I am in Brazil with Mitch doing some meetings with some bible college students. Last night Mitch was talking about the story of Jesus, when he was baptize by John. When he came out of the water they heard a voice saying, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. Then the next thing that happen was that the Spirit lead Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and to fast for forty days.
I was thinking that so many times when we hear a word from the Lord, we get so excited that God has spoken to us about our purpose and destiny, Then we are lead into the wilderness to be tempted, to see if we really believe what the Lord has spoken.
Notice that when the devil came against what God had spoken about Jesus, that Jesus didn't feel the need to prove himself to the devil, but just spoke to the devil what the Father had spoken. If Jesus had fallen into the trap of trying to prove to the devil what God had spoken, then the devil would have been the judge to rule on what God had spoken. Jesus just agree with what the Father had said.
I think that it is good to just agree with what the Father has spoken and let the devil see that he is the liar and the truth is not in him.
We don't have to prove anything to him and we don't have to perform for him.
Let us be the people that takes the Father at His word and see His Kingdom established in us and around us.
Food for your thoughts.
Blessings on your journey.
Doug
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Being a Friend
Here are a few thoughts on being a friend.
Friends love through all kinds of weather, and families stick together in all kinds of trouble.
Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; But the kisses of an enemy are profuse.
By yourself you’re unprotected. With a friend you can face the worst. Can you round up a third? A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped
This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.
Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God.
Friendships are eternal, we need to be friend to have a friend.
Let's learn how to be a faithful friend of God's and to one another.
Blessings
Doug
Friends love through all kinds of weather, and families stick together in all kinds of trouble.
Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; But the kisses of an enemy are profuse.
By yourself you’re unprotected. With a friend you can face the worst. Can you round up a third? A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped
This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.
Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God.
Friendships are eternal, we need to be friend to have a friend.
Let's learn how to be a faithful friend of God's and to one another.
Blessings
Doug
Monday, March 31, 2008
Practice Love
My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.
And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.
If you know the truth, the truth will sent you free.
Blessings
Doug
And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.
If you know the truth, the truth will sent you free.
Blessings
Doug
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Life as an Offering
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.
If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.
Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.
Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.
Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.
Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”
Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.
Food for thought.
Blessings
Doug
I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.
If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.
Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.
Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.
Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.
Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”
Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.
Food for thought.
Blessings
Doug
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Way of Love
1 Cor 13: 1-7
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for the self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swollen head,
doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies
I am glad that God is love and not just a God of love.
Let this be our goal: to walk in God's love.
Blessings
Doug
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for the self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swollen head,
doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies
I am glad that God is love and not just a God of love.
Let this be our goal: to walk in God's love.
Blessings
Doug
Thursday, March 6, 2008
What is the Mystery
I like the way The Message translates what Paul said about the mystery.
Col 1:26-29
This mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it’s out in the open. God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of their religious standing.
The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you and therefore you can look forward to sharing in God’s glory. It’s that simple. That is the substance of our message. We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the message. We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ! No more, no less. That’s what I’m working so hard at day after day, year after year, doing my best with the energy God so generously gives me.
Christ is in you. How cool is that.
Everything we are and ever will be, is in Christ. No more, no less.
Let us have faith as a child. Believe what God says--we are in Christ.
Blessings
Doug
Col 1:26-29
This mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it’s out in the open. God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of their religious standing.
The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you and therefore you can look forward to sharing in God’s glory. It’s that simple. That is the substance of our message. We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the message. We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ! No more, no less. That’s what I’m working so hard at day after day, year after year, doing my best with the energy God so generously gives me.
Christ is in you. How cool is that.
Everything we are and ever will be, is in Christ. No more, no less.
Let us have faith as a child. Believe what God says--we are in Christ.
Blessings
Doug
Saturday, February 23, 2008
There is Only One
Eph 4:4-6
There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
I have just returned from Peru where I had been invited to come share the word of God. I found that the word of God is the same in Peru as it is in America. If were not, then something is wrong. Because God is not building something in the USA and something else in the rest of the world. I am reminded of what He said: If God is not building the house, the labors are working in vain.
I feel alot of what is being built today is not the heart of God. Most of what we see being built today is the tradition of men or a spider web. The spider web, I guess, is not bad if you are the spider, but if you are not the spider, then you are just food for the spider. There seems to be alot of fat spiders or Apostles and Pastors in what is called the church today.
God has called us to build His Church, make disciples and establish His Kingdom on Earth. What causes the body to grow, is when every part is working. We need to understand that every part is important; we need each part walking in the grace that was given to them in Christ's gift.
That is why Christ gave gifts to men for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
The heart of a Father should be to see everyone complete in Christ, who is the head of His body. We need to think about what Jesus said--He came to serve, not to be served. If you want to be great, you must be a servant of all. Paul said that he was the least of all saints. I feel that is a different mindset than what we see in today's so-called Fathers.
Paul implores us to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Blessing on your journey.
Doug
There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
I have just returned from Peru where I had been invited to come share the word of God. I found that the word of God is the same in Peru as it is in America. If were not, then something is wrong. Because God is not building something in the USA and something else in the rest of the world. I am reminded of what He said: If God is not building the house, the labors are working in vain.
I feel alot of what is being built today is not the heart of God. Most of what we see being built today is the tradition of men or a spider web. The spider web, I guess, is not bad if you are the spider, but if you are not the spider, then you are just food for the spider. There seems to be alot of fat spiders or Apostles and Pastors in what is called the church today.
God has called us to build His Church, make disciples and establish His Kingdom on Earth. What causes the body to grow, is when every part is working. We need to understand that every part is important; we need each part walking in the grace that was given to them in Christ's gift.
That is why Christ gave gifts to men for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
The heart of a Father should be to see everyone complete in Christ, who is the head of His body. We need to think about what Jesus said--He came to serve, not to be served. If you want to be great, you must be a servant of all. Paul said that he was the least of all saints. I feel that is a different mindset than what we see in today's so-called Fathers.
Paul implores us to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Blessing on your journey.
Doug
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