As a minister I believe the only true way to study is to look at verses in the context of which they were written. These HJD messages and the scriptures are done for that purpose. Each verse listed is a link to the whole chapter. Simply click on the verse and you will be taken to the whole chapter for further reading. I chose the translation “The Message” as it is in the language of today so we can relate. I encourage you to study with passion each verse in many translations. Enjoy and I pray this blesses you over and over.
Perry
December 31st, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Christmas All Year Long!
I woke early this morning, after Christmas, to look back! The presents are gone. The stockings are on the floor. Just like that, the day we look forward to all year long, is gone. Soon lights will come down and the songs, well they have already disappeared. As I sit and ponder this time of year, I smile as I think of all the love that is shared and the goodwill people show to each other. Then Christ put on my heart… “I am always here… I am always in your heart… why do you not celebrate my birthday every day of your life? Why only show love at Christmas? Is my life, my birthday, not just as important in June as it is in December?” When going to dinner on Christmas Eve I saw people being nicer. I saw people sharing goodwill with others they didn’t even know. Why don’t we live our lives celebrating love, kindness, and goodwill to everyone? Why just at Christmas? Why can’t we have Christmas everyday of our lives? Today as I visited stores I asked “Did you have a good Christmas?” The people I encountered smiled, and said I most certainly did. Shouldn’t we take the time each day to acknowledge others and ask how their day is? Then truly listen… good or bad. Life would be better if we celebrated the goodwill of Christmas daily. So during this coming year spend time being nice. I promise your life will change… and maybe others will see Jesus… in you.
I Love You!
Perry
So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
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.
Here is a simple rule of thumb for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them!
Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it’s needed. Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it!
Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.
Whoever wants to embrace life and see the day fill up with good, Here’s what you do:
Say nothing evil or hurtful;
Snub evil and cultivate good; run after peace for all you’re worth.
God looks on all this with approval, listening and responding well to what he’s asked;
But he turns his back on those who do evil things.
So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.
December 25th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
The Lesson Of The Manger
I thought I got it! Every Christmas, I look at and read about the nativity scene but the true deep reality of it never fully came clear. In that time a stable was simply a lien-to and perhaps the most disgusting structure in town. Under its’ roof the dirtiest place would have been the manger. Full of animal saliva… worms… and the stench of uneaten moldy food. God could have chosen anywhere for his son to be born. A palace. A suite at the inn. In the middle of the synagogue. Why a manger? He wanted to choose the lowliest, most disgusting, vile place, to show us how his love works. I have watched churches turn away people because they do not fit in. I have watched as people shun those they consider disgusting. We live in a world where it is believed you should act a certain way, dress a certain way, and talk a certain way. The manger says – I came for everyone! I was born to love the most disgusting, dirty, vile person you can think of. Sometimes God hides lessons in the most obvious place. For me, this one brought a multitude of tears and time on my knees. The manger teaches humility. The manger teaches unconditional love. Isn’t it time we all practice that each day in our churches and on the street?
Happy Birthday Jesus!
I Love You!
Perry
While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the hostel.
An Event for Everyone
There were shepherds camping in the neighborhood. They had set night watches over their sheep. Suddenly, God’s angel stood among them and God’s glory blazed around them. They were terrified. The angel said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: A Savior has just been born in David’s town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master. This is what you’re to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger.”
At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God’s praises:
Glory to God in the heavenly heights,
Peace to all men and women on earth who please him.
As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the shepherds talked it over. “Let’s get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us.” They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. Seeing was believing. They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child. All who heard the shepherds were impressed.
On the road someone asked if he could go along. “I’ll go with you, wherever,” he said.
Jesus was curt: “Are you ready to rough it? We’re not staying in the best inns, you know.”
Jesus said to another, “Follow me.”
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.
I love those who love me; those who look for me find me.
Don’t overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. God isn’t late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s giving everyone space and time to change.
We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
December 24th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Behold The King!
His teaching was troublesome. As we observe so many nativity scenes they bring to mind the special nature of our Saviors birth. Each one made different but each one containing the same picture. His teaching was on the inaccuracy of the many nativities. Were the wisemen really there? Did they lay the gifts before the newly born baby and at the bedside of Mary? We know the three wisemen came a great distance. It would have taken around nine months to travel that journey. Many believe the wisemen did not show up until Jesus was nine months old. I chose not to limit my God! I find it interesting that the time they would have had to travel is the same amount of time Mary would have carried the Jesus child. So couldn’t God have revealed to these men the future and the arrival of his son? Why do we insist on putting God into our terms and our understanding? Why do we limit his abilities and believe he told us everything in scripture? We have a God who can not be comprehended. Our God has his ways, his plan, and they are beyond our understanding. He sent a King, a Savior, someone to teach us how to love. He chose a young girl for the task when he simply could have sent an angel. Why? To prove to us that we don’t have to understand his methods. We simply have to accept and believe. That is what the wise men did. Because they believed. They beheld the KING!
Merry Christmas!
Perry
God’s the one who rebuilds Jerusalem,
who regathers Israel’s scattered exiles.
He heals the heartbroken
and bandages their wounds.
He counts the stars
and assigns each a name.
Our Lord is great, with limitless strength;
we’ll never comprehend what he knows and does.
God puts the fallen on their feet again
and pushes the wicked into the ditch.
Have you ever come on anything quite like this extravagant generosity of God, this deep, deep wisdom? It’s way over our heads. We’ll never figure it out.
Is there anyone around who can explain God?
Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do?
Anyone who has done him such a huge favor
that God has to ask his advice?
Everything comes from him;
Everything happens through him;
Everything ends up in him.
Always glory! Always praise!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Jesus looked hard at them and said, “No chance at all if you think you can pull it off yourself. Every chance in the world if you trust God to do it.”
“You’ve been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don’t understand? To see me is to see the Father. So how can you ask, ‘Where is the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you aren’t mere words. I don’t just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act.
“Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can’t believe that, believe what you see—these works. The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. You can count on it.
Jesus said, “So, you believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.”
December 17th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Joseph’s Prayer
God I feel so lost. I come to you asking for help… asking for guidance. I’m not sure what to do. My future wife is pregnant, and it is not mine. How can I stay with her? She is disgraced among our people. How can I be expected to raise this baby, as if it were mine? There was this angel. I think it was an angel… it could have simply been a dream. I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. How am I suppose to be a dad, to your only son? How do I discipline him? How do I teach him? How do I simply talk to him, knowing who he is? I’m just a simple man. Why was I chosen to bear this burden, and be blessed at the same time? There could be no greater honor, but I simply fell in love with a girl. Am I expected to help her deliver this child? Will there be help from you? An angel maybe? What am I to do when he arrives? Will I fall to my knees… or simply shout out… when I feel his beating heart? God give me strength to be your servant! Just like Joseph, so many times we feel intimated by his presence. Maybe we feel overwhelmed, or we feel as if we are not worthy. Then our God takes us in his arms and reassures us… he simply loves. He simply cares. He simply forgives. There is no greater honor than to be one of his children.
