Seek First The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness

  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...

  The Presence, glory, face and ways of God For the last 5 or 6 weeks I have been on a journey that has become a quest that is transforming into this overwhelming desire to dwell/abide in the presence of the Father.  To live in His Presence and glory, to seek His face and to know His ways. I feel it in the depths of my being that there is a level of closeness, of intimacy with the Lord that I have yet not experienced but that I must not only experience but abide/dwell/inhabit/live in.   I begin, I think, to understand the depths of what Moses was expressing in Exodus 33:12-18.  These words are not just religious words but they are words that I believe come from the very depths of Moses soul. I believe that he is crying this out to the Lord because he knows that there is no other way for him to go on.  Then Moses said to the Lord, “See, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people.’ But You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You...

 I recently listened to a mom speak about her teenage child who is in active addiction. This child goes missing often and wherever they go it is a rough place because when they come back they are all cut up. As this mother was speaking about this Mark 16:17a came to mind. “And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons;. “ I don’t believe that casting out demons is listed first by mistake. Deliverance is supposed to be a normal part of every believer’s life.  Did you know that 12 step groups are only about 1 percent effective in getting people out of addiction? How effective has anti poverty programs been?  What if we started seeing things that are going on around us differently? What if we saw addiction as a need for deliverance? What if we saw poverty as a need for deliverance? What if we started seeing the demonic strongholds for what they are started casting them out?  Hosea 4:6 mentions that God’s people are destroyed because...