If you where to classify your self as either a nibbler or some one who munches, or a sipper or a gulper. Which one would you be?
Do you like to nibble on your food? Or do you like to chomp and enjoy taking mouthful of bites like someone is going to take your food if you don't finish fast.
Do you sip your drink? or do you gulp down as if you are quenching a thirst like if you just ran 5 miles under the sun with no wind and no cloud cover.
I need to be honest... I am a stuffer and a gulper. Sometimes it feels like I can not get enough of what I am eating or drinking, especially if it tastes so good that I want more. I want to stuff myself.
I started to think about this and how does it relate to me and God. I came to me that when we don't have a close relationship with God it manifests itself in different ways. One of the ways is on our hunger and thirst for his word. In all seriousness, how many of us spend more than 15 minutes reading, meditating and memorizing the word of God? How many of us truly believe that the word of God is essential to our survival?
How many of us live our lives like if we don't have the word of God there is a huge part missing in our lives?
There is a saying: Eat to live, don't live to eat. How true it is for all of us. In order for us to truly live we need to eat. If we want to have the kind of life that God wants us to have, the abundant life we need to eat of his fruit. We need to take in his word like out lives depended on it... cause at then end our lives do depend of his word. I want to feed my spiritual life the way I feed my physical life..... devouring all I can get my hands on... in this case His word.
The greatest aspect of this is that the more I hunger for his word, the more I thirst for His truths the more I want to be nourish the more He has to give. His bread will never finish. I will never go hungry. There are always seconds, and thirds enough for a life time. I will never thirst again either. My throat will never be parched. My mouth will never be dry. There is enough of His living water for the rest of my life.
John 6:35 Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
I don’t know about you but I want to stuff my self with His word and gulp down everything that is in the bible. I hope that you can all join me in this great feast that He has prepared for us.
"Round and round we go, where we end up no body knows"
Not sure where that phrase came from, I know I've heard it before, but i believe that it can be indicative of our life. We go round and round with work, family, friends, responsibilities etc. etc. but we don't have a clue where we going to end up. It's funny in a not so funny way, how we let everything crowd our lives. I sometimes wonder if we where to make a pie chart of our life, how big of a slice would God have in it? I am not talking about the work we do for him... rather the time we actually spend with him. Talking to him, praying to him, praising him, meditating in his word.
Sometimes we get so busy taking care of all our responsibilities in life that we forget to stop and take in what God has for us. The bible tell us something very significant when it comes to this.
"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God"
We should not live our lives apart from God. We should not compartmentalized our lives. God should be able to have full access to all of our life. He should not be bound by time, day or availability but should be in every decision, every thought, every word, every look and every move that we make. When we start to lock God out of certain parts of our lives, our lives stop revolving around him and he start to revolve around our lives.
When God stops being the center of our lives, when He ceases to be at the core of who we are, we begin to loose focus, purpose and meaning in our lives. When God starts to revolve around our lives we are basically saying to Him, try to find a place to fit in because I am too busy to find a place for you.
Life is temporary... but it should revolved around God.
Does God revolve around your life? or does your life revolve around God?
I guess I am not one to rant too much... though it makes me wonder why I would have a blog if it's not to share my rants lol. Anyway there is this thing... this observation that has been nagging at me for a while now. Something that I have noticed but in the past just glossed over. Not really paid attention to it. It is something that for better or for worse we have all suffered or we are in the middle of it. I want to share a verse of a track that will come out on my next cd that talks about it.
It creeps up your back giving you a yellow tone eyes wide open witness was to come dilate your iris to take in more light like when you try to gain focus in the middle of the night muscles tense up and your breathing is erratic flee or fight you sensing all the static like when hairs in your neck begin to stand up something wicked this way comes so do you fight do you run give up or stand strong face the situation or turn and be gone do you stand your ground with no hesitation or cast the blame in every tough situation with no way out cornered for the kill fear got a grip now you standing still or do you plan you moves when you sense a loss something wicked this way comes
If it's not too obvious the verse talks about fear. I described the physical aspect of when some one is gripped with fear. Their iris dilate to see the danger that is coming, the muscles tense up and breathing becomes a bit more labor and erratic. Basically is not a good feeling. I also describe the spiritual aspects of fear. When you let fear take over it does not matter how wide your eyes open, your spiritual eyes will be surrounded by darkness and unable to focus. When you let fear in, you start to doubt whether you can stand and fight this and come out victorious. When fear creeps up our sense of responsibility goes out the door and we look to throw blame on someone else. When fear has a hold on your life you will always feel like a corner animal with no where to go.