The Spirit of Truth
“If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you. I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!
Merry Christmas!
Perry
Jesus looked hard at them and said, “No chance at all if you think you can pull it off yourself. Every chance in the world if you trust God to do it.”
So be content with who you are, and don’t put on airs. God’s strong hand is on you; he’ll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you.
“When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—‘playactors’ I call them—treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.
That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
The Reality, Not the Illusion
My purpose in writing is simply this: that you who believe in God’s Son will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life, the reality and not the illusion. And how bold and free we then become in his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he’s listening. And if we’re confident that he’s listening, we know that what we’ve asked for is as good as ours.
I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else
But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him—and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own.
December 10th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Love In Unity
We live in a country that is divided. Not since the civil war has there been so much division. The Christ I love is about unity. As we celebrate the coming of our Savior my thoughts turn to nothing but his arrival. The Christ that came to save us is about love. When Jesus came to be one of us, it was not about theology… who is right or wrong… but about union. It was about a young girl allowing herself to be vulnerable and letting go. She let go of her reputation… her material possessions… her pride… in order to bring pure love into this world. Until we get out of our heads, and our prideful beliefs about theology, we will never be able to deliver the true love of Jesus to the world. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. In heaven Christ celebrates love and unity. People are not separated by their status but loved unconditionally by Jesus. Do we truly believe that prayer, or simply recite it? I certainly don’t see much unity and love in this place. I see fighting and disagreements between different faiths, different politics, gay or straight, liberal or conservative, fair skin or dark. To the Jesus I know, nothing is more important than love and unity. That is the bedrock that everything else in his teaching stands on. More than ever, during this season, let us teach that. Let us live that. Let us unite to show the world what true love is. His name is Jesus!
The Most Important Command
When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: “Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?”
Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
I Love You!
Perry
Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.
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.
So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.
“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
Peter fairly exploded with his good news: “It’s God’s own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open. The Message he sent to the children of Israel—that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again—well, he’s doing it everywhere, among everyone.
Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
December 2nd, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Grace, Glorious Grace!
Grace! So misunderstood. So foreign by our standards. A gift that we cannot comprehended. No strings… no agenda… no effort to earn… simply free. Grace cannot be understood by any record of merits and demerits. It cannot be held to patterns of buying, losing, earning, achieving, or manipulating, which is where most of us live our lives. Grace is quite literally “for the taking.” It is God eternally giving away God—for nothing, except the giving itself. I believe grace is the life energy that makes flowers bloom, animals raise their young, babies smile, and planets remain orbit—I feel it in my heart and soul daily. I still have trouble understanding it. How can his love be this strong? How can this unmerited love and grace be mine simply because I am his child. “But for the grace of God go I” that thought crosses my mind when I see others with addictions. People with hatred. People who have lost their way and land on the street. The grace and the favor of God is for everyone ever born, simply for the asking. It can’t be earned. It is a gift and the very nature of a gift is that it is given free of charge, with no expectation. So is the grace and love we have for our children. There is nothing in this world one of my children could do that would make me stop my love and grace from them. Being a child of God is so much better. So why does he shower us with his grace. For no good reason except love alone. Ephesians 2:4-9
I Love You!
Perry
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.
God’s readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation’s available for everyone! We’re being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. This new life is starting right now, and is whetting our appetites for the glorious day when our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, appears.
It’s the same today. There’s a fiercely loyal minority still—not many, perhaps, but probably more than you think. They’re holding on, not because of what they think they’re going to get out of it, but because they’re convinced of God’s grace and purpose in choosing them. If they were only thinking of their own immediate self-interest, they would have left long ago.
“So why are you now trying to out-god God, loading these new believers down with rules that crushed our ancestors and crushed us, too? Don’t we believe that we are saved because the Master Jesus amazingly and out of sheer generosity moved to save us just as he did those from beyond our nation? So what are we arguing about?”
We all live off his generous abundance,
gift after gift after gift.
We got the basics from Moses,
and then this exuberant giving and receiving,
This endless knowing and understanding—
all this came through Jesus, the Messiah.
No one has ever seen God,
not so much as a glimpse.
November 26th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Choices! / LOVE!
Our lives are connected to choices… and the consequences of those choices. Good or bad we are the choices we make. We choose how we act. We choose how we treat others. We choose to be happy or sad. We can even choose if we see the cup as half empty, or half full. We may not choose situations, but we choose how we handle or react to the outcome. We choose what path to seek. When God opens doors we choose whether to walk thru or turn around. We choose our work ethic… our honesty… our character. Every choice we make reflects on who we believe in and who we follow. You can’t blame your choices on the past. You can’t blame your choices on your rearing, or the mother and father you were given. Every path… every circumstance… is a product of our choosing. We can not give our choices to someone else. They belong to us and us alone. You may ask someone for guidance but in the end, the choice is always yours. God has choices as well. Throughout his words, he outlines choices he made and will continue to make. God chose to make you. God chose to give you life. God chose to whom you would be born and where you would live. God chose to love you through your sin. Then God chose to send his son to save you. His son, Jesus, chose to suffer and die on a life-crushing cross. Why you ask? Simple! LOVE! Colossians 3:16
I Love You!
Perry
Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
Wake up from your sleep, Climb out of your coffins; Christ will show you the light!
So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!
Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants.
Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
Are you now going to accuse me of flip-flopping with my promises because it didn’t work out? Do you think I talk out of both sides of my mouth—a glib yesone moment, a glib no the next? Well, you’re wrong. I try to be as true to my word as God is to his. Our word to you wasn’t a careless yes canceled by an indifferent no. How could it be? When Silas and Timothy and I proclaimed the Son of God among you, did you pick up on any yes-and-no, on-again, off-again waffling? Wasn’t it a clean, strong Yes?
Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience.
Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.
So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.
Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you. These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ’s suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don’t keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible!
For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God—his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!
Quite frankly, I don’t want to be bothered anymore by these disputes. I have far more important things to do—the serious living of this faith. I bear in my body scars from my service to Jesus.
May what our Master Jesus Christ gives freely be deeply and personally yours, my friends. Oh, yes!
If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.
I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
November 19th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Where is Joy?
