the weather changed. The sinking began when the eyes changed. And here is the mercy that must not be skipped. Jesus did not wait on the shore until Peter became a better walker. Immediately He reached out His hand. The first correction was not a speech. The first correction was nearness.

You of little faith, why did you doubt. That sentence is not heaven telling you to despise yourself. It is the voice of the One who is still close enough to take hold of you. Little faith is still faith that can look again. Little faith is still on the water with Jesus. Little faith is still being held.

So if your mind wandered this morning, you are not finished. If your heart ran toward the headline, the bill, the argument, the old fear, the next disaster it can imagine, you have not been dismissed. You have been handed the next correction. Bring it back. That is the work. That is the walk. That is not self rescue. That is cooperation with the Spirit who already lives in you.

Scripture keeps saying this in different clothes because we keep needing it. Look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith. Set your mind on things above, where Christ is seated. Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Stayed does not mean the mind never drifts. Stayed means the mind has a home, and it knows the way back.

The accuser would love for you to treat every drift as a verdict. He would love for the correction itself to become the new storm. You looked away, so you are a fraud. You felt fear, so you never believed. You have done this too many times, so you should start the whole Christian life over. That is a lie with a religious accent. Do not take it in. Do not let shame drive the yoke.

Course correction is not a bug. It is a feature of a life lived toward a living Lord in a noisy age. The people of God were not those who never wandered on the inside. They were those who kept coming back. David talked to his own soul. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me. Hope in God. That is not failure speech. That is steering. That is a man putting his hands back on the wheel.

You will not arrive at a morning when the world stops competing for your attention. The wind does not sign a peace treaty. The water does not promise to go still so you can finally be holy. Holiness in this life often looks like return. Return of the eyes. Return of the will. Return of the inner conversation to the One who already stands on what you are afraid of.

Do not despise the small turn. The small turn is how long journeys are finished. When the thought comes and says, look at the size of this, answer it by looking at Him again. When the feeling comes and says, you should be further along than this, answer it by coming to Him again. When shame says you have worn this path out, remember Peter. One reach of the Lord's hand was enough for that night. It is enough for yours.

You are not asked to freeze the yoke and never move. You are asked to keep your hands on the walk. Seek first the kingdom. Look at Jesus. And when you find that you have looked away, do the most ordinary and most holy thing a believer can do. Look again.

He is still on the water. He is still saying Come. Every time you bring your eyes back to Him, you are not starting from nothing. You are staying on course.

Look again. That is not weakness. That is how you walk.

Bills Gates, AI to Cause a Billion Deaths

 He just cannot restrain a smile when he talks about these things.   The prayer target page has been updated to bind "their" latest and greatest false flag against humanity.  "They" have to tell us what they plan to do in advance so we have the chance to bind it, restrain it, rebuke it and otherwise push it back through the gates of hell from whence it came.

When these things come up we do not agonize over them.  We know what they are interested in: killing, stealing and destroying.  Thats fine, they do them, we do us.  We continue operating in faith, hope, love, joy and peace, the Christian Operating System.  We must never be complacent again, ever.  While we remain on the face of the earth we need to do our jobs part of which is being salt and light.  Salt restrains rot and decay and light restrains darkness.  We also move through life as mobile firebases for the gospel or good news of our Lord Jesus Christ.  His Spirit lives in us and goes where we go.  When He reaches through us to touch other lives, they are going to want more of Him.  There is no amount of sex, money or power that can even scratch the surface of comparing what its like when the Lord our God shows up in our situation.  His Presence and Power are what its all about.

So continue seeking first His Kingdom.  Continue on the path of love.  Everything else will sort itself out in time.  We are dearly loved children ♡

Please join with your brother in praying over the prayer targets today.

Glory to God

grace and peace

Seek First The Kingdom of God

 Matthew 6:33

ESV:
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

1 Cor 13

13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Matthew 6:33 sits inside a passage about anxiety over food, clothes, and tomorrow. Jesus’ answer is not “try harder to relax.” It is: put the King’s rule and the King’s righteousness first, and the Father who already knows what you need will add what is required.

