Seek First The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness

  The Ascension Today is celebrated as Ascension Day.  The book of Acts in chapter 1 verse 8 records the last words spoken by Jesus to His disciples as such: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”  We Pentecostals/Charismatics/Full Gospel people love to focus on the “shall receive power” part of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon a believer.  What we overlook or even misunderstand is the purpose for that power.  It is for being WITNESSES to the world around us.  Our purpose is not to hold up in our church buildings to impress one another with our Spiritual gifts.  It is to GO into all the world and make disciples of ALL nations.  The police don’t sit around the police stations waiting on the criminals to turn themselves in, the firemen don’t wait around the fireho...

  I had the great privilege of meeting with John Abbe this morning before work.  (Even though I got myself messed up and was about 30 minutes late John gave me much grace and waited for me. Thank you again John) We had a very interesting conversation about unity in the body of Christ.  As I have been meditating over this conversation  Ephesians 4:13 came to mind specifically the first part.   “ till we all  come to the unity  of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;”   There are several things that jump out to me now.  We come to unity.  Unity doesn’t just happen it is something that we come to.  It seems to me that this has the implication that unity has an aspect that is dependent upon us to choose.  I would say that many times where there isn’t unity it is because we haven’t made the choice...

  Conversation   Have you ever just had a conversation with the Lord?  I mean a real two-sided conversation, one in which you and He both got to speak?  How about one of those two-way conversations that isn’t about anything deep but just a simple conversation like you would have with your spouse, or a friend?  I wonder if we understand that frequency of conversation tells a lot about the quality and depth of relationship that we have not just with people but with the Lord? The slogan that I have heard in the church most of my life is that it is not a religion it is a relationship. While this is the truth of how things are supposed to be, I wonder how many of us really have quality in that relationship. Sadly, I think that we don’t spend the time developing the relationship we have in Christ through genuine conversation.  We have settled for a acquaintance level relationship instead of the intimate one that is made available to us.  ...

  The Price and Cost for more of God and His Presence I was reading an account of a preacher’s experience that I had previous heard him describe before in a sermon. Thought the account was familiar to me this time though it hit different.   The experience was during a time he had spent months desiring and seeking more of God and His Presence.  There were two statements that the preacher made from this account that the Lord highlighted for me.  The first was “My request for more of God carried a price” and the second was from his cry to the Lord “I must have more of You at any cost!”. These statements when I had heard them before sounded very true and I totally had agreed with them.  In fact, they had inspired me.  This time, though, was different.  This time there was at first, for a moment fear and not a Godly fear.  No, it was a fear that the price I would have to pay would be the cost of the life of one or mor...

  Fragrance   2 Corinthians 2:14-15   Now thanks  be  to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.  15  For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.   Today in a prayer meeting someone mentioned the word fragrance as they were praying. The first thing that popped into my head was of a college student who had come into my store yesterday.  This young man had gone a little overboard, in my opinion, with his cologne.  It was so strong that I could smell him coming.  I also have customers who come in to the store with a different type of fragrance, one that isn’t pleasant.  In both cases you can smell them before you even see them and also the fragrance sticks around for a while after they leave.  The point of this being that fragrance influences and ...

  Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Couple of thoughts on this verse.  Many if not all of us live this in reverse. In our time of need we come boldly to the throne looking to obtain mercy and grace to help us.  There is no mention of coming and going. The invitation is to come and stay. Then from this place of abiding in His presence when the trouble comes we’ll have the mercy and grace to deal with it.  Being saved doesn’t put us in the intimate place automatically. If it did this verse wouldn’t have been written nor James 4:8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Salvation gives us access to come to the throne and to draw as close as we desire.  We often seek God’s Presence as away of obtaining things we have made goals of. Grace, mercy, anointing, healing, power, prosperit...