I have watched her for forty years as she moves thru the day. Beautiful… heart of gold… and a love for God. I am so blessed! I look at pictures of my children and grandkids. All healthy… all good and loving people. I am so blessed! I behold the land that we have been made stewards of. The feeling of peace and the presence of God is in this place. I am so blessed! I ponder the company that belongs to God, that he allows us to reside over. The amazing people that work there and the help the company gives to them. I am so blessed! I think on my friends… my church… and the comfort they give. I am so blessed! The health that we enjoy and the love that fills our home. I am so blessed! We live our lives not knowing what is around the next corner. We are not sure what tomorrow holds and if our world will fall apart. If everything I just mentioned crumbled like a stale cookie, I would still be so blessed. Blessed to know the love of God. Blessed to have experienced so much favor. Blessed to live a life of peace and love. Blessed to be allowed to reveal Gods heart through Happy Jesus Day! I encourage you to spend your day looking to everything he has blessed you with. As Jiminy Cricket says: “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative”. You will find joy in those moments.
God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so that you’re ready for anything and everything, more than just ready to do what needs to be done. As one psalmist puts it, He throws caution to the winds, giving to the needy in reckless abandon. His right-living, right-giving ways never run out, never wear out.
I Love You!
Perry
So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.
Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you’ll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.
So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
“But blessed is the man who trusts me, God, the woman who sticks with God. They’re like trees replanted in Eden, putting down roots near the rivers— Never a worry through the hottest of summers, never dropping a leaf, Serene and calm through droughts, bearing fresh fruit every season.
Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see—how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him.
So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.
Don’t drink too much wine. That cheapens your life. Drink the Spirit of God, huge drafts of him. Sing hymns instead of drinking songs! Sing songs from your heart to Christ. Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master, Jesus Christ.
November 12th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Pure Gospel!
The line from the movie was:
“Seeing isn’t believing. Believing is seeing.” As that hit me, my heart pondered, and the movie fell away. When your faith becomes strong, you began to see Jesus in everyplace and everyone. During Jesus last moments, the lessons he gave us were some of the most important. That is when he explained he would be sending the spirit of God to live in each of us, and guide our lives. I think we bypass that. We spend hours, days, weeks, searching the scripture but we don’t allow the spirit to move us. We don’t listen and acknowledge the spirit of God that lives in everyone and everything. Everything, every person, every blade of grass, every animal, everything has the spirit of God in it and was made by him. Until we understand that God and Christ are at the center of everything, we will continue down a path of destructive disconnection we see so clearly in the world today. All my life I have seen and talked with those that spend countless hours learning scripture, down to the letter of the law. Knowing it versus by versus, but ignoring the presence of the spirit. The spirit of Christ that will place knowledge on your heart when you let go, and allow him to work. From the inside out. Mature Christianity is perhaps when the inside meets the outside and the bottom is allowed to teach the top. Sounds like pure gospel to me. Psalm 139
I Love You!
Perry
That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion.
There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.
That’s why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the followers of Jesus, I couldn’t stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I’d think of you and give thanks. But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!
God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one can resist God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what.
In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.
You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s sheer genius, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified.
I was unsure of how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate—I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it—and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else. But the Message came through anyway. God’s Spirit and God’s power did it, which made it clear that your life of faith is a response to God’s power, not to some fancy mental or emotional footwork by me or anyone else.
ach of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
October 22nd, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Trusting His Grace
“It’s easier for a camel to go thru the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom.” Is that speaking of money? Is that speaking of those that seek material riches? Could Jesus have been talking of power? Of religious elite? Was he talking about those that think their rich in wisdom and power? Those that think they are rich in good behavior so they don’t need grace? She was so surprised he was talking to her. She had lived a life of question and she knew it. She also knew of her heritage and his. He did not hesitate to take of her cup and drink. She knew without doubt that she needed him and the water he was offering… full of grace. We spend our days thinking if we are just good enough. Still stuck in that paradigm that uses goodness and rule following to earn our way to his arms. Believing that he will only find joy in us if we behave a certain way or show the world how “religious” we are. Truth be told he did not find favor in those that thought they had it right. Those that followed the rules to the letter of law. He found favor in those that knew they needed him. Those that lived a life of commonality and sin. Her comment to me was “I love Jesus but I cuss a little”. I think Jesus finds favor in this young lady. She knows who she is and she doesn’t put up a front. She simply loves him and is trusting his grace.
I Love You!
Perry
They’re holding on, not because of what they think they’re going to get out of it, but because they’re convinced of God’s grace and purpose in choosing them. If they were only thinking of their own immediate self-interest, they would have left long ago.
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this.
I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
We all live off his generous abundance, gift after gift after gift.
We got the basics from Moses, and then this exuberant giving and receiving, This endless knowing and understanding—
all this came through Jesus, the Messiah.
No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse.
This one-of-a-kind God-Expression, who exists at the very heart of the Father, has made him plain as day.
Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.
October 15th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Life Given By God!
How can we presume to make someone or something soiled that God has created. Peter was told by Jesus to eat of what he considered to be unclean. “How can you worry about what you consider unclean when God has already made it clean and purified it”. Don’t we do that with people? Through judgment we label some people as unclean and ourselves or others as clean. All my life I have watched people judge based on first appearances and impressions. Never bothering to know someone or look to the motives that drive that person. I heard so much hatred surrounding Sam Smith, the singer, and his song “Unholy”. People judging based on perception without even knowing the lyrics or meaning behind the song. He wanted a song to convey the way he felt about his fathers behavior growing up. His unfaithful father, had a mistress, and to his mind it meant his father was controlled by satan. That is the purpose and meaning of the lyrics. To shine light on infidelity and the darkness it brings. The point that Jesus made to Peter was this. It’s not that religion is holy and the secular is profane. It’s that both religion and the secular can be holy and both can be desecrated. Ultimately religion and the secular are not two things… but one. Life given by God. Not just Christian music but all music is created by God. Not just Christian art but all art is created by God. Not just certain people but all people are created and loved by God. Acts Chap.10
I Love you!
Perry
We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
Jesus said, “I did one miraculous thing a few months ago, and you’re still standing around getting all upset, wondering what I’m up to. Moses prescribed circumcision—originally it came not from Moses but from his ancestors—and so you circumcise a man, dealing with one part of his body, even if it’s the Sabbath. You do this in order to preserve one item in the Law of Moses. So why are you upset with me because I made a man’s whole body well on the Sabbath? Don’t be hypercritical; use your head—and heart!—to discern what is right, to test what is authentically right.”
But God told Samuel, “Looks aren’t everything. Don’t be impressed with his looks and stature. I’ve already eliminated him. God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face; God looks into the heart.”
Jesus replied, “You’re right that you only have my word. But you can depend on it being true. I know where I’ve come from and where I go next. You don’t know where I’m from or where I’m headed. You decide according to what you can see and touch. I don’t make judgments like that. But even if I did, my judgment would be true because I wouldn’t make it out of the narrowness of my experience but in the largeness of the One who sent me, the Father. That fulfills the conditions set down in God’s Law: that you can count on the testimony of two witnesses. And that is what you have: You have my word and you have the word of the Father who sent me.”
Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ.
Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad.
