“Sometimes I hate me and that is why it is so amazing that Jesus still loves me!”  I guess when I really stop and think about it, I don’t hate myself so much, but I hate my ways, because even with the best of intentions, I still manage to really mess things up.  I know that I am supposed to love and that love begins with me, but sometimes it is really tough.

That love word get’s bounced around a lot.  Some people guard and are afraid to let the love flow, so rarely do they give or receive.  Some throw love out to everyone and everything, with very little thought.  They might say:  ”I love you!” and in the next breath:  ”I love pizza!”  So when we throw that love word out – what exactly does that mean?

The goal is to let love flow into, through and out of our lives.  Not just any love, but the real love of our Creator.  The Bible tells us that God is love.  When we receive Him, we receive love.  This love changes us from the inside out by enabling us to become all that we were created to become, according to His plans and desires.

The older I get, the more I realize that I need to get this love thing right.  It is very important and it matters more than most of us realize.  The older I get, the more I realize how wrong I’ve gotten it.  I thought I was loving.  I expressed my love, but a lot of times, sad to say, it probably was not a whole lot more than just words.  The older I get, the more I realize that the love talked about in the Scriptures is the real deal and I’ve got a lot of work to do to get it right.

The first part of the work I have to do is taking what love is, comparing it to what I have and figuring out the difference, so that I know what kind of work I need to do.  1 Corinthians 13:4-8 gives us a beautiful description of what love is:  “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails…”

Wow!  We’ve got some work to do and when we do it, we are sure to live blessed!

One of the most powerful gifts ever given to man is the gift of trust.  God has given us the ability to trust in Him and as we learn to trust in Him, we find the answers to the questions that really need answering.

Whatever you are facing, simply learn to say:  ”I trust you!”  As you learn to say “I trust you!” in whatever comes your way, you will begin to see your Creator at work even in the challenges of life.  Realize that your Creator is in control and allows whatever flows to flow to and through you, if you will trust and allow it.

Learning to say and believe “I trust you.”, enables you to see things from the divine perspective.  Trust chases away the darkness with the light of God’s universal presence and power.  Fear, anxiousness and worry cannot exist in the light of His presence.  Challenging circumstances become dynamic opportunities for growth when we learn to affirm our trust in Him.

Open your life to receive blessings gratefully, challenges hopefully and your life will learn to trust, and trust will strengthen the most important relationship of your life, which will in turn strengthen and grow the meaningfulness of all your other relationships.

Trust and live blessed!

Change is the real constant!  Change is an expression that life is still going and evidence that there is purpose and meaning to our existence.  If you are paying attention then you realize that there is a cycle of life and that we are all apart.  Things come and things go.  We often view the coming and going as temporary, but in reality, it never stops – it is a constant.  We can count on the coming and going everyday of our human experience.

When something comes to an end, we often want to mourn.  It may be the closing of a phase in your life, the ending of a relationship, the completion of a project, the termination of a meaningful connection or death itself.  The wisdom writer of Ecclesiastes 3:1 puts it this way: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:”

Realizing that this process of coming and going in life should produce rejoicing, not sadness in our lives and living.  We should live in peace knowing that we are a part of the whole.  Everything comes from the Creator and everything must return to the Creator, for the Creator to do with as He pleases.

What we perceive as an ending is really a beginning.  There is life beyond this present moment.  That is not to say that you should not get the most out of this present moment, because you certainly should.  It is to say that life is made up of many moments and we should never miss the enjoyment of next because we are stuck morning the passing of the last.

Stop and observe life and realize that endings are beginnings, because life is constant!   Remind yourself that your Creator is at work within you and through the events of life, and make the decision to connect and not miss a thing.  When you begin to think this way, peace will take the place of despair and you will have hope and with hope comes amazing blessing.

Someone once coined the phrase:  ”This too shall pass!” and they were exactly right!  The stuff of life comes and goes.  You can rely on the reality that all of life is either coming or going.  Look around you and see the evidence – spring flowers, wrinkles, birth, death, relationships beginning and ending.  All the stuff of life – coming and going, beginning and ending is all a part of the journey, a journey where hopefully you are living blessed…

The country music group Alabama sings a song called “I’m In A Hurry!” which says:  “I’m in a hurry to get things done, Oh, I rush & rush until life’s no fun.  All i really gotta do is live & die.  But, i’m in a hurry & don’t know why.”  This is a pretty good picture of most of us – always in a hurry and not sure why.

We need to take time to MELD into our surroundings, so that we might enjoy and learn from them in their fullness.  To learn to stay still within, while everything else is rushing by around us is a discipline that has to be practiced.  Once learned, it will allow us to live a very different and much more fulfilling life.  God put it this way in Psalms 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God!”

We originate from stillness and when we learn to live in stillness, we discover an unlimited potential.  Let your mind flow with life and enjoy the shaping that comes from within and without.  Living in stillness will allow you to experience a peace that flows from deep within you, which will allow you to face and grow from everything going on outside of you.

Clarity is coming, if you can slow down enough to not miss it, as it passes by you.  When we get into harmony with nature and move in sync, not ahead or behind, then we begin to develop roots that nourish us with the deep, good stuff of our Creator.

