I have noticed that a lot of us folks who call ourselves Christians, tend to have a pretty distorted view of the Scriptures.  This is something that we need to pay attention to, especially since our view of God’s Word determines our faith and our faith determines our life!  Romans 10:17 says:  “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”

We don’t really value the Word!  We say we love it, but we are not so good at obeying it. We claim we believe it, but we do not fully understand or apply it!  This is a faulty foundation and needs to be fixed.  We need the right attitude toward the Word of God or everything else is going to be off!

We need to take a look at what the Word has to say about itself!  A lot of people believe, but believe it in a vague way.  Many take the Scripture and use it the way they want to use it, which leads to a whole lot of misunderstanding and frustration.  Our goal needs to be to use it the way God intended.

We need to believe that what we read in our Bible is God’s Word!  Our Bible is God’s inspired Word written through men!  Our Bible is God inerrant Word and is perfect in every way!  It is accurate, trustworthy and the perfect guide to direct our life!  Our Bible is God’s infallible Word and speaks to every situation of life!  We need ABSOLUTES and the good news is that there are absolutes and we can have confidence in God’s Word!

We really need these absolutes!  James 1:2-8 “2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”

I am not perfect, but I am excited to say that I am experiencing that God’s Word is true and it is changing my
life in more ways than I could have ever imagined!  In Mark 4:3-20 we read the lesson that Jesus taught about the parable of the seed and the soil and find a very important lesson about what God’s Word is and how it works.

Jesus said:  3 “Listen to this! Behold, the sower went out to sow; 4 as he was sowing, some seed fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on the rocky ground where it did not have much soil; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of soil. 6 And after the sun had risen, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. 8 Other seeds fell into the good soil, and as they grew up and increased, they yielded a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.” 9 And He was saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”10 As soon as He was alone, His followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the parables. 11 And He was saying to them, “To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, 12 so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven.” 13 And He *said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 These are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown; and when they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them. 16 In a similar way these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; 17 and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, 19 but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. 20 And those are the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil; and they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.”

You Reap What You Sow!  The old saying comes right out of the Word and it is very true!  We learn from the above passage that “God’s Word Is The Seed!”  You can’t grow anything without a seed!  Verse 14 tells us that “The sower sows the Word!”
The seed that we plant, the seed that produces a harvest in our lives us God’s Word and you have to live it to understand it!

It is a simple, but powerful truth:  If you don’t plant, you can’t harvest!  If we really believe it’s God’s Word, then we should plant this Word in our lives!  We want the blessings of God, but won’t use what He has given us!  The best way I know to plant the seed of God’s Word in our heart and lives is by taking time to meditate on it.  (Not just read it, but actually “stew” on it!)
You can’t claim a promise that you don’t know.  In other words:  You have to know the promise to claim the promise!

1 Peter 1:22-25 gives some great instruction from another perspective when it teaches:  “22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For, “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you.”  It says that we have been born again not from perishable seed, but imperishable seed.  The greek word for seed in this passage is where we get our word for sperm.  From the word seed comes impregnation and from impregnation comes life.

It Is The Natural Design Of God!  We have to obey the natural laws and design of God, if we expect to live in blessing and victory!  We have to do our part, because this is how the Kingdom works!  God will not do for you, what He expects and has prepared you to do for yourself.

Ephesians 4:11-16  “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”  This passage teaches us that God has provided others to help us, but that we are all responsible and have a part!

Will You Do Your Part?  Will you do your part to make sure that you are building and living life from the right foundation?  Here are three steps to help you get headed in the right direction:  1.)  Fall in love with the Word!  Get your very own personal copy and carry it with you.  Read it every chance you get and share it with others!  2.) Study, apply and obey the Word!  Open it up and seek to understand what you are reading and how it makes life better.  Practice what you are learning and grow in every area that you can.  3.) Claim the promises of the Word!  The Scriptures are full of all kinds of promises.  Find these promises, know them, claim them, experience them and talk about how amazing they are!

Thank you so much for letting me share a little of what the Spirit is sharing with me and I hope that it blesses and grows you so that you might continue to live blessed!

In Matthew 6:19-34, Jesus teaches us some amazing truths about what it means to pray.  The Word Is simple, we just need to live it!  I am learning that the secret is about getting ourselves to the right place.  This means that the work I have to do is on me.