October 8th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
A Work In Progress
Sometimes it feels like God directs me to places to reveal his message. He puts people in front of me to lead me to his heart. We had gone to our normal Friday breakfast spot but alias they were to busy. We ended up at Starbucks in downtown Fort Worth. I noticed them outside. Four guys with iPads around their necks facing outward. God put on my heart. “If I had made you with a screen on your chest, revealing your heart what would everyone see.” YIKES!
They would see a heart that loves Jesus with every square inch but still judges those around me. A heart that truly loves everyone but criticizes those who don’t think like I do. A heart that weeps for the marginalized but spends to much money for a simple meal. We all do it. I know I do. We have a facade we wear. A vision we want the world to see that is different from our thoughts and inner heart. Thoughts that we would never want revealed on a screen attached to our chest. Our amazing God… loves the broken inside. He doesn’t see the facade. He looks past it and loves the person we truly are. Regardless of how broken we might be… he loves. It ended up those guys worked for “Doctors Without Borders” and they used the iPads to show everyone what they do. They go to places that we consider unsafe, to offer medical aid. They truly have the heart of Christ! I however am a work in progress!!
The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love—love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God.
I Love You!
Perry
Be good wives to your husbands, responsive to their needs. There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty. What matters is not your outer appearance—the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes—but your inner disposition.
Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God that way, and were good, loyal wives to their husbands.
The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love—love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God.
Repeat these basic essentials over and over to God’s people. Warn them before God against pious nitpicking, which chips away at the faith. It just wears everyone out. Concentrate on doing your best for God, work you won’t be ashamed of, laying out the truth plain and simple.
Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body
No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are easy prey for predators. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.
But God told Samuel, “Looks aren’t everything. Don’t be impressed with his looks and stature. I’ve already eliminated him. God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face; God looks into the heart.”
We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
October 1st, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
His Name Is Jesus!
It happens daily. I notice it when I wear my HJD shirts. People look at me and form a pre-conceived idea when they see the name Jesus. Many tell me they like my shirt. Others ask about it. Those comments and inquires are great. The ones I worry about… the ones that keep me up at night… are the ones that turn the other way. Those that have a different lifestyle or maybe don’t believe in the same God I believe in. They turn or make a face. Why? Because Christianity has become known as judgmental and condemning. Instead of radiating a heart like Christ, we are perceived as we think our life is correct, and theirs is wrong. Why would they want to be around someone who is allows judging? They get that enough from the rest of the world. Instead of opposing so many things, by trying to force our lifestyle on others, maybe we should practice more love and acceptance and let Christ do what he does best. Change hearts! A friend of mine was at a gas station on a Sunday and he looked like he had been to church. Some young people at the pump next to him got his attention and flashed one of their shirts. It simply said “freedom from religion”. We have to be very careful how we portray our Savior. Why would those young people want to trade a system of rules, for another system with a whole other set of rules. I would have told them. I have freedom from religion also. His name is Jesus!
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.
Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.
So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.
For instance, a person who has been around for a while might well be convinced that he can eat anything on the table, while another, with a different background, might assume he should only be a vegetarian and eat accordingly. But since both are guests at Christ’s table, wouldn’t it be terribly rude if they fell to criticizing what the other ate or didn’t eat? God, after all, invited them both to the table. Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God’s welcome? If there are corrections to be made or manners to be learned, God can handle that without your help.
God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next. May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we’ll be a choir—not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus! So reach out and welcome one another to God’s glory. Jesus did it; now you do it!
Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and misfits?”
Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”
So here’s what I want you to do. When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight. If prayers are offered in tongues, two or three’s the limit, and then only if someone is present who can interpret what you’re saying. Otherwise, keep it between God and yourself.
My dear children, you come from God and belong to God. You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world. These people belong to the Christ-denying world. They talk the world’s language and the world eats it up. But we come from God and belong to God. Anyone who knows God understands us and listens. The person who has nothing to do with God will, of course, not listen to us. This is another test for telling the Spirit of Truth from the spirit of deception.
God Is Love
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
September 24th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
A Yearning!
It has always been there. A yearning. A desire to learn and a desire to go further. As a teenager when others were listening to rock music, I was listening to motivational speakers. I wanted to know more and understand everything. More than anything I have always had a longing for a understanding of Christ heart. A quest to know Christ on a more intimate level. To not just look and study the scripture, but a deep yearning that keeps me up at night… wondering. Searching for answers to a deeper knowledge of his spirit. A yearning that says there is more to our God than what I have always been taught by the evangelical movement that permeates our lives. Since I can remember, pastors have said you should memorize verses, like that will lead me to his heart. Most of the things that we learn, we learn in passing, on our way to something else. Then, every so often, something gives us reason to pause. Something catches our eye or grabs our attention, and we’re drawn for a moment to reflect on that which awakened us. That is where I long to be with Jesus. So close… so intimate… that i can feel his heart beat with mine. That I can hear him talk to me, not thru scripture, as much as through the intimacy of our hearts. That can only come thru time together in contemplation and conversation. Before you know it he is on your mind every minute. Then his heart will be right in front of you.
“You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.
I Love You!
Perry
“I’m not interested in crowd approval. And do you know why? Because I know you and your crowds. I know that love, especially God’s love, is not on your working agenda. I came with the authority of my Father, and you either dismiss me or avoid me. If another came, acting self-important, you would welcome him with open arms. How do you expect to get anywhere with God when you spend all your time jockeying for position with each other, ranking your rivals and ignoring God?
God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
Servants, do what you’re told by your earthly masters. And don’t just do the minimum that will get you by. Do your best. Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you’ll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you’re serving is Christ. The sullen servant who does shoddy work will be held responsible. Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t cover up bad work.
The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.
Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!
You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.
So let God work his will in you. Yell a loud no to the Devil and watch him make himself scarce. Say a quiet yes to God and he’ll be there in no time. Quit dabbling in sin. Purify your inner life. Quit playing the field. Hit bottom, and cry your eyes out. The fun and games are over. Get serious, really serious. Get down on your knees before the Master; it’s the only way you’ll get on your feet.
September 17th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
The Best Way To Love!
He was young and appeared to be homeless. As I came from the market I could hear the conversation. The young man had a look of despair and appeared to be cornered by an older gentleman. Young and homeless, but Gods child all the same. He was being preached at by a gentleman who looked as though he just came from church, on this Sunday. A gentleman who appeared to be concerned with his opinion of this young mans’ life, more than that of his own. This gentleman was more concerned with telling him how wrong he was… than he was with simply loving. Why do we think that because we live a life of church going and prayer that our life is more right than that of this homeless person? Why do we think that we need to advise when Jesus would simply love? I have talked with a lot of homeless people. I work with many organization that support homeless people and help give them medical attention. One thing I know for sure is that the homeless want someone to care… to listen… to pray… to simply love. They are not looking for someone to preach or tell them why your right and they are wrong. They want to be in the presence of someone with a Jesus heart. Someone who is more concerned with lending an ear or a hug than with preaching. The best way to love anyone is to simply listen. Simply support. Simply understand. It’s Jesus job to do the rest.
