Compassion

Feeling what another person is feeling, without regard to your own personal feelings is the mark of true compassion.  How many of us can even begin to experience such emotion?

Our own feelings swallow up every thought and direct every emotion.  Our own experiences shadow every thought and emotion.  Our own concerns outweigh concern for others.

Unless we are led by the Holy Spirit of the living God.

Through the Spirit working in and through us, we find our own self set aside, and are able to fully, compassionately be consumed with honest care for the hurt and needful hearts of others.

It has always amazed me how some people are so much better at this than I've ever been.

Until I yielded my heart to God, and sought His heart for the people He is calling to repentance and new life in Christ.  I can't say when it happened.  I cannot tell how it happened.

Surrender to the Holy Spirit brings about miraculous occurrence that there is NO earthly, physical explanation for.  Within the power of the Holy Spirit is where we truly begin to bless, minister to and love other people as Jesus loved, unselfishly, no personal agenda, pouring our heart out in order to fill it with compassionate empathy for the need of others.

Gods Word in Action

A place; a season; a job

In the Old Testament book of I Chronicles, chapters 25, 26 & 27 lay out a plan that includes a specific function for every family and each member of those families for the entire tribe of Israel.  Each one supplying what they are gifted and anointed to do best, means that the entire tribe of Israel has all of it's needs met by its own members.  They don't need anyone outside of themselves, when they function in the way God set them up to do.  He is the Head, they are the body.

The Apostle Paul sets up a similar idea in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12.

Christ is the Head of the Body, and we each individually as followers of Christ have gifts and are anointed to function in a way that builds up and strengthens the Body of Christ.  No one gift or function is of any greater significance or importance than another, but all are necessary to the healthy working of the body as a whole.

Praise God, Who is Wisdom beyond our understanding, and always does what is BEST for His children!

The Great HOPE

When I first began to listen, really listen to others teach the precepts and doctrine of the Bible, it inspired me and stirred such a passion in my heart!  How did these people KNOW these things?  How could they be so sure?

As a young child I began reading the Bible, and having no real life experience, most of what I read escaped my understanding completely.  BUT... a layer of wisdom was being sowed in my heart.  As I continued to read, and study, and listen to others, and study some more and read some more I discovered that a great deal of the Bible revealed itself, quite simply, within itself.

Take as an example the great problem of SIN.  Having listened to the teaching of man we come to understand that we each are sinners in need of a Savior, and God provided Jesus as our Savior.  We are blessed at the Great Salvation but are then deceived into condemnation, believing falsely that having once obtained the Great Salvation we are no longer worthy of it, can never be worthy of it and must pay a price, over and over again, in what appears to be a vain hope that we'll squeak by and sneak into heaven.

NAH... that just ain't the truth my friends!

Here's a simple truth in Gods Word taken from the Old Testament.

Jeremiah 3: 1 They say "If a man divorces his wife, and she goes from and becomes another man's, may he return to her again?  would not that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot with many lovers; Yet return to Me" says the Lord.

If the "text" for the sermon were to stop there, we would only grasp how woefully we lack, how we fall so far short.  We might say we believe that God forgives us, certainly, but there would linger an edge of fear, a slice of doubt that could keep us enslaved to our sin as a burden that, though lifted, the shadow would remain to cloud our life still.

Continuing to read we will find within the same passage of scripture these words of truth:

Jeremiah 3: 12 -13  ...For I am merciful, says the Lord; I will not remain angry forever.  Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against the Lord your God....

Forgiveness is a complete and utter thing with God.  He requires that we acknowledge our sin in order that we will take responsibility and turn away from sin.  He doesn't hold it over our heads, count it against us forever or bring it up to humiliate us.  He throws it in a sea of forgetfulness, He separates us from it as far as the east is from the west and He remembers it no more.  GRACE.

In His Word, the Bible, we find we can indeed have the Great Salvation.  In our human frailty we find in Him we have Great Hope of His strength being our strength.

Be encouraged today!

IF you have confessed your sin to God, and turned away, repented of it, He has forgiven you and you walk, not burdened or shadowed, but FREE indeed as Christ Jesus declared!  Truly free to live in newness of heart, strength of purpose and JOY as you fulfill the great and mighty plan God has for your life!

IF you have not yet taken this step yet, today can be the day of your rebirth as a new creation in Christ, set free from enslaving sin and moving forward in the Grace of the Lord our God.

This is our Great Hope, to live eternally through Christ in God.  Allelujah!

Want to know more, understand more, gain more and receive all that God has for you?  Read, dear friend, His matchless wonderful words of life and love and hope and joy found in His book that we call the Bible.

It isn't just "a" book, it is THE BOOK.
Through it for centuries God speaks to those
who will LISTEN.

BFF

We all have that "Best Friend Forever" right?  and that person has never, ever let us down, have they?  What?  They have?  There has been a time when even with the BEST of intentions, not meaning to, our BFF let us DOWN?!?!

Yes, it happens.  Our closest confident repeats words whispered in confidence.  Our dearest friend just isn't "there" for us when we feel like we need them the most.  

Or, worse, it's been US who is the BFF that let someone down!  We didn't mean to, we didn't want to, but our own needs, our own lives just got in the way of "being there" for them.

But there is a friend who truly NEVER lets us down.  Who is always present, always loving, always seeking our best interest and not His own.

But we miss it if we think that friendship comes with no price.  As in ANY friendship, it is a two way street. We expect that our earthly friends will have expectations toward us, because we also have expectations toward them.  Yet there is a friend who willingly gives far more than He ever gets - and He expects no more!

John 15: 9-17

9 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.

11: “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. 12: This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13: Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. 14: You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. 15: No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. 16: You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. 17: These things I command you, that you love one another."

This Best Friend Forever really is Eternal!