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In Deuteronomy 7 God says he keeps his covenant of love to a thousand generations to those who love him. God has given us a New Covenant of love. God is keeping his covenant commitment to steadfast love for us and we are to remain in his love and let it flow through us to others.
Ezekiel 16 has a beautiful passage about how God shows his covenant love. He talks about how he cared for Israel, took care of them, and made them beautiful. God is the source of all beauty.
Here is the passage from Ezekiel 16...
4 On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. 5 No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.
6 “‘Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I...
Pentecost was earlier this week and it was the midpoint of the year on God's calendar. It was the transition of the year where the two sides come together, which reminds us of our covenant with God. In Ephesians 3 the apostle Paul prayed for the people to be rooted and established in love, and in Deuteronomy 7 God said he gave the people a covenant of love. God has given us this covenant of love and this time of year is a reminder that we must be rooted and established in it. With trees they must grow a whole root system underneath the ground to support the tree and an established tree is one that is grown, fixed, immovable, and consistent.
This time of year is a reminder to be steadfast and fixed in our covenant of love with God. A covenant is a partnership or agreement where the two sides come together. Our covenant of love is to receive God's steadfast love and let it flow through us to others.
This is a special communion meditation for forgetting troubles and painful memories. Sometimes in life we go through painful or traumatic experiences that can keep replaying in our minds over and over for years after the event. And there may be certain triggers such as words, smells, sounds, places, etc that trigger these memories to start stirring up on the inside again. Nothing is impossible with God and he can make us forget these troubles and painful memories. God can make all things new and give us a fresh start.
When we go through these types of experiences in life they are usually times of very high emotions and these emotions seem to embed them deeply into our hearts and souls. In this communion meditation we are going to ask God to help us remember these things no more.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, I pray for all those watching, listening, or reading this and their families, friends, and all those connected to them along with our church and...
Winning the Battle at the Gate (Communion Meditation)
Sometimes we have to win the battle at the gate. The gate into our lives is the mind and imagination. Winning the battle at the gate is winning the battle to stay in peace and joy when thoughts of fear, doubt, discouragement, stress, sadness etc come into our minds. It is also winning the battle to stay in the present moment with God when imaginations try to get us to dwell on bad events of the past or worry about the future.
One of the greatest ways to win the battle at the gate is by taking communion. This idea of winning the battle at the gate by taking communion comes from my book The 8th Date: God's Operating System for Abundant Life. Here is an excerpt from the book.
The Battle At The Gate
In Genesis 22:17, after Abraham had committed to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, God tells Abraham, “I will surely bless you and multiply your offspring like the stars of the sky and the sand on the...
Communion Meditation
Recently my youngest daughter brought me a pocket sized New Testament and asked me to read her a Bible story. Her favorite Bible story is Jesus walking on the water and when I flipped open the Bible it fell to that story. In the story it says Jesus was going to keep walking past the disciples in the boat until they called out to him. A similar thing happened on the road to Emmaus when the disciples turned to go into a house and it says Jesus was going to keep walking until they invited him in. Jesus will often wait until we call out to him and reach out to him. When he was walking on the water Peter called out to him and asked to come out to him. Peter started walking on the water, but then he got his eyes on the wind and the waves and started to sink. When he called out for Jesus to save him, the Bible says Jesus stretched out his hand to caught him. Jesus lifted Peter up out of the water and brought him safely back to the boat.
We...
Here is a communion meditation from Psalm 25. In the Abundant Life Blueprint the most important thing we do is daily communion and when combined with meditation it is very powerful. In Hebrew meditation means to mutter, recite, rehearse, and growl. In Psalm 25 are some powerful verses to begin to rehearse and recite to remind us of God's covenant of love so that his love comes into our minds and out of our mouths at the time when we need it. Here are a some individual verses to meditate on along with the entire Psalm down below.
10 All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful
toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.14 The Lord confides in those who fear him;
he makes his covenant known to them.
15 My eyes are ever on the Lord,
for only he will release my feet from the snare.
Here is the entire Psalm.
Psalm 25
Of David.
1 In you, Lord my God,
I put my trust.2 I trust in you;
do not let me be put to shame,
nor let my enemies triumph over...
Today is the day of Pentecost. On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was given. He was sent to be our guide and help navigate our lives. Pentecost is the 4th feast of Israel and in Genesis on the 4th day God created the sun, moon, and stars which we use for time, signs, seasons, and navigation.
When we navigate our lives, we can rely on God's Holy Spirit to guide us into the way of love. When navigating our lives I think there are three paths we can choose when faced with tough decisions.
Path 1 = Retaliating, quiting, leaving, doing evil back to those who wrong us.
Path 2 = Doing nothing, withdrawing your presence, holding things in and being bitter and frustrated.
Path 3 = Choosing to grow in our love no matter what is going on around us.
Pentecost is a reminder that God has given us a covenant of love. He chose path 3. He could have retaliated against us, left us, or withdrew his presence from us but he chose the way of love and...
God sees us with the eyes of grace, through what Jesus did. To see with the eyes of grace takes being present. For example, God remembers our sins no more. He is not seeing us in the view of the past but in the present.
Pentecost is tomorrow and it is the midpoint of the year on God's calendar. Whenever I think of the midpoint I see it as a reminder to be more present. Presence is one of the biggest keys to seeing grace flow in our lives. To see with the eyes of grace means being more present, letting go of the past, and seeing other people in the present moment not holding anything from the past against them. We must also give ourselves this same grace.
There is a phrase that appears over and over in the Bible which is, " Let me find grace in your eyes." To find grace in someones eyes means that they are with you and for you. That they want to help you and bless you. Because of Jesus we have grace in God's eyes.
We must receive that we have...
In the temple of the Old Testament there was a table in the middle room for the bread of the presence. Notice this was in the middle room. Pentecost is coming up on Monday May 17th and it is the midpoint of the year on God's calendar. Whenever thinking of the middle I think of the power of presence because it is in the middle of the past and the future.
God is in the present moment, because he says I Am, not I was or will be. There is often a heaviness that comes in our minds and spirits when we worry about the future,think of regrets, or ways people have wronged us in the past, but when we get more present and aware of God's presence everything feels lighter. I think of joy as my indicator that I am present, because in God's presence there is fullness of joy.
In the video above there is a communion meditation and an important concept of communion is bringing the sacrifice of Jesus into the present moment. The bread in communion of symbolic of the...
Quick Summary
Pentecost is coming up on May 17th and in the story of Pentecost all of the people were gathered together in one accord when the Holy Spirit came. They were unified as one. Pentecost is the midpoint of the year on God's calendar and it is a reminder to create a bridge to become more united with the people around us. In our lives it can be easy to become divided because we focus and meditate on all of the areas where we disagree with others but to create unity takes focusing on the areas where we do agree and building from there.
Communion Meditation
In Ephesians chapter 4 the subtitle of the chapter is Unity in the Body of Christ. It tells us to be completely humble, gentle, patient, bearing with each other in love and to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. When the body is unified and every part is doing its work properly the body builds itself up in love
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