Good Morning Loved, Pursued, Forgiven Transformed Friends of God who Is the Friend of Sinners! PTL! He is a way maker! Even when we think there is no way or we think we are too far gone. He pursues us, forgives, cleanses and redeems! PTL! Then He prepares and sends us to allow Him to love and forgive others. Jesus said to a questioning Phillip, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Me. We will encounter many lost, confused and questioning people in our journey that God is pursuing and wants to love through us. Keep your eyes open and heart ready and committed to allowing God to use you! Remember, you are custom made--God's masterpiece! (EPH. 2:10), made new in Christ for His planned purposes for you for such a time as this. Our mission is simple and easy if we stay yoked to Christ. It's to learn to live and love like Jesus and allow Him to connect to those He is pursuing and then make disciples of Jesus. Easy peazy! We know Love. We know peace. We know joy. Because we know Jesus! PTL! We are sent to bring love, peace, joy and Jesus alive and allow Him to use us to transform the world while He transforms us. Who is He pursuing through you? Who is helping you with figuring out and doing what He is sending you to do?
We've been seeking, discerning and have begun planning our outreach for the summer with small gatherings wearing St. Matts T-shirts hanging out, having fun and blessing others. We are in the process of designing T-shirts, but we don't have to wait for that to get out, have fun and bless others. Where is God sending you? Rita's, the park, a game, the dinner...? Who is joining you as you fellowship and enjoy life in Christ and make yourself available for Him to pursue through you? Maybe our shirts could say learning to live and love like Jesus (our vision statement) with our web address or just the symbols:
Know love, peace and joy? We do because of Jesus! We are learning to live and love like Jesus. Join us! and website...Anyway, something like that. Maybe a bumper sticker with the saying: Do you follow Jesus this closely? We do! And our website. Whatever God leads us to, hanging out with some friends living and loving like Jesus and blessing others with contagious love, peace and joy is God's mission for us this summer as we get out and live and love more like Jesus! Pray into all of that! God has great plans for you and us as He pursues those He is drawing through us. Amen! Maybe we should change our name even? Any church with a saint name has a stigma because of the sins and abuses of the catholic church. What if we were Joy Church, Community, Care Givers? JC3! Pray about that too. In the meantime, prepare you hearts, hands and feet to go live and love like Jesus as you steward all God's blessings well and work at becoming more like Jesus and doing more of what you are created to do! He does have great plans for you, His very loved, forgiven pursued, transformed, sent child! PTL!
Check out our devos for today and the Harvest Prayer blogs as you dwell in God's presence, seek His best, listen, learn, confess, repent and prepare to follow Jesus more in '24. I'm praying for you and God is wanting to pursue someone through you! Amen! Jesus is the Way and He is the way maker who has plans for you perfectly aligned with who He created you to be. Come as you are and learn to live and love more like Jesus for such a time as this! Amen!
ODB:
At Home in Jesus
If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me. John 14:3
READ John 14:1-7
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“There’s no place like home,” says Dorothy, clicking the heels of her ruby slippers. In The Wizard of Oz, that was all it took to magically transport Dorothy and Toto from Oz back to their home in Kansas.
Unfortunately, there aren’t enough ruby slippers for everyone. Although many share Dorothy’s longing for home, finding that home—a place to belong—is sometimes easier said than done.
One of the consequences of living in a highly mobile, transient world is a sense of detachment—wondering if we’ll ever find a place where we truly belong. This feeling may also reflect a deeper reality, expressed by C. S. Lewis: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
The night before the cross, Jesus assured His friends of that home, saying, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2). A home where we are welcomed and loved.
Yet we can be at home now too. We’re part of a family—God’s church, and we live in community with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Until the day Jesus takes us to the home our hearts long for, we can live in His peace and joy. We’re always home with Him.
By Bill Crowder
REFLECT & PRAY
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What makes you feel at home and why? How does knowing Jesus will take you to be with Him forever help you live here on earth?
God of love and grace, help me look forward to being at home with You, in Your presence, forever.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
John 14 is part of the Upper Room Discourse (chs. 13-17). It’s been referred to as the “Farewell Discourse” because Jesus attempts to prepare the disciples not simply for His impending trial and execution, but for His ultimate ascension back to the Father. In the opening verses of chapter 14, Christ seeks to calm the anxious hearts of the disciples by assuring them that not only is there a place for them where He’s going, but that He’ll come back so that they can be with Him (vv. 1-4). It’s easy to forget that very little of this would’ve aligned with what the disciples thought about the role of the Messiah (see Matthew 16:21-23). So great was their confusion that immediately after Jesus told them that they had known and seen the Father (John 14:6-7), Philip asked to be shown the Father (v. 8).
J.R. Hudberg |
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UR: A Safe Place
When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble; I will rescue them and honor them. - Psalm 91:15 (NRSVUE)
In the 1950s I attended a boarding school for boys. It was run in a military style with strict discipline and punishments that were often issued in an abusive manner. Bullying at the school was rampant and persistent. Needless to say, I suffered at the school and learned how to avoid any confrontation, disappearing into anonymity when required.
One place in my school that nobody went during the day was the chapel. There I found my retreat where solace and support awaited me. I found that I was not alone. I felt God’s reassuring presence, and I enjoyed that calming influence and support. This was the beginning of my lifelong journey with God.
I still give thanks to God for coming into my life. I cannot give thanks for the experience of being bullied, but I am grateful that during that time I found God. What might my life have become without that sacred introduction?
TODAY'S PRAYER
Loving God, cleanse the hearts and minds of those who abuse others. Be with those facing persecution, and grant us lives of harmony and peace. Amen.
Charles Stanley:
TWFYT:
Harvest Prayer Blogs:
April 15 - A Tender Conversation
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Our prayers are not a meaningless ritual before a harsh God. It is a tender conversation between two who love each other. And, there’s nothing more powerful than God’s presence. It should humble us to know that Christ gave His life so that we might have entrance into His Throne Room. What a tragedy it would be if we never enter it!
I would challenge you, right now, to take a few moments to enter into the Throne Room and shut the door. It should be a familiar place, an hourly place for you if you are to pray without ceasing. Enter in with sincerity, seclusion, simplicity, and simple faith as a son or daughter.
Don’t rush in His presence. It might be good to bring no requests to Him at first. Simply get acclimated to His presence. Sense the reality of the moment. Enjoy the privilege of being with Him. Worship Him and then ask Him if there is anything He wants to say to you.
There is simply no better place to be in heaven or earth. And, it’s available to His children all the time!
Holy One, so often I rush into Your presence without a thought! Please help me to be aware that I am walking up to the Throne of Grace when I pray! Slow me down to sit and listen rather than uttering a few short phrases before going about my hurried day! Help me to know You as Father, King, Friend, Counselor…and so much more! Pour out Your peace on me so that nothing else matters when I come before You…except You.
---Adapted from Simply Prayer by Bill Elliff. This book is available at prayershop.org. Use the code CONPSP3 at checkout to receive an additional 10% discount.
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- Praise God that you know who he is because you have Jesus Christ, “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15).
- Give thanks that “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Christ], and through him to reconcile to himself all things . . . by making peace through his blood” (1:19-20).
- Confess the instances when you spurn the reconciliation that God has accomplished.
- Commit yourself to continuing in your faith, “established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel” (1:23).
- Ask that Christ will have first place in every part of your life, and that nothing else will rival him.
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