I Love You!
Perry
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
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.
Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”
But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.
Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes!
God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we’re awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we’re alive with him! So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. I know you’re already doing this; just keep on doing it.
The Way He Wants You to Live
And now, friends, we ask you to honor those leaders who work so hard for you, who have been given the responsibility of urging and guiding you along in your obedience. Overwhelm them with appreciation and love!
Get along among yourselves, each of you doing your part. Our counsel is that you warn the freeloaders to get a move on. Gently encourage the stragglers, and reach out for the exhausted, pulling them to their feet. Be patient with each person, attentive to individual needs. And be careful that when you get on each other’s nerves you don’t snap at each other. Look for the best in each other, and always do your best to bring it out.
Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government.
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.”
So let’s do it—full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out. Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.
September 10th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
It Is A Promise!
The drought here in Texas has been relentless. Day after day of one hundred plus temps, and no rain in sight. Then it happened. Dark clouds… heavy wind… thunder… lighting… then glorious rain. Only for a few minutes, but water from heaven none the less. Over the next couple of days out of that simple rain, seeds that had set dormant… waiting… sprung to life. Slowly at first, but with more water they started to grow. As I noticed, my thoughts turned to the small seeds that live inside of us. Small seeds that wait for the perfect time… the perfect rain… to bloom and grow. Seeds we are unaware of but placed there by the Master Gardener. Seeds of hope. Seeds of love. Seeds of faith. Seeds of joy. I don’t know what is happening in your life, at this moment. Maybe your lonely, depressed, feeling less then loved. Maybe your faith has withered and you are looking for solid ground. Small seeds have been planted in each of our hearts. Seeds that may sit dormant and unseen. Maybe years or decades. They wait for the perfect time and the perfect rain to bloom and grow. He is waiting for the perfect time in your life to water those dormant seeds in your heart… in your soul. Wait… Be patient… Keep watch… When the time comes and he choses to water… life will spring forth and hope, love, and faith will grow. It is HIS promise.
I Love You!
Perry
“I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.
So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.
Then Jesus said, “God’s kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows—he has no idea how it happens. The earth does it all without his help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. When the grain is fully formed, he reaps—harvest time!
We each carried out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God’s field in which we are working.
Or, to put it another way, you are God’s house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ.
Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!
Every time we think of you, we thank God for you. Day and night you’re in our prayers as we call to mind your work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope in following our Master, Jesus Christ, before God our Father. It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very much but also has put his hand on you for something special. When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s withinus. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
Spetember 3rd, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Where To Find God!
They call us their adopted grandparents! What an honor! This group of amazing young people, who shine a bright light on the future of our planet. Mere children in my older eyes, but young adults with a future that shines like the sun on this hot August day. A group of young people, with our own grandchildren counted among them, who enjoy the company of Lorna and I, despite our age. They hang out at our house. Go to dinner with us and include us in their group text. As I watch them jump in the pool, with their dress clothes on, I feel the presence of God. I can feel him all around me and see him in these wonderful teenagers. These amazing young people take me away from all my worries, if just for a moment. It is just the primal stuff of life that has broken through the mess of concerns that takes us captive on most days. It is life in the immediacy of the present moment before thought begins. What is so extraordinary about this moment is that nothing beyond the ordinary is present. It is just a starlit sky and young people at play. That is where we find God. In the simple unexpected times, when cares of the world fall away. When we are able to leave the problems of the day behind and simply contemplate Gods glory. I see him in their face. I feel him in their hugs. I hear him in their conversations and I marvel at the blessings he provides.
I Love You!
Perry
Get the word out. Teach all these things. And don’t let anyone put you down because you’re young. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity. Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching. And that special gift of ministry you were given when the leaders of the church laid hands on you and prayed—keep that dusted off and in use.
“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
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.
So be content with who you are, and don’t put on airs. God’s strong hand is on you; he’ll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you.
Appreciate your pastoral leaders who gave you the Word of God. Take a good look at the way they live, and let their faithfulness instruct you, as well as their truthfulness. There should be a consistency that runs through us all. For Jesus doesn’t change—yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself.
So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.
“What am I doing in the meantime, Lord?
Hoping, that’s what I’m doing—hoping
You’ll save me from a rebel life,
save me from the contempt of idiots.
I’ll say no more, I’ll shut my mouth,
since you, Lord, are behind all this.
But I can’t take it much longer.
When you put us through the fire
to purge us from our sin,
our dearest idols go up in smoke.
Are we also nothing but smoke?
August 27th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Less Ego / More Self-Esteem
Ego is what holds us back from seeking more knowledge. As he sat in my office all he could say was “I am a proud man. I am worthy of respect. I certainly don’t need anyone telling me how to live or what I can say”. What I observed was a child of God with a low self esteem who was using ego to try and feel better about himself. Self esteem and ego. Two very different things. Christ had a high self esteem because he knew who he was. Ego – not to be found anywhere in our Savior. Self Esteem says I am a child of the living God made in his image. I have self worth simply because I know who I belong to. Ego says I am better than you because of who I think I am and my beliefs. Self esteem says because I know who I am, I’m willing to listen, learn, and love unconditionally. Ego says I know it all so why should I heed your advice or listen to your opinion. Daily humans live more from the ego side than from the self-esteem side. To become our true selfs we have to abandon ego and find self esteem in the seed that lives in us. The seed of love that was planted by Christ. Christ lived without ego. His high self esteem allowed him to treat everyone with respect and to be open to learning from those around him. Learning to put away ego… allows you to hear the voice of God. Philippians 2:3(msg)
I Love You!
Perry
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
You’re cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. And do you suppose God doesn’t care? The proverb has it that “he’s a fiercely jealous lover.” And what he gives in love is far better than anything else you’ll find. It’s common knowledge that “God goes against the willful proud; God gives grace to the willing humble.”
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.
Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived. Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
When God, who is the best shepherd of all, comes out in the open with his rule, he’ll see that you’ve done it right and commend you lavishly. And you who are younger must follow your leaders. But all of you, leaders and followers alike, are to be down to earth with each other, for— God has had it with the proud, But takes delight in just plain people.
They still didn’t get it, didn’t realize that he was referring to the Father. So Jesus tried again. “When you raise up the Son of Man, then you will know who I am—that I’m not making this up, but speaking only what the Father taught me. The One who sent me stays with me. He doesn’t abandon me. He sees how much joy I take in pleasing him.”
August 20th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Living Without Judgement!
