Trust Should Come First, Not Last

God’s promise to Jacob:  “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land.  For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.  Genesis 28:15

When you know the will of God, you must ask yourself whether your behavior is the behavior of a person who is counting on God’s faithfulness and power or are you trying to add some personal insurance of your own?   

So, now I finally get it ~~ God wants my wholehearted trust!  The whole point about a relationship with God is not about what I want or gain in personal safety or material prosperity, but in fellowship and peace of mind.  I can be perfectly safe or have it my way and yet experience no peace.

Faith is an attitude of will that says, “whether I feel that God is there or not, whether I feel he will listen to me or not, his Word tells me he hears and answers, and I am going to count on that.

So, TRUST should come first not last.  I need to understand that there is no limit to what God will do, no desperation He will withhold to teach me this basic lesson in prayer:  I am helpless, and I have no hope except in Him.

Gratitude Attitude

~~ Long, but worth the read!

For gratitude to be real requires connection to experience. Gratitude is not some abstract impression of things that a person might be thankful for but gratitude is an experience of those things and those persons who provide us with the concrete images of why we are thankful.  For the Apostle Paul, the core of gratitude is Christ’s gift of mercy.

Surely we know that for gratitude to be gratitude, one cannot remove self from the equation. Gratitude centers on what we have experienced and who we have experienced to be sources of goodness and grace and love in our own lives.  Without gratitude the self loses all sense of perspective – whether through inflated pride or the equally misleading hatred of self. Gratitude provides the balance. Gratitude reminds us that we are not entirely self-made creatures. We are not entirely self-enclosed and self-sufficient. We have others to thank for who we are and may yet become. Gratitude reminds us that we are persons of worth – because others see good in us, and have sought out good with words and actions for which we are grateful. Paul’s gratitude recognizes that Christ’s favor goes beyond Paul’s own ability to control or merit. Paul was grateful because he recognized Christ valued him and bestowed mercy and commissioned him to service. His gratitude, even while writing from prison captivity awaiting execution, led him to say “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” Rejoicing and gratitude weave together the attitude of joyful thanksgiving.

Do we have this kind of gratitude? Paul doesn’t list reasons for gratitude in this passage. There is no mention of gratitude for wealth and material success. There is no mention of having more food than he knows what to do with.

Blessings and gratitude do go hand in hand. Our materialistic culture tries to convince us from every angle that what we WANT is what we need. And what Jesus deems as blessed is named for us in the beatitudes.

Gratitude for the blessings of God draws individuals and communities toward the needs and conditions of others. Paul’s gratitude in this passage is entwined in Paul’s service to Christ. Our gratitude toward God intends to draw us in the same direction.  As those who have been blessed by God in Christ, we find cause and example to be a blessing to others as servants to Christ.

I AM GRATEFUL TO CHRIST JESUS. Those simple words direct our gratitude toward Christ, but they also direct our lives toward others, toward being a source of Christ’s love and grace so that others might find cause and reason to be grateful. Gratitude is not our way of earning God’s love. Gratitude is our way of responding to and reflecting God’s love in the world around us. And once such gratitude is set into motion, the difference between being on the receiving end and the giving end tends to blur. We see ourselves graced by God, and graced to be able to serve. We see ourselves loved by God, and thankful for opportunities to show such love.

Consider beginning and ending each day with the prayer, “I am grateful to Christ Jesus!” Make it your confession; let it be the words of your commission and see where a gratitude attitude will take you.  Ref:  I Timothy 1: 12-17

Something to think about on this cold Sunday afternoon!

"If you have Christ's love, the makers 

of misery can no 

longer infect your joy."

This photo was taken in 1973 while living in Chile.  Seeing this photo reminds me of how God was able to bring, sea, land, water together ~~ and it is so magnificent!

Belief

"Develop an attitude of gratitude and give thanks for everything that happens to you knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation." Brian Tracy

Interview with Rick Warren

So, I am sitting out on my new patio just thinking and soaking up the sunshine. I all of a sudden realize that my blog cannot and will not be all about "me". My sister in law forwarded to me this great interview by Rick Warren. I thought I would share with you all!! If you have not read his book, "The Purpose Driven Life", it is a must read!!

You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer, and him having 'wealth' from the book sales.

This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, 'Purpose Driven Life ' author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California.
In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:
People ask me, What is the purpose of life?

And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body -- but not the end of me.
I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity...

We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.
This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.
Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.
No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems: If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is 'my problem, my issues, my pain.' But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her- It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.

You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease.
So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit... We made no major purchases.

Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.
Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.
Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.
We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or, am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.