Good Morning Earnestly Seeking and Following Disciples and Apostle of Jesus! Amen! Seek and you will find! keep knocking and the door will be open for you. Don't lean on your own understanding, but acknowledge God in all your ways and He will direct your steps. Go! Make disciples for He is with you always. Love as Jesus has loved you and everyone will know you are His disciples. The Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience kindness, faithfulness, goodness and self control. Carry each others burdens and in this way people will know that we are fulfilling our call in Christ. Treat others the way you wanted to be treated. Live and love like Jesus !
Meditate on these and process them with your teammates. These are things we get to do and the measure for how well we are following Jesus and obeying His will for us. I witnessed (and some outsiders noticed too) God's love coming alive through us, us doing what we can with what we've been given to go live and love like Jesus, and the Fruit of the Spirit coming to life. AMEN! God is drawing some through us! PTL! What's God revealing to you and what will you do about that? Who are your accountability partners and teammates? What's your/our fruit looking like? Where can we improve? What can we release? Many questions to ask God and process with your team! God awoke me early with many things rattling around in my head that I am still processing almost three hours later. Is He doing the same for you? He might be! What do you get to choose to do about that? Will you? I'm praying for you! There are a few threads through our blogs and devos for below. Start there and call a friend to pray, process, plan and go.
at Bread a man asked me how and why do our people have such love and confidence in Christ that overflows through them as they go? I shared it's because Christ lives in us. God is love. And we allow love to live through us as we go daily. This man has little biblical knowledge and asked even if Jesus and Moses ministered together. A month or so ago I gave him a few devotionals. He's using them and the Bible I gave him to try to figure things of God out. he asked me about Matthew 5 and 6 and said they sound like the ten commandants. Man did God open doors of understanding as we processed together with open Bibles. These passages are the sermon on the mount and Jesus' teachings that stirred this man to try to understand how to move from the law to the new covenant of grace. He's struggling with the simplicity of grace and that he can be forgiven of his many sins. He is a work in process that God keeps sending to us. Who is He sending to you to explain truth and to love on like Jesus? Seek the Lord and not your own plans and allow Him to open doors and the Holy Spirit to give you the words and motivation and to affirm you. You are His chosen and a priest of the Lord sent to bring love and truth alive! Go! Allow God to use you and the Holy Spirit to lead you.
We discussed this at our amazing Chosen Huddle. (Almost 40 people came again and over half are not members! PTL!) God continues to draw and provide and speak through us! PTL! And keep praying for Him to keep bringing in the harvest and using us! The reality for most people , and many are wrestling with the implications of this or rejecting it, is the Truth. We need to focus on the seekers God is sending. When Jesus calmed the storm, the disciples asked, "Who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey Him?" (Matt. 8:27) That is the question everyone is seeking the answer to, even if they don't realize it. Who is this man and how does that affect my life and choices? In reality much of the Chosen is about trying to answer those questions. Who is this man, Jesus, to you? How does that affect your life? Is there something He is leading you to do, something to repent of, something to pray about or someone to share with about how He has impacted your life? Will you trust and obey? ? Do you have teammates to pray and plan with and hold you accountable? What's God revealing?
There is one more thing to consider...how do we measure success and going and following well as we make disciples? FRUIT! James said people will see our faith by our actions and deeds. Many are experiencing this through our ministries (and Clothing too). Are we doing what we can and are made and activated to do with what we've been given and as we are for such a time as this? (Read that again and begin processing) Are people (and us) seeing and experiencing the fruit of our choices...love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, goodness and self control? That is our measure. And yes that man from noticed some of these, especially our supernatural love as have many others! Keep up the good work team! Keep praying and processing with some friends, and keep going to live and love like Jesus. He has great plans for you and us and we are doing our part to bring His kingdom and will alive ! PTL! Ask if there is more? What's your part? Will you trust and obey? I'm praying! Share those stories of all the seemingly "little things" God is using and doing in and through you and the fruit you are living! And go! Man, I can taste the good fruit already! Thanks brothers and sisters, co-laborers in Christ and for doing all for His glory. He is glorifying His name through us! And we get to keep being who He created us to be and doing what He has created, gifted and empowered us to do! PTL! Go know His peace as His love continues to come alive and change the world around and through us! Yes! Live and love like Jesus! Amen! And thank God we are His students, sent as we are and we get to do that His way and with His help, as we are for such a time as this! Yes, rejoice, seek and follow !
