Seek First The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness

  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...

  Acts 4:13   Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.   I saw a clip from an interview with R.T. Kendall where he was asked this question, “After 70 years in ministry what would be your advice to a young R.T. Kendall?”  His answer was that though he himself has many degrees he would not recommend to young ministers to go to seminary.  He mentioned Acts 4:13. His recommendation was to do 2 things.  Pray a lot and know your Bible. He said that God wants us to know 2 things, His Word and His ways. He pointed out that how we know His ways or anyone’s ways is to spend time with them. This is not the first time that Acts 4:13 has jumped out to me. This time I ask myself the question do unbelievers know that I have been with Jesus?  The they that realized in Acts 4:13 wasn’t the church but unbelievers....