Almost 1/3 Through!

So we are almost 1/3 of the way through this year! I was just pondering that and getting excited about next year. Of course this is a great year, but I am really REALLY excited about starting Bible School at the start of the new year! Golly me, I can not even describe all that God has been doing in me and it is incredible to behold. He just blows me away. All praise be to Him :-).

Excerpt from "Experiencing the Holy Spirit."

Oh, Christian, learn at this point that your life daily depends on God's will, on God's grace, and on God's omnipotence. Yes, every moment God must work in your inner life and strengthen you by His Spirit; otherwise, you cannot live as He would have you live. Just as no creature in the natural world can exist for a moment if God does not work in it to sustain its life, so the gift of the Holy Spirit is the pledge that God Himself is to work everything in us from moment to moment.

Learn to know your entire, blessed dependence on God. Recognize the claim you have on Him as your Heavenly Father to begin in you a life in the mighty strengthening of the Spirit and to maintain it without the interruption of a single moment.

Paul tells these believers what he prays for in their behalf in order that they may know what they have need of and ask for it themselves. Expect everything from God alone. Bow your knees, ask, and expect from the Father His manifestation to you of the riches of His glory. Ask and expect that He would strengthen you with might by His Spirit who is already in you as an unknown, hidden, and slumbering seed.

Let this become the desire and confidence of your soul: "God will fill me with the Spirit: God will strengthen me through the Spirit with His Almighty energy." Let your whole life be daily permeated by this prayer and this expectation.

The Gospel

I have been thinking so much about the Gospel recently. I just want to grab the shoulders of those around me and shake them yelling "Turn to Jesus and be saved!" I know that would probably not be the most effective way to lead them to Christ, but it still feels like all I have left. I see people around me every day and I pray, "Lord God, please turn that person's heart toward You if they don't know You already." I am a sort of silent prayer warrior. I hope God takes note of those prayers and works in those random peoples' lives. I especially hope He works in the hearts of those around me who I see every day and yet know are rejecting Him. THEY NEED HIM AND THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW IT! Or maybe they do realize it but are just putting on a cool exterior to try and mask the fact. I want them to break down and give in! I want to see them turn their hearts to Him and know that my prayers have not been in vain! I trust that God takes note of how I try to spread His Gospel to those around me, but I want to see salvation. It is like I see a dark cloud over these people, as they work, as they talk. Every day it bothers me more and more. I know that I need faith that it is all in God's hands, but that is little comfort when beholding those who are [currently] damned.

Jesus paid your price! Don't let His suffering be in vain! You don't even know what you are missing both in this life and the life to come!

I just want to shake some sense into them.

Life...

I am listening to music from years ago... it's incredible how music can instantly bring back so many memories...

I'm remembering visiting Lockridge Park as a child with the family... remembering Dad's old friend Joel... remembering a rainy day and a fort that was nothing more than a pile of warped lumber... remembering Daddy's ankle popping while playing soccer, pulling up handfulls of grass while in so much pain he could not speak... remember him in a cast working with Mark Zook... remembering plastic frogs in my pockets... trapper keepers... Mother dancing to a song that she loves... swimming in the lake... Daddy surprising us one one evening and taking us to an airfield to each take individual flights with a pilot over our house... school uniforms... tea time and movies alone with Mother... Chick-Fil-A... the Bible... Hannah...

If anything is clear, it's that my life is not my own. I thank God everyday for His sovereignty. I have seen His hand in every piece of my life thus far... and am excited to see what He has around the next corner for us.

Foundational Truth: The Separation of Church and State

"Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,
and to God the things that are God's."
Luke 20.25

These are the immortal words of Jesus Christ given in the Gospel of Luke. In this simple verse, Jesus makes a clear distinction between God and Caesar, or what we would consider Church and State. Each has distinct responsibilities from God and have been given authority to fulfill those responsibilities.

Throughout history, we have seen this distinction blurred and the results were always disastrous. In the Middle Ages, we saw the Catholic church take on the responsibilities of civil government (the state) and the world saw bloody crusades, oppression, widespread poverty, and total abandonment of the proper functions of the Church. On the other hand, we have seen governments attempt to control the church for political means and especially in recent history have seen government claim responsibilities that are rightfully left to the church. These have caused corruption, poverty, persecution and pointless bloodshed. If each party had respected the other and each fulfilled its proper functions, many of history's greatest disasters could have been avoided. So what are their respective responsibilities?

Let us start with the church, or the Christian religion in general. In Matthew 28.19-20, Jesus lays out three responsibilities: (1) Discipleship (2) Baptism (3) Teaching. Also, James 1.27 says, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." So those are some basic, biblical responsibilities of the Church. Now what are the responsibilities of civil government? Romans 13.4 tells us that God has given civil government authority to be "an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." So, to put it in a nutshell, civil government has been given the responsibility of protecting good people by punishing evildoers.

We must always make a proper distinction between the Church and the State. They each have been given authority to fulfill certain responsibilities, and in any case where one attempts to usurp the authority of the other there is nothing but trouble and pain. We must hold fast to the wisdom of Jesus and render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. That is truth.

Reading, Studying, Talking

I was excited to start Bible studying with my carpool buddy, Dan, today. The plan is that when he is driving (every other day), I will lead as we read, study, and talk about the Scriptures. We decided to start in Genesis and work our way through. We will move relatively quickly through the Bible without much commentary, just presenting the Word with limited interruption except for short comments to aid in understanding. I started in Genesis a while back and am in Psalms now, so it is especially fun to go back and start over after having only recently been there. And it also helps in preparing notes for our study :-). So this morning we started in Genesis 1 and worked through the end of chapter 3. The plan is to finish chapter 5 by the time we get home tonight. I am very excited about how God is going to use this extra study time in our lives.

I am at a point in my life where I absolutely can not get enough of the Scriptures. In Bible college, I read and studied all the same things, yet it was like there was a cloud over my eyes and I could hardly even read the Bible. My eyes would dart all over the pages and I would read the same paragraphs over and over again. It was so incredibly frustrating that after leaving school I did ZERO reading (not just the Bible) for two years! But a couple of months ago, God unlocked something in my brain and for the first time in my life I can not just read, but I can actually absorb the Scriptures and other books on the Bible. The exact same books that I physically/mentally COULD NOT read a few years ago, I am now able to absorb quickly and recall easily.

THANK YOU!!!

What's In The Bible?

This is an exciting new series from Phil Vischer, the creator of Veggie Tales. I bought the first DVD in the series today and am very impressed. I am excited to see the rest.