Includes...
We are moving into the cooler time of the year when many transitions happen. Don’t be surprised if God starts shifting things around. If you are in a leadership position, there will often be some shifts in people during this time. Transitions can be messy and some people will choose to leave or do something different during this time. During transitions, stay calm and be at peace because they can often be overwhelming, but you can be assured that God is working it all out for good. God transitions things slowly so that nothing tears or breaks. If things feel like they are slowing down the most important thing you can do is stay positioned in thanksgiving, praise, forgiveness, and love and keep doing what you know you can do TODAY.
Sometimes when transitions happen people freak out and you may see a side of them that you've never seen before. If this happens make sure to be gracious and gentle with them, the way God is with us.
We just finished going...
As part of the Daily Communion Meditations we have been asking God to expand our capacity to receive from him and to flow through us so that we are a blessing everywhere we go. To expand capacity is to expand the ability for more work to flow through the system. Think of this like a pipeline of living water and in the living water is everything God has... His love, peace, joy, wisdom, spirit, energy, health, and much more.
Recently, I have been gaining some insight into how this happens based on the 4 fundamentals we have been discussing. Here are the 4 fundamentals we review before taking communion each day along with how they impact our capacity for God to flow more through us.
1. Positioned in the light
Positioned in the light means being positioned in forgiveness, thanksgiving, praise, and love. In the light God has given us everything he has and we are either in the light or we are not. There is no middle ground. This step opens us to be...
Love for God and people is supposed to be the underlying motivation for everything we do. What we do is important but how and why we do things also matters. If we think about this...God is love, so to be motivated by love is to be motivated by God. Love was God's motivation for sending Jesus.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says...
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
This reminds me of something I once read in the book "The Greatest Salesman in the World," by Og Mandino. He said that one of the most important keys to selling successfully was saying..." I love you, I love you," in your...
In my time of training clients in the gym relationships and results were both important. Good relationships were needed for clients to trust us but it was also important that they saw progress and got results.
In our walk with God, both relationship and results are needed. It all starts with our relationship with him. As we connect with him we get to know him and trust in him more and more. This connection with him should produce fruit in our lives. Jesus said that if we abide in him our lives would produce much fruit. But, Jesus also gave the example of rebuking people doing miraculous things in his name that didn't really know him. God wants to make our lives fruitful, multiply us, and increase us greatly, but it's our relationship and connection with him that produces all of this.
God wants our relationship with him to lead to a transformed life that is a living testimony of his love and faithfulness. Everything comes out of relationship with him....
Recently I was reading Romans 4 in the MSG version and thought it was really powerful. Here is Romans 4:1-9 MSG.
Trusting God
4 1-3 So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we’re given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, “Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.”
4-5 If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that...
Sometimes in life we have points of contention with others. A point of contention is an area of struggle, strife, and opposition. It is the main point of debate, controversy, or argument. These points of contention are very important, because even though they can be small things that are argued over they can have much bigger effects. The other day we said that points lead to waves, which leads to cycles.
Small points of contention can cause side effects through our whole life and lead to a vicious cycle that plays out over and over. However, the good news is that if we will learn to handle points of contention God's way they can become a point of trusting in God that is like the first domino that sets a series of good things into motion.
In Genesis 13 is the story of Abraham and Lot separating. They had grown wealthy and their herdsmen were fighting over the land. Abraham knew God's way wasn't strife so he suggested that they separate and he gave Lot...
Psalm 18 is a song of praise after God delivered David from all of his enemies. It tells us God's unfailing love, faithfulness, and power.
This is a longer Psalm so here are some of the highlights to meditate upon today.
I am praying for you.
Daniel
One of the most important things I feel God has been wanting me to teach my children lately is a concept called Points, Waves, and Cycles. This concept is found everywhere in science. It is a powerful principle God has built into the world. Here is how the principle works...
Shifts or changes at or in one specific point, leads to waves or surges of events/energy, that lead to bigger cycles of things.
One little shift for the good or bad can lead to bigger waves that lead to bigger cycles whether vicious or virtuous. For example, yesterday my daughter and I were studying earthquakes. A shift at one point(the epicenter), leads to surges of seismic waves, and these waves move out in circular fashion leading to destruction, tsunamis, etc. The same is true with a drop of water as can be seen in the picture above.
This principle is a gift God has given us and here is how I think we can apply it...
We all have issues and problems that need to be solved in...
This is a time of year when God often opens doors to the next level. But the next level often doesn't look like what we think it's going to look like. As God opens doors it will take faith to go through, because there might be the temptation to doubt whether you have what it takes. But, the key is to look at what he can do through you.
The next level will probably require a greater level of work, productivity, and responsibility but not in the way we typically think. The next level with God is about learning how to get out of his way more and let him increase your work, productivity, etc. It is about learning to rest, trust, and rely on him more so that he can flow more through you. You may or may not have what it takes... but he does and nothing is impossible for him.
I am praying for you.
Daniel
At our local church there was once a sermon series on getting both bigger and smaller at the same time. As any organization or community grows bigger it must also grow smaller at the same time by paying attention to the little things going on in peoples lives.
It's amazing to think about how big God is but also how interested he is in the little details of our lives. Sometimes it's the little thoughtful details that mean so much. When we see God come through in both the big and the little things it helps us to know his love and faithfulness even more. Small acts of kindness and love are much more powerful than we often think.
In today's communion let it be a time of gratitude for how big God is, but also how much he cares about the little things in our lives. And today we are asking for his help to become more like him in this... To grow and expand but to also grow in the little thoughtful details and acts of love that can mean so much to...
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