I could not help but overhear her discussion. She was sitting right next to me. She turned in my direction and seeing I was a minister moved forward with her conversation, which was now directed to me. As she told me her story my first thought was “Why would you want to live that way”. Why would you choose to live in negativity and have a judgmental heart. As I listened to her story my mind moved to this thought: “Why do we set our own lifestyle as a benchmark, and use that to judge another’s life”. On a cultural level, we take what our group… tribe… religion… or political party deems to be negative… out of bounds… or to be shunned… or punished. We then use that as a benchmark for judgement… for mistreatment. Behind every social oppression lurks a piece of a group whose members are exporting it onto others who are not of their tribe. It happens when you think your lifestyle is better than theirs. When you think your religion is better than others. When you think your sin is not as soiled as the next persons sin. To truly understand the heart of Christ means you live as he did. Not with judgment but with understanding love. Planting seeds of hope and salvation without your opinion on the issue. The only people Jesus had an issue with were the ones who thought their tribe was the best. We have to let go of our egos. Live with love… not judgement.
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.
I Love You!
Perry
Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you’ll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”
Don’t bad-mouth each other, friends. It’s God’s Word, his Message, his Royal Rule, that takes a beating in that kind of talk. You’re supposed to be honoring the Message, not writing graffiti all over it. God is in charge of deciding human destiny. Who do you think you are to meddle in the destiny of others?
Cultivating Good Relationships
Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.
For instance, a person who has been around for a while might well be convinced that he can eat anything on the table, while another, with a different background, might assume he should only be a vegetarian and eat accordingly. But since both are guests at Christ’s table, wouldn’t it be terribly rude if they fell to criticizing what the other ate or didn’t eat? God, after all, invited them both to the table. Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God’s welcome? If there are corrections to be made or manners to be learned, God can handle that without your help.
Or, say, one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience.
What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake; if you eat meat, eat it to the glory of God and thank God for prime rib; if you’re a vegetarian, eat vegetables to the glory of God and thank God for broccoli. None of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It’s God we are answerable to—all the way from life to death and everything in between—not each other. That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other.
So where does that leave you when you criticize a brother? And where does that leave you when you condescend to a sister? I’d say it leaves you looking pretty silly—or worse. Eventually, we’re all going to end up kneeling side by side in the place of judgment, facing God. Your critical and condescending ways aren’t going to improve your position there one bit. Read it for yourself in Scripture:
“As I live and breathe,” God says, “Every knee will bow before me; every tongue will tell the honest truth that I and only I am God.”
So mind your own business. You’ve got your hands full just taking care of your own life before God. Forget about deciding what’s right for each other. Here’s what you need to be concerned about: that you don’t get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it already is. I’m convinced—Jesus convinced me!—that everything as it is in itself is holy. We, of course, by the way we treat it or talk about it, can contaminate it.
Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, “The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone.” Bending down again, he wrote some more in the dirt.
Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift.
If someone claims, “I know him well!” but doesn’t keep his commandments, he’s obviously a liar. His life doesn’t match his words. But the one who keeps God’s word is the person in whom we see God’s mature love. This is the only way to be sure we’re in God. Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived.
August 13, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Standing In Awe!
I stood in AWE! I stood with wonderment and tears, beholding Gods’ mighty hand. Standing at the foot of a four hundred foot waterfall, the power is overwhelming. Then my eyes turn to the Mendenhall Glacier. Ice that is thousands of years old, in a valley that was shaped by Gods hand. Thinking to myself, this did not happen by accident. To believe all of this came together, as a fluke of nature, is simply impossible. To stand still and feel the presence of God is not something to be taken lightly. As the huge sixty thousand pound whales come out of the water, ten at a time to feed, tears flowed and family members hugged from shear excitement… amazement… and a sense of thankfulness. Everywhere you looked you could see God. His presence shining forth in this amazing world he built. I prayed a prayer of thanksgiving, realizing he did not have to make our world so incredibly beautiful. Then to think that everything is spiritual. Everything bears witness to him and his mighty power. The point of the Christian life is to stand in solidarity with everyone and everything. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the crucifixion. At that moment, God, through Christ, stood in solidarity with the whole earth. We are to stand the same. Doing whatever is needed to protect his world and each other. Each and everyday it is our reasonability to take care of the things he trusts us with. He did it all out of love… caring is how we love him back.
I Love You!
Perry
Earth-creatures, bow before God; world-dwellers—down on your knees! Here’s why: he spoke and there it was, in place the moment he said so.
We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
Jesus, grilled by the Pharisees on when the kingdom of God would come, answered, “The kingdom of God doesn’t come by counting the days on the calendar. Nor when someone says, ‘Look here!’ or, ‘There it is!’ And why? Because God’s kingdom is already among you.”
Worthy, O Master! Yes, our God! Take the glory! the honor! the power! You created it all; It was created because you wanted it.
Blessed are you, God of Israel, our father from of old and forever.
To you, O God, belong the greatness and the might, the glory, the victory, the majesty, the splendor;
Yes! Everything in heaven, everything on earth; the kingdom all yours! You’ve raised yourself high over all.
“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”
God claims Earth and everything in it, God claims World and all who live on it.
He built it on Ocean foundations, laid it out on River girders.
God took the Man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order.
No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it— What God has arranged for those who love him. But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.
July 23rd, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
To Be A Better Teacher!
We could all be better teachers. Being a good teacher is more than what is in a book. It’s a lifestyle that leaves an indelible impression on those around us.
Jesus constantly looked for teachable people—people who would look beyond appearances and not make snap judgments. He warmed to those who asked honest questions. And he was grieved and dumbfounded by the educated who were hardhearted… unteachable. He said to them, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39). Being a better teacher means when people see you they see Jesus. We teach thru example. I had many teachers during my school days. However the ones that left the biggest impression were not the ones who knew everything in the books… but those that showed a life of character and love. For me my most memorable was Mr. Mooneyham. He thought me so much more than what was in a book. Christ taught from his heart and in communion with his father. He taught more from example than from the prophets and the scripture. He taught from a heart of pure love and compassion. To be a good teacher is to have a positive influence on others in our path. We are all teachers whether we know it or not. We should strive to be memorable… just as Christ was!
Jesus came back, “God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah! You didn’t get that answer out of books or from teachers. My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am. And now I’m going to tell you who you are, really are. You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.
I Love You!
Perry
But mostly, show them all this by doing it yourself, trustworthy in your teaching, your words solid and sane. Then anyone who is dead set against us, when he finds nothing weird or misguided, might eventually come around.
“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again. All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s Cross. But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.
This is the kind of life you’ve been invited into, the kind of life Christ lived. He suffered everything that came his way so you would know that it could be done, and also know how to do it, step-by-step.
Friend, don’t go along with evil. Model the good. The person who does good does God’s work. The person who does evil falsifies God, doesn’t know the first thing about God.
Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.
July 16th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
The Jesus Principle
Do you live with the Jesus Principle?