Connection Blogs:
- Unveiling the Kingdom of God
“…your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
Because the King has come, the kingdom has come. Because the King is still to come, the kingdom is still to come. Because the King is here, the kingdom is here. But the King is here in veiled form, the kingdom is ordinarily present in veiled form. Is that not why Jesus so often speaks of “having eyes to see and ears to hear”? Not everyone recognizes His already-ness. So not everyone will recognize the already-ness of the reign of God.
You can see that the term “second coming” is a bit misleading, for He is not coming from some far away place. He is breaking through from behind the veil of hidden-ness. When He does, the already present, but ordinarily hidden, kingdom of God will be manifest to all and will overcome and replace all other kingdoms.
So, what does it mean to pray, “Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”? It means something like “Living God, even before the Day of the Lord, reveal what is invisible, manifest what is hidden.” Can you handle that? That is what those words mean. We ought to pray the words standing on tiptoe!
We mere human beings . . . we can ask for the unveiling of the kingdom of God? Yes! If the Church of Jesus has been given this privilege then why haven’t we exercised it more intentionally? Perhaps it is because we have not understood the privilege. Perhaps it is that we have not wanted to submit our lives to the King. We may have wanted the benefits and blessings of the kingdom but we have not been willing to align our lives with His rule. Or perhaps it is that we know the coming of God’s rule means the end of our rule. Perhaps the Church has not fervently prayed for the kingdom because we know it is dangerous to do so; the King just might answer and start turning everything upside-down!
Lord Jesus, forgive me for continually longing for the benefits of Your kingdom without submitting to what it truly means for Your kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven! May I have my eyes opened to see the truth of Your presence in my life at this very moment. Help me to bow my heart before Your sovereignty in complete and utter humility so that my prayers become aligned with the purpose of Your kingdom over and above the desires of my own.
Praise the Lord, who is able even to weigh your motives (Prov. 16:2).
Thank God for times he has brought conviction to lead you to needed change.
Confess any sinful actions, words, plans, or motives the Spirit brings to your attention.
Commit to the Lord whatever you are planning to do, asking that he then make your plans succeed (16:3).
Pray that the leaders of your church will be motivated by love, faithfulness, and the fear of the Lord rather than pride (16:5-6). Ask God to keep your heart pure toward your leaders and to use you as an encourager for them.
Prayer Points taken from Patterns for Prayer by Alvin VanderGriend. This book is available at prayerleader.com. Use the code CONPSP3 at checkout to receive an additional 10% discount.
Louise, a project manager, regretted taking on the freelance job. Both the client and designer were testing her patience. Why is it so difficult? she wondered. Why can’t these people get it together?
Weeks later, as she read Proverbs 27, verse 17 stood out—“iron sharpens iron.” “You can’t file down rough edges with something soft, like silk,” she told her small group soon after. “You need something hard, like iron.”
Louise realized that the challenges in the project were smoothing down some rough edges of her own. She was learning to be more patient and humble, and to adapt to different working styles. God, she concluded, was using the project to expose her flaws and teach her new lessons about working with others.
Much of the book of Proverbs extols the value of godly wisdom, but this wisdom doesn’t come easily. It needs to be sought after with obedience and discernment (3:13; 13:20; 19:20), and refined in crucibles and furnaces, with mortars and pestles (27:21-22)—situations that may mean temporary pain and suffering.
Yet the Bible reminds us that challenges come with rewards: In seeking God’s wisdom diligently and obeying His ways, we’ll find true security, satisfaction, and blessing (vv. 26-27).
By Leslie Koh
REFLECT & PRAY
What lessons can you learn from difficult situations you’re facing? How might God be refining and shaping you to be more like His Son, Jesus?
Loving Father, please grant me strength to endure my trials and a humble heart to learn from life’s challenges. Thank You for shaping and molding me each day.
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Learning to view troubles and trials as instruments in God’s hand is an important key to our spiritual growth. His goal for us isn’t that we have an easy or pain-free life, but rather that we “be conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). As fire purifies gold (Proverbs 17:3; 27:21), so the heat of trials can be God’s tool to purify us and make us more like Jesus. Christ’s half brother James affirms this in his letter: “The testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete” (James 1:3-4). Part of walking by faith is trusting that God doesn’t waste anything. We can be sure that when difficult times come, He has a purpose for those trials in refining and shaping us to become more like Jesus.
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