What Is Prayer?  Prayer at it’s most basic level is communion with God!  It’s about relationship!  If you care about someone, then you want to have a relationship with them and that relationship is made possible by investing time with one another.  Most people pray for answers, but this should really be a very small part of our prayer lives.  We need to learn to make the main thing the main thing!  Matthew 6:33 says:  “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you!”

Make God #1!  Matthew 6:19-21 says:  19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  We tend to focus on what we can do, what we can make happen, what we can manipulate.  We treat God as an add on.  God is much more than an add on!  The problem with doing it this way is that we put the burden on ourselves and then wonder why we are frustrated!

God Makes It Work!  In Matthew 6:22-23 it says:  22 “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”  It is supernatural and we miss it because we get stuck in the physical.  The saying:  “It is what it is!” is right.  We don’t have to add anything and we can’t take anything away.  No matter what you are going through, then you need to know and believe that “God’s got this!”  If you are in relationship with your Creator, then all the All the devil can do is aggravate you, so don’t allow him anymore influence or power over you.

We Obsess & Stress Over The Wrong Things!  Talking to God is also talking to yourself!  Matthew 6:24 put’s it this way:
 24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”  Get your heart and head right by getting into God’s presence.  Don’t allow anyone rent space in your mind.  You were made by God and God wants to change your life for the better!

Matthew 6:25-27 says:  25 “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27 And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?  We obsess about the wrong things!  Have you ever stopped to think that 90% of what we stress over can be taken care of simply by loving God.  You can be better off accidentally than you have ever been on purpose, if you will just love God!

Fix The How! Matthew 6:28-32 challenges us to think about it:  “28 And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31 Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32 For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”   The process to a better life is simple: 1.  Start loving God.  2. Stop asking for everything.  3. Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added…

Getting Prayer Right!  We read and we need to believe Matthew 6:33-34 when it teaches:  “33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  34 “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  Salvation, the amazing and beautiful gift of God is about intimacy!  It’s not just so we will not perish, it’s also so that we will have everlasting life.  And everlasting life is a present tense reality!  Stop viewing eternal life as something that is coming and start seeing it as something that is here, powerful and life changing right now.  In John 17:3 Jesus describes it this way:  “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom you have sent…”  To know is to be intimate!  The goal of salvation is much more than heaven and hell, it is relationship.

The Good News Is That God Is Not Mad At You!  He loves you and wants relationship.  God wants you to hear it, feel it, experience it.  We don’t need to chase the blessing, we need to love God and the blessing will catch us!  That’s right, The blessing will chase you!  All we have to do is:  Just love God! (We are not human doings, we are human beings.)  God who is love, loves to be loved!  The right approach is to love God whatever, whenever and however and the result is always the same, we will live blessed!

Almost everyday of my life I have the blessing of working with people that are in the midst of facing some of the toughest challenges of life.  Many of the people that I work with, find themselves at a difficult place because of a series of wrong choices, bad decisions and the curveballs of life.  The help that we are blessed with providing is not about a hand-out, but a hand up.  We really want to help ourselves and others take a step up into the better life of blessing that we were all created for.

One of the things that I encounter over and over again is how our choices lead to habits and habits turn into the life that we are living.  If we want to change the life we are living, then we must work on our choices and change our habits.

Do you have a habit you want to change or get rid of?  Is there something in your life that you have lived with that is keeping you from being and doing?  You can make excuses about that thing or those things, or you can do something about them, the choice really is yours.

Someone has said:  “Never underestimate your power to change yourself, never over estimate your power to change someone else.”  The key to getting rid of bad, destructive, self defeating habits is to change our thinking.  To change our wrong or bad habits, we must get rid of excuses and commit to change.

We were created in the image of our Creator, which means that we have the attributes of a creator, which promises that we have built within us, the ability to change the way we look at things and by changing the way we look at things, actually see the things we look at change.

Perception has the ability to alter and change the things within and without.  If we can fix, discipline and grow our perception, then faith will take us to places that we could never take ourselves.  I want to challenge you to think about the life that you were created for and if this is not the life that you are living, the face it and do what you have to do.  Go now, do it and live blessed!