When God put this thought in my head I had to ask: What Does He Mean? I believe with my heart it is a way of life that looks to Christ in everything… for guidance in every situation. When faced with conflict. When faced with temptation. When contemplating a direction we should ask: Does it fit into the Jesus Principle? Jesus lived without judgement or condemnation. Jesus lived without violence or hatred. He allowed others to have their space and to move in the direction they thought best. He was peace personified. When Peters’ reaction was justice with a sword, Jesus rebuked. “Peter that is not what we are about.” Only to pick up the guards ear and replace it. When you live by the Jesus Principle and someone wrongs you, your first thought should not be revenge, but love and prayer for them. Jesus did not return violence with violence. Instead he demonstrated restraint, and returned violence with love. When others thought differently, he simply taught by planting seeds, then sent them on their way. No rebuke… no judgement… no hatred. He met people right where they lived and showed them a life through example. He looked upon all, as the children of his father. Worthy of his love and worthy of his understanding. To live with the Jesus Principle means we should do the same.
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.
I Love You!
Perry
Show me how you work, God; School me in your ways.
Let me give you some good advice; I’m looking you in the eye and giving it to you straight:
“I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you’ll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”
Don’t bad-mouth each other, friends. It’s God’s Word, his Message, his Royal Rule, that takes a beating in that kind of talk. You’re supposed to be honoring the Message, not writing graffiti all over it. God is in charge of deciding human destiny. Who do you think you are to meddle in the destiny of others?
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.
July 9th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
The Ego Separates Us!
Our egos are the part of our hearts, that not only separates us from God but from each other. I have watched as people I love, allow a relationship that has the potential to be a gift, erode like the dirt of a nearby creek. They allow erosion to happen, before speaking from the heart, because truthfulness and heart felt listening produces a blow to the ego. Ego and pride. Two words that go hand in hand but bring no glory to those that let them control. Of all the things Christ talked against, these two top the list.
He caused one of the greatest losses our company had ever experienced. He cheated… lied… to all of us. Mostly to me. He did it out of what he believed was a right cause, but it was wrong regardless. After it was over, my heart could do nothing but allow forgiveness and take him back in. His pride, would not allow him to come back to his home of 22 years. That is how pride and ego work. When someone will not let you in traffic… ego! When someone let’s their beliefs out weigh their love… ego. When others are belittling or condemning… ego. I cry sometimes thinking about how the world has become so egotistical. Each of us being so hateful to the other, all in an effort to feed our egos. If you are in a relationship. Be it friend, spouse, or co-worker. Throw the ego… the pride… out the window. Look for common ground. Then stand on. Let love fill your heart. It’s the only way to peace and understanding. Luke 14:10-11
I Love You!
Perry
Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.
When God, who is the best shepherd of all, comes out in the open with his rule, he’ll see that you’ve done it right and commend you lavishly. And you who are younger must follow your leaders. But all of you, leaders and followers alike, are to be down to earth with each other, for—
God has had it with the proud,
But takes delight in just plain people.
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.
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.
You’re cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. And do you suppose God doesn’t care? The proverb has it that “he’s a fiercely jealous lover.” And what he gives in love is far better than anything else you’ll find. It’s common knowledge that “God goes against the willful proud; God gives grace to the willing humble.”
Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.”
Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.
Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
July 2nd, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Hear His Whisper!
Take a moment…
Close your eyes…
Relax your spirit…
Can you hear him? Can you feel his presence? Can you hear his whisper? Come with me! Daily he whispers. Come with me! He wants to show us pure joy that can’t be found without him. He wants to show us a peace that can’t be understood outside of him. He wants to show you faith over fear. He wants to give you rest from this weary world. He wants to lead you to an uncontaminated love. He longs to love you like you’ve never been loved before, in this worldly place. A love you will wonder how you ever lived without. Once you experience it, you will never let it go. He longs to be with you… to hear you whisper back. He wants to hear you say his name… he wants to spend the day with you. To show you wonders and amazement. He longs to know your worries… your concerns. He wants to break the chains that hold you captive, and set you free. Take a moment and whisper his name “Jesus”.
He’s listening…
leaning in…
waiting for you…
Let him wake you up as only he can do. Jesus!
The apostles then rendezvoused with Jesus and reported on all that they had done and taught. Jesus said, “Come off by yourselves; let’s take a break and get a little rest.” For there was constant coming and going. They didn’t even have time to eat.
I Love You!
Perry
May the Master of Peace himself give you the gift of getting along with each other at all times, in all ways. May the Master be truly among you!
“I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.
That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’sman. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
“Look at me. I stand at the door. I knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I’ll come right in and sit down to supper with you. Conquerors will sit alongside me at the head table, just as I, having conquered, took the place of honor at the side of my Father. That’s my gift to the conquerors!
Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.
Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders. Don’t miss a trick. Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.
June 25th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Love Decentered!
Hatred means there is a deficit of understanding. Daily I see so much hatred. Hatred for groups that live a life that is different. Those that may have been born in the wrong body. Those that may have been born with different preferences. Those that have been born with different skin, different beliefs or different interpretations of the word. As she walked out of the group my mind wondered as to why? She simply couldn’t listen to the discussion any longer, because it didn’t fit into her mold of what was right… what was wrong. She had spent her life believing a certain direction of scripture and to think outside her comfort zone was simply more than she could handle. Then I think of our Savior and how much he taught outside the comfort zone of the people. He challenged almost everything they believed. He asked “who should cast the first stone”. He asked “why do you break the commandment of love for the sake of your tradition?”. “If you love only those who are easy then what reward will you get?”. Jesus new commandment of love meant that neither beliefs, nor words, neither taboos, systems, structures nor the labels that enshrined them mattered most. Love decentered everything else; love relativized everything else; love took priority over everything else—everything. When the glorious day comes for me to sit with Jesus… the discussion will not be about you or my neighbor. It will simply be about me, and how much I loved you!
I Love You!
Perry
Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping.
We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first. If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”
That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.
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.
After that, Pharisees and religion scholars came to Jesus all the way from Jerusalem, criticizing, “Why do your disciples play fast and loose with the rules?”
But Jesus put it right back on them. “Why do you use your rules to play fast and loose with God’s commands? God clearly says, ‘Respect your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.’ But you weasel around that by saying, ‘Whoever wants to, can say to father and mother, What I owed to you I’ve given to God.’ That can hardly be called respecting a parent. You cancel God’s command by your rules. Frauds! Isaiah’s prophecy of you hit the bull’s-eye:
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the supple moves of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
June 18th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
It’s What You See!