Fear is the root of all other negative feelings. Hate, anger, bitterness, despair, anxiousness frustration. What causes fear? When we start to pay attention to the lies of the enemy more than the truths of God. When we hold on to what is whisper in the darkness than what is spoken in light and truth.
I am sick and tired of seeing so many believers walking around defeated. Totally and utterly defeated. It breaks my heart to know that many believers choose to listen to the lies of the enemy rather than to hold on to the truth that they know come from God. It hurts to see so many demoralized and down casted like they lost the great battle when THE WAR IS ALREADY WON!
"For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. 1 John 5 4-5
Let's stop feeling sorry for ourselves, let's stop walking around like we have lost everything. Let's stop talking and acting like there is no hope and all is lost. Let's start claiming the promises that God has given us. Let's start walking with our heads high knowing that the War has been won already. Let's start living empowered by the Holy Spirit and letting it's fruit be manifested in our lives.
I have felt in my heart to write about this for a while now... i know that timing is everything and I think that God has chosen this time for me to write down some thoughts about drawing those though lines in our lives.
I have been thinking about this for a while now and it has been nudging at my heart for a couple of weeks. I have had some time to think about it and the more I think about it the more passionate I get and the more convince I am about the dire need to draw borders and having the tough lines drawn out in our lives.
Let me start off by saying this... the more this world or society becomes liberal the more we look like radical conservatives. Not sure if you follow me on this. Basically what I am saying is that the more this world or this society is liberal or open to things that go against what we believe or against the word of God the more we are going to look and be labeled radical conservatives and narrow minded. The interesting thing is that this change happens in such a slow pace and in a very non-threating way that when you realize what occur you are either "open minded" to accept what society is doing or go against it and be "narrow minded".
I believe that this is the point where we need to stand firm and draw the line. I know that I suffered and still suffer from wanting NOT be looked as conservative, or narrow minded or old fashioned. I guess that is the equivalent of been called a nerd or geek or dweeb... and we all know that once you are labeled is hard to separate yourself from it. That got me thinking about our lives and how much we are willing to compromise in order to fit in the right label. Most times we compromise without even knowing or giving it a second thought. I have this image of a person drawing a line in the dirt and constantly moving it back to accommodate things/people/habits that happen to appear.
"Everything is permissible for me"—but not everything is beneficial." 1 Cor. 6:12
Sometimes I think that we get blinded and up in arms about the things we believe we have a right to do because we are free to do them. We take on this air of martyrdom and and think some sort of injustice has been done if we are in any way shape or form deprived from this. We forget that with that freedom comes a responsibility to know and discern what is good and what is not good for us. We need to understand that even though we have freedom to do, say, live, think, feel the way we want to, not everything is going to benefit our physical and spiritual lives.
Here is where we draw lines.... here is where we need to swallow hard and be honest with ourselves and with God and either commit or continue to compromise.
I want to put it in a more practical sense. We have the freedom to do whatever we want, to go to clubs, to go dancing, to go to the movies, to stay up as late as we want, to drink (alcohol), to smoke, to over eat, to not eat, to have sex out of wedlock, to choose the friends we hang out with etc. etc. but how many of these things are we taking part in? and we feel that it's okay for us to do them? How many of us constantly compromise, shift our beliefs, cater to friends, cave to peer pressure when we are faced with a though decision? How many of us are really concern with what we see in the movies, the horror, the gore, the depravity that we subject to ourselves to in the name of entertainment? How many of us compromise or time and priorities to cater to friends? How many of us are more committed to work than to reading the word of God? How many of us split hairs about drinking if we don't we drunk? or smoking because we just can't seem to kick the habit? Besides the Bible does not clearly states that we should not smoke.
This precious freedom that we are talking about here has a huge bearing on our spiritual lives. What places you go to... the people that you hang out with, the type of things you see and hear all have a direct bearing on your spirit. We sometimes neglect to remember that we are fighting a spiritual battle...
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians. 6:12 Just cause we are believers does not mean that we are far away from the front lines. On the contrary we are the front line. We are in the battle! If we don't know where we stand, if we don't draw our boundaries, if we don't commit to the good fight then we are bound to loose ground and compromise our spiritual lives. I beg of you, not to over look this. I plead not to take this with a grain of salt. This is vital for our having and abundant life with God. This is important for you to always keep in your mind.
I know that right now some that might be reading this might say "Oh please... you sound like my dad. I can't do the things that I like to do" Or "You sound like a conservative. This is soooo boring". Some of you might even be thinking "You ain't perfect. Who are you to judge me!". All I can say is that if we don't know where we stand with God, we will fall for anything. If we don't draw lines and boundaries in our lives, we will always be in retreat. If we don't commit our everything to God then we will compromise our spiritual lives every time. This goes beyond something to do... this has everything to do with life.
