BEING STILL

We're currently buried under the 38 inches of lovely white fluff that fell gently from the sky all night, and all day, and all night..... I've been gone from the East Coast for so long, I'd almost forgotten what it was like.  It's FAST and it's CONSTANT MOTION.  When I first left New England for the Midwest, one of the first things I had to do was learn to t a l k s l o w e r.  'Cause I was born and raised in this fastpaceneverstoptotakeabreath beautiful New England style of living.

We get like that in our lives, don't we?  Full steam ahead and no slowing us down!  We've got things to DO don't you know.

And there sits that beautiful Psalm 46.  

be still..... the Lord whisper.....be still......and then you'll know that I am God.

Have you ever tried to sit very still for any length of time?  No talking, no motion, just BEING STILL?  It's hard!  Especially if you are always on auto-pilot set at 100 miles an hour. 

Yet, that is what is required if we are to truly get to know the Lord God. Building that relationship is the single most important thing and it takes time.  Our time.  God already knows us.  He made, formed and created us just for His own purpose and pleasure.  There isn't anything He doesn't know about us.  He knows our hearts better than we do! 

We need time to get to know Him.  To not just read the words written about Him, but to spend time coming to know Who He is, that we can trust Him, what His heart for us is, how He acts and interacts with us so we'll recognize His voice.

STOP!  Whatever it is your doing.  Whatever your calendar, or time clock or busyness.  Just stop. Take 5, 10 even 20 minutes, and spend it being still and seeking to hear His voice and KNOW HIM.

Simple, yes.  Effective?  YOU BET!  Knowing Him will revolutionize your life!

If you've not done so how about taking a moment to subscribe to this blog site?  Follow us on Twitter @TTTMinistries  Leave a comment about this or any of our other posts.  Contact us at turnthetideministry@live.com  Send us your prayer requests, praise reports or just say hello!  GOD BLESS YOU TODAY AND TOMORROW AND THE NEXT DAY AND THE NEXT......

BALANCE IN THE BODY OF CHRIST

When the teeter totter is not resting upon a proper fulcrum it cannot be rightly balanced.  When we, the Body of Christ are not balanced on the ROCK which is Christ, having Him as our Head and His command as our foundation, the Body likewise cannot find proper balance.

In many of our American churches the work of ministry is resting on the Pastor as its fulcrum, not only in expectation that the Pastor will do the work of the ministry while the sheep of the pasture show up on Sunday to sit for an hour, but many times also resting solely on the Pastors whims, desires and personal dictates.  Why is this?  People have abdicated their responsibility to be accountable to one another. Pastor “power” is running amok precisely because the people God intended to be contributing members of the Body see themselves as less  in spirit or ability than those few considered anointed as clergy.

Failure to individually adhere to Apostle Pauls exhortation in II Timothy 2:15 “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God a worker who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth”,  has left many ignorant and vulnerable to false teaching and the wolves in sheep’s clothing who devour them.  We sit passive in the face of the serious problems cropping up in our churches feeling helpless to stop it. Sin runs rampant and Christians are seen as powerless and ineffective to the very ones we are to example Christ before! 

Somewhere along the way we’ve lost sight of the truth that every born again believer who calls on the name of Jesus as Savior is to be a minister of the Gospel as set forth in Apostle Pauls second letter to the Corinthians 5:17-18 and 6:1 “we then as workers together...”  We have absented ourselves from our role in the Body of Christ and expect to be carried by arms that have no legs to support them!  Apostle Paul revealed clearly in First Corinthians 12:12 the importance of every member of the body doing his or her part. If we fail it is not just we but the whole Body who is failiing!

We turn Pastors, our fellow workers into some sort of celebrity figureheads and bow to them in worship as the foolish Israelites bowed to their own handmade golden calf in the wilderness rather than remain true to the Mighty God who delivered us from slavery to sin.  We place the full weight of ministry upon the imperfect shoulders of Pastors throughout our religious organizations and then we are angry with them at the imperfection that results. As quickly as we shoved them onto pedestals is just how quick  we are to join in the mocking of the world to knock them off with hardly a single prayer and replace them with more imperfect specimens. 

We’ve watered down our Lord Jesus' truth in a false effort to make it more palatable in order to appear we are tolerant and inclusive that the world in turn might find us more acceptable and agree to populate our church pews and include us in return. When that doesn't happen  we seem blind that how they do spitefully use us is really a screaming cry about how desperately in need they are for us to pray for them, to pray for their deliverance from the darkness that grips their souls!

