Seek First The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness

  In my Bible reading this morning 1 John 3:16 jumped out to me, “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” We know Love, Agape, because of Jesus laying down His life for us.  I believe that this is more than just His dying on the cross.  Was He not laying down His whole life before the cross for us?  He was a King but was born in a stable and not a palace. He was God and yet He humbled Himself for our sakes. Philippians 2:5-8 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Kings have servants who wait on them but He instead was the one serving Matthew 20:28 just as the Son of Man did n

  The Lesson of the Water Line   We often blame God for not providing or blessing us because we are not seeing the desired results just like I blamed my well water pump for not providing the water pressure when I turned on the faucet.  The real problem was that I didn’t have a big enough main waterline and the second problem was that a clogged had developed in a small section of the metal water pipe I was using. Once I replaced the clogged section and the main waterline with a line 2/3 larger, I have water pressure greater than I ever hoped.   God is infinite in His resources and power.  If what we desire is not flowing through us to produce the outflow/results we desire it isn’t God’s fault, there is either a clog or “water line” that is restricted the volume.  As I learned with my water line, it doesn’t matter how much pressure is moving the water if the channel for it to flow through doesn’t allow a sufficient volume to come through it won’t produce much.   If we are lacking anythin

  Purpose, Time and Season.   Ecclesiastes 3:1 To everything  there is  a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:   I know it the context of the Church the word season has become way over used in the last 10 years.  There was a preacher, about 5 years ago, that anytime he would get up to preach my children would make it a game to count how many times he would use the word season during his sermon.   Having grown up farming seasons had a little different meaning for me.  Knowing the season and the proper time with in the season for doing things was very important for it dictated our income.  As the verse above states to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose.   For a moment I want to look at this in reverse order.  Purpose, Time and Season. Purpose is what we are to be doing.  Time is exact when that purpose is to come into being and season is marking of the beginning and the end of everything regarding purpose.  To help explain what I just said let us take the sp

  Logos and Rhema-A lesson about verifying things for myself.     I have heard for years that Logos was the written Word of God and that Rhema was the spoken Word of God. I believed this to be true but until a couple of weeks I had never looked up the definitions for myself.  I just took other people’s word for it. When I actually looked up the definitions for myself it was another lesson on why it is always important to verify thing for myself.    Following definitions are from Strongs. Logos-something  said  (including the thought); by implication, a topic (subject of discourse), also reasoning (the mental faculty) or motive; by extension, a computation; specially, (with the article in John) the Divine Expression (i.e. Christ):--account, cause, communication, × concerning, doctrine, fame, × have to do, intent, matter, mouth, preaching, question, reason, + reckon, remove, say(-ing), shew, × speaker, speech, talk, thing, + none of these things move me, tidings, treatise, utterance, wor

  Fall Into The Lord   This morning, I heard a sister in the Lord use this term.  She used it in describing her morning time with the Lord.  In this context the falling is not from an accident or by happenstance but by intent. Like when you are tired and you just fall into the bed.  You do it on purpose, by choice.  Many times, people speak of the reason that they married someone was that they just fell in love and then the next thing you hear they get divorced because they just fell out of love.  Sadly, many people treat the Lord and a relationship with Him the same way.  Without intention and based solely upon their emotions.  God’s love is one that is not based upon emotion.  It may, and often does, stir up our emotions and an emotional response but it is not an emotion.  It is a choice.  God made and continues to make the choice to love us.  The love spoke of in 1 Corinthians 13 is not speaking of a love that is natural to humans or that originates from humans.  It is from God and