If I were to ask you the question:  “Where do you live?”  what would be your response?  Many would give their address, some would name their town and a few would be skeptical and not willing to give an answer at all.  When I ask that question, I am not really asking for the physical location.  I am really asking were do you live spiritually and emotionally?

God desires for us to live with Him in a relationship that changes everything.  A lot of people see their relationship with God as being the thing that gets them out of Hell and into Heaven!  We tend to think of our relationship with God as something that is in the future.  We see it as a place that we might live one day.

A relationship with God is a place that we should be living right now in every moment of every day!  God loves you and has an amazing plan for your life.  Enjoy loving Him back and living in the powerful moments of that plan, and trust me, you will be glad you did!

I hear a lot of people throw around the “C” word!  What does it mean when you call yourself a Christian?

When I say that I am a Christian, I am saying that I have a personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ.  It means that I know that I am nothing without Him and everything with Him.  It means that I have died to my old self and come alive as a new creation.  It means that I am saved and when I die a physical death, I will experience a miraculous resurrection and live with God – my Creator and Sustainer forever and always!  It means that I have made the choice to live in the power of the spiritual over the physical!

I am saved!  Saved for what?  Saved for God, from Hell, to Heaven!  There is something better and I experience a taste of it everyday and I am looking forward to the day when I experience the whole deal without any breaks or interruptions.

I am saved to experience the difference and make the difference.  My life has not and will not ever be the same.  It is bigger, better and growing everyday with no end in sight.

I am saved to choose risk over safety.  As a child of the Most High God, I have a promise from the only One who can really make and keep His promises.  There is nothing that will ever come my way that God will not use for my good, as I love and trust Him.

I am saved to experience change over stability.  The world says: “Take it easy!”, but God says “Go for it!”  I will go for it again and again and know that my God has already counted the cost and counted it worthy!

I am saved to work for expansion over preservation.  God did not save me to protect my very limited space.  God saved me to go out and take back what was taken from me.  This is notice:  We are coming to get what belongs to us!

I am saved to live adventure over predictability.  God has a great and amazing adventure mapped out for me. I don’t have to know the directions on the map, I just have to know the One that knows the directions and be willing to follow His lead!  I will follow!

I am a Christian.  I am saved.   Life really does matter and I am going to live it to the fullest – here on earth and in a special place called Heaven!

I don’t know of anyone that likes to suffer.  Suffering is hard work.  In fact, most of us do everything that we can to avoid suffering if at all possible.  As I read through my Bible, I notice that Jesus talks a lot about suffering.  He knew that he was going to have to suffer and he indicates that if we are going to follow his way, then we will have to suffer as well.  I know that suffering is not a popular subject, but it is a necessary subject, because reality says that if you live long enough, then you will at some point experience suffering.

If I am going to have to suffer, then I want to get my suffering right.  If I am going to have to suffer, then I want to get out of my suffering whatever I can that will benefit and grow me into something or someone better than what I am.  I believe that this is one of the reasons that God allows us to suffer, so that through our suffering we can experience growth that we could not experience any other way.

All of us have gone through something at some time in our life and thought to ourselves:  “There is no way that I am ever going to make it through this!”  But then, the crazy thing is – we do make it through and we are better for it!

I don’t know what you are going through, but I know that if God is allowing you to go through something, then as you trust and love Him, He is going to use that something for your good and other’s blessing.  Hang in there and get the good stuff that God’s got waiting for you!