Seeking the Kingdom is not first a program. It is allegiance. It is asking, in ordinary decisions: Who is actually on the throne here — Jesus, or my fear, my appetite, my reputation, my timeline?

That is why the parables of the Kingdom sound so costly: hidden treasure, pearl of great price, a man who sells everything (Matthew 13:44–46). The King is not an accessory to a life we already planned.

A tightened definition

The Kingdom of God is the present and coming reign of Jesus Christ — wherever His will is done, His righteousness is loved, and His authority is confessed — beginning in the heart of the believer, extending through His people, and ending in the renewal of all things.

Wherever Jesus is on the throne, that is Kingdom ground. The invitation of the gospel is to come under that throne now, and to live as if the rest of creation will one day do the same.

Another Feast of Trumpets has come and gone without the Lord showing up unexpectedly for His Church.  That does not mean He cannot show up today however...That's the difference between the once per year coming out of the woodwork "this year the star alignments, and the day counts and all the rest of my garbage calculations say He comes back" and living every day as if the Lord can come back.  

We have a job to do while we are here, each and every day.  That job, starts and ends with love, His Love, agape love, decision based love.  Not feelings based, but decision based love.  Read, and re-read 1 Cor13, and 1 John 4 until you really, really, deeply "get it."  Nothing else matters.  1 Cor 13 tells us clearly you can be doing all the religious stuff in the world, you can look like a Christian rockstar, and yet without love its all a stinking pile of garbage, utterly worthless.

He Loved us, that is how this story started.  He died for us, in Love.  We are to be living out that love story now by both loving Him and each other and even our enemies.  That is our "job" or "ministry" or whatever other words you want to use for what we are doing here on earth.  What about "leveling up" into the best version of ourselves?  That's still front and center as well.  In love and obedience we are employing all of our talents, skills and abilities at higher and higher levels in order to fulfill the high calling each of us has in Christ.  We are centered in His Will, each and every day.  Every day, we are seeking the Kingdom of God.  Every day in Love we put Him first in our lives.  He sits on the throne within us.  Not our hopes, dreams, fears or diagnosis, none of that gets to sit where He sits.

One of the most encouraging things this servant can share with you today is that we live in the middle of a great big love story.  Yes, it might feel a lot different for those who reject the Kingdom of God, but this is all a love story.  Nobody gets into heaven without love.  He did what He did in Love, we do what we do in reciprocal love.  Not because we loved Him but He loved us first.  

The way we cut through the darkness in the days ahead is with His Love and His light.  We are salt and light in this world.  We are also love, as we are in Him.  God is Love.  God=Love is the same statement.  We are "in Christ" one with Christ who is one with the Father:

John 14:10–11
“Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

John 14:20
“In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”

John 15:4–5
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

John 17:21–23 (the heart of what you asked)
“that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

Related verses that say the same thing in other words:

1 John 4:13, 15–16
“By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. … Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

Colossians 3:3
“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Galatians 2:20
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

Romans 8:9–10
“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. … If Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”

The pattern is: the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father, the Son in us, we in Him — one life, not three separate rooms. John 17 is the place Jesus prays that this oneness would be visible.

As we proceed down the road ahead of us let us remember to put first things first.  His Kingdom comes first.  He is on the throne.  Faith, hope and love remain but the greatest of these is love.  We are salt and light in this world.  Let us "love in" to the Kingdom those who can be saved with the time the Lord God has given us.  

We must never go back to "business as usual" that was the life before the scamdemic.  Taking things for granted, taking time for granted was and is a great sin.  Let us do what we can today with what the Lord has given us to move forward His Kingdom and His Righteousness.  And we will do this in, with and through Love.

You are dearly loved children.  Keep the faith.

Please join with your brother in praying over the prayer targets today.

Glory to God

grace and peace