Life is always unfolding, but it usually does it slowly.  If it seems fast, it is because we have chosen to speed things up with our way of living.  Let go of the demands that force you to do fast and learn in the stillness to know the One, Who created you.  The One who is unfolding your life according to the Master plan.

When you learn to live in the natural flow of life, life is fun and relaxing – like riding an inner tube down a slow moving stream, just enjoying the sights, sounds and new discoveries along the way.  Take some time today to sit quietly and think about slowing down.  Ask yourself:  Why am I in such a hurry?  Learn to live life at the old, original pace of slow and enjoy the unfolding of God’s blessing.

A casual reading through the book of Ephesians will reveal a whole list of things that your Creator has already done for you.  We often get so wrapped up in asking God to do something new, that we fail to appreciate and appropriate what God has already done.  I think one of the reasons that we have the book of Ephesians is so that we can learn to have the eyes of our understanding opened, so that we might see what we already have.  In fact, Paul prayed this very thing for us in Ephesians 1:17-21 when he prayed that “the eyes of your heart might be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you.”

We have been made ALIVE, but a lot of us or living like zombies – walking around as if no one is home.  The power to be alive has been purchased for everyone, but not everyone claims, receives and puts that power into action.  If you have received the gift of God’s Son, then the Spirit of God is alive within you.  The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and wanting to work in and through your life.  You do not have to try to be made alive, you need to start living, because you are alive.

It is through grace and faith, that we draw out of our spirit and into our flesh and soul.  You are not going to reach sinless perfection, this side of Heaven, but you can understand what God has done for you and learn to live in Him as He lives in you, so that you can experience the victory.

If you are in relationship with God through the gift of His Son Jesus, then you are filled with His Spirit and with His Spirit, you can allow His Word, the Bible to transform your mind, so that you begin to have victory over the old desires of the flesh as you learn to yield your soul to the direction of the Spirit.

Ephesians 2:8 says:  ”For by grace you have been saved through faith; and it is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”  Grace alone cannot save you and help you to experience the joy of life in the Spirit.  Faith alone cannot save you and help you to experience victory over the sin that holds you back and keeps you down.

It takes grace and faith together to bring about the marvelous salvation of God that sets a man free.  In His grace, God has provided salvation for everyone through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This grace is the same to everyone, but not every person is saved.  You see, the provision has been made by God for each of us, but not each of us is willing to appropriate God’s grace through faith.

Faith has to be placed in the right thing, or a better way of putting it:  Faith has to be placed in the right person.  I cannot earn His grace.  I do not deserve His grace.  God’s grace is unmerited favor that I cannot earn and that I do not deserve.

My part is faith!  Some people think that faith is what moves God, but the truth is:  God does not need to be moved, because God is not stuck and is never in the wrong place.  Faith that attempts to move God is works and this is the limited stuff of man and his flesh.  All of the good stuff of God, flows by grace through faith!

Faith is simply our positive response to what God has already provided by grace.  True faith receives what God has done.  True faith reaches out with the love, grace, mercy, forgiveness and redemption of God.  True faith rescues, because it realizes that it has been rescued.

It really is simple!  God loves you and grace is His invitation into the miraculous, while faith is your acceptance that says:  ”Done Deal!”

I have taken a little bit of a break from blogging for several weeks, because I have been incredibly busy and I am just not as young as I used to be.  A year ago, I set out on an incredible journey by stepping out of my comfort zone and into the unknown.  There is still much that I do not know, but I have to say that I have learned much during this past year.

I am looking forward to this next year and I am very thankful for all of the family, friends, encouragers and supporters that I have met along the way.  I hope to resume my normal blogging schedule next week and would like to say thank you to all of you that have missed me and took the time to let me know it.

I love my extended family and am excited about some of the things that I am going to get to share with you over the next several weeks.  May each of you continue to enjoy the journey that our Maker has you on and may you always live blessed!

Have you ever stopped to think about “forever” and what it really means?  Forever has no beginning or end, it has just always been and will always be.  You cannot see it, smell it, taste it, hear it our touch it, but you know that it exist and that you are a part of it.

All that has ever been, all that is, all that ever will be is the result of the unfolding of forever.  We cannot understand forever in the physical, because the physical is limited by time and space.

To grow from some understanding of forever, we must learn to yield to our Spirit, so that we can see without eyes and hear without ears.  The Spirit is life and it is important to learn the difference between living and existing.

Learning to step out of the flesh and into the Spirit is one of the most important faith steps in our unfolding journey.  In order to take this step, we must abandon our ego, which continually attempts to anchor us to the things of the flesh with possessions and achievements.

I am so much more than the man staring back at me from the mirror.  I do not need more information, I need inspiration.  Inspiration that flows from the Spirit to me and through me. Life in the Spirit allows me to go to places that most people never go, because most or too lazy to step out of the flesh.  This laziness causes us to miss the real joy of the moment, because we have never learned the value of forever.

Think about forever and as you travel inward, let go of the flesh and yield to the Spirit,  Now – pay attention, because there are amazing things to learn on this journey.  As you actually begin to see and hear spiritually, the unfolding of forever, you will begin to live in a new space, a space where time and place do not matter so much.

You will find yourself coming into alignment with your created purpose, which will bring balance to your life and living, which will begin to restore to your life the amazing gifts of love, joy and peace.

Enjoy the journey and live blessed!