Let me be clear in what I am saying here.  The world does not need Christians to include them, but they violently need us to recognize how lost they are and pray to Almighty God for their salvation.  Jesus sternly rebuked those who took the “work of ministry” to be treated as a light matter. He stressed this important point when He declared in Matthew 11:12 “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the VIOLENT take it by force.” 

Take what by force?  Take the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN by force!

The single most powerful force in the hands of a believer of Jesus Christ as Savior and God the Father as Creator is prayer.  Simple, powerful, zealous and energetic prayer laid as an offering upon the altar of Gods throne of grace.  Both in the physical realm and the spiritual realm prayer is our most powerful weapon, affecting both earth now and all Eternity in Heaven!

I do not point these things out from some lofty position of authority but on the contrary, from the position of lowly servant to the people of the Lord, a sinner saved by the gracious Savior. I cry out as the Holy Spirit of God that is in me reveals in order that we all might come together in unity. 

Church, our Head is calling us to obey Him more perfectly in the way of surrender that He might open a way to fuller understanding and intimate relationship with Him for all His sheep. We must continually strive to TURN TO HIM, JESUS, WHO IS THE HEAD OF THE BODY, in order to serve His purposes and not our own.

All Scripture is quoted from the New King James Version. 

Pastor Marie and her husband continue to travel the US, sharing the Gospel of Salvation through Christ alone and exhorting Unity in Christs Church across denominational lines.

You are welcome to comment on the opinion expressed here. 

Don’t miss a single Tide Turning Tale; subscribe to receive weekly updates to your inbox.

SURRENDER IS VICTORY!

Man did not create the true God for mans purposes, but the true God created man for His own purposes.

Hebrews 11:6 ….for he who comes to God must believe that He is…..

All the human race starts somewhere.   We have a beginning and we realize at some point in our life journey that we will most certainly have an end in this physical world.

If we haven’t already been introduced to the Creator of Heaven and earth it is certain that we will start thinking thoughts of this nature.  Once we do, we discover a choice must be made.  To believe or to reject.  How fearsome a thing is free will after all.  Rejection has its own consequence. 

This morning, let us consider the consequence of believing.

As we begin to learn and grow in understanding it is very possible and almost probable that we will find ourselves again in conflicts.  Conflicted between our new heart’s desire to please the Almighty God we’ve now chosen to abandon ourselves in obedience to and the old, fleshly desire of sin that continues to rear its ugly head and demand our attention.  Most of us might even come to agree that this is the hardest “fight” in the life journey of a believer.  When won, it is almost surely a long arduous battle which has left many scars.  We take courage in the knowledge that all believers face this fight.  We are enlivened to know we do not struggle in this alone, but our brothers and sisters in Christ struggle as well. 

But there is another battle.  One more subtle than the battle of flesh and spirit quarreling over our attention.  One deep in our heart we wrestle mightily with and are hard pressed to see anyone else’s struggle in order to be encouraged by it.  It is the struggle of FAITH, wrapped snugly around and intertwined with the struggle of understanding.  Being human, we want to SEE before we believe, but that is not an available option.  We form our thoughts and behaviors on our experiential history, but this struggle often defies that avenue of wisdom.

It is the struggle to reconcile ourselves to trust and believe and obey and surrender our complete and whole and total selves to a God we cannot see, hear, taste, touch or smell in the even harder circumstance of what appears to be contradictions.  He is a God of GRACE and MERCY, yet also a God of WRATH and RIGHTEOUSNESS.  He is kind and forgiving, while remaining completely HOLY and JUST.  He LOVES US, yet CHASTISES US in our disobedience sometimes quite severly.

And we are to TRUST HIM, not in spite of these seeming contradictions, but inside these very contradictions.  Brothers and Sisters, this is hard!  Hard to walk by faith, hard to live in obedience.  Yet this is the place of SURRENDER.  Not blind faith, not foolish faith.  Perhaps not even faith at all.  Simple SURRENDER, embracing the spiritual knowledge that when one comes to the Lord, one must believe that He is…..AND that He is a REWARDER of those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)

In the diligent seeking is where you will find, not easy to follow directions, but the strength and grace necessary to SURRENDER.  Consider the idea in this sentence deeply and well:

Man did not create the true God for mans purposes, but the true God created man for His own purposes. ~ Reverend Marie Krebs

You are welcome to click on and share your comments.  We welcome interaction with our Readers. Click and begin sharing!