As I ride thru the Pacific side of Mexico I am reminded of how truly blessed I am. We had stopped at the oldest brick making operation in Mexico. As we entered I expected to see machinery. I was amazed to see none of that. Instead I saw men, using mud, and manure to produce bricks. No tools, no equipment, simply God’s gift of hands and feet. As I watched him build the bricks. Mixing the mud and manure with his feet. I thought of how much God loves him. I saw a child of God who is always on his mind. I saw a man who had no material riches. Did not go to a fancy church with air conditioning and movie screens. Did not have an air conditioned car to ride in. Chances are he may not even know of Christ. But God loves him just as much as he loves me… this man is on his mind every minute of everyday. It’s not what you look at… it’s what you see! As we live our lives we are so prone to judgement. We look at others and we judge based on our life… our perception. We claim salvation based on church participation and rule following. We feel sorry for those who do not know Christ and we assume they are not saved. Christ love says different. Our Gods’ love breaks down barriers and looks with favor on his children. I plan on seeing this man in heaven. Maybe he will teach me how to make bricks the old fashion way.
I Love You! Perry
Servants, do what you’re told by your earthly masters. And don’t just do the minimum that will get you by. Do your best. Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you’ll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you’re serving is Christ. The sullen servant who does shoddy work will be held responsible. Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t cover up bad work.
I write this, dear children, to guide you out of sin. But if anyone does sin, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When he served as a sacrifice for our sins, he solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world’s. Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep his commandments.
But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.
But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, easy marks for sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives.
Basically, all of us, whether insiders or outsiders, start out in identical conditions, which is to say that we all start out as sinners.
June 11th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Betrayal!
It started on a Wednesday and got bigger the following Tuesday. Betrayal. Deceit. Selfishness. All in an effort to get ahead. I never thought they would leave my side. These people I love. Some people I have poured my heart and resources into. Friends and those I love being hateful… devious… in an effort to self promote. I have felt betrayed and broken. All my life I have found a strength in helping others. All my life I have been a part of Christian organizations. Only to be betrayed by the very systems that claim to follow Christ. Systems that claim morals and rules based on scripture and our father. I now know that those very institutions are more about self preservation and not Christian principles.
So I thought about Paul. What Paul already recognized, is that it is almost impossible for any social grouping to be corporately or consistently selfless. It has to maintain and promote itself first, at virtually any cost—sacrificing even its own stated ethics and morality. So where does that leave us. With Christ and Christ alone. It has taught me that believing in Christian institutions, derived from men, is a dangerous place to put faith. So what is faith? It’s not certainty in what we know or systems we are a part of. It’s confidence in who we know. I certainly don’t expect Institutions to be perfect. No one is. However I do expect them to follow the one who leads our life.
Look only to Christ! Christ alone! In him is complete truth.
I Love You!
Perry
God’s my strong champion;
I flick off my enemies like flies.
Far better to take refuge in God
than trust in people;
Far better to take refuge in God
than trust in celebrities.
Make sure you don’t take things for granted and go slack in working for the common good; share what you have with others. God takes particular pleasure in acts of worship—a different kind of “sacrifice”—that take place in kitchen and workplace and on the streets.
“I’ve never, as you so well know, had any taste for wealth or fashion. With these bare hands I took care of my own basic needs and those who worked with me. In everything I’ve done, I have demonstrated to you how necessary it is to work on behalf of the weak and not exploit them. You’ll not likely go wrong here if you keep remembering that our Master said, ‘You’re far happier giving than getting.’”
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’sman. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.
It pleases me that you continue to remember and honor me by keeping up the traditions of the faith I taught you. All actual authority stems from Christ.
So roll up your sleeves, get your head in the game, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”
June 4th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
The Dance!
Friday… is the day that we reserve for each other. Friday is the day when we let the cares of the week scatter like leaves in the wind, and we devote our time to each other. Her question was very simple: “Do You Love Me?”. My beautiful wife while sitting at a red light, on a Friday afternoon, asked a simple question. As I thought, my response was this: “Certainly I love you. But… my love… it goes so much deeper than that. Our existence together is on a spiritual level. We have truly become as one”. When God referred to two becoming as one he was not simply talking about sex. In fact, I think that is the least of it. He was wanting us, as people, to become as one on a deeper spiritual level. To move as one in a singular direction. To become so close that our thoughts are similar. Our actions are similar. He wanted us, as his children, to move together as the Holy Trinity does. In a spiritual dance. Each as our own person but moving in-sync in a common direction. That is what God was looking for when he said the “two shall become as one”. So it should also be with our father. The dance, that is marriage, should also be a holy trinity with Christ at the center. Becoming so close to him that the three move together in one direction. In the dance with Christ and the dance with each other, it takes losing yourself to gain. I will say “there is no better feeling in this world”.
Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting.
I Love You!
Perry
Jesus said, “Moses wrote this command only as a concession to your hardhearted ways. In the original creation, God made male and female to be together. Because of this, a man leaves father and mother, and in marriage he becomes one flesh with a woman—no longer two individuals, but forming a new unity. Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate his art by cutting them apart.”
No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That’s how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of his body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become “one flesh.” This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband.
As written in Scripture, “The two become one.”
Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.
But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
Jesus sensed that his disciples were having a hard time with this and said, “Does this rattle you completely? What would happen if you saw the Son of Man ascending to where he came from? The Spirit can make life. Sheer muscle and willpower don’t make anything happen. Every word I’ve spoken to you is a Spirit-word, and so it is life-making. But some of you are resisting, refusing to have any part in this.” (Jesus knew from the start that some weren’t going to risk themselves with him. He knew also who would betray him.) He went on to say, “This is why I told you earlier that no one is capable of coming to me on his own. You get to me only as a gift from the Father.”
When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this,
Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
What God has arranged for those who love him.
But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.
The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along. Who ever knows what you’re thinking and planning except you yourself? The same with God—except that he not only knows what he’s thinking, but he lets us in on it. God offers a full report on the gifts of life and salvation that he is giving us. We don’t have to rely on the world’s guesses and opinions. We didn’t learn this by reading books or going to school; we learned it from God, who taught us person-to-person through Jesus, and we’re passing it on to you in the same firsthand, personal way.
The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can’t receive the gifts of God’s Spirit. There’s no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit—God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God’s Spirit is doing, and can’t be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah’s question, “Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?” has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.
May 28th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Climb The Mountain
Do you ever have a week… or two… or five… where you wonder what went wrong? Did the moon and stars forget to orbit? Was there a shift in the balance of nature that caused everything to go haywire? My last two months I have felt as though satan is punching me in the head. Then I turn around and he kicks me in the crotch. I also come to realize the change in my attitude as this happens. What drives us to reach further and grow stronger? What produces in us the ability to think outside the box and embrace the love of God? Time in the valley? Hardship? Challenges and times of despair? Then and only then, do we turn to our better selves, we turn to God to bring the energy and tenacity we so desperately need. If we continue to climb, and strive to move forward, we will reach a place where the valley turns into the mountain. It’s so easy to forget that he is there. To forget that he cares and that his ways are bigger than ours. As humans our first inclination is to wallow in self pity. To think “why me”. Did I do something wrong? Has the sin in my life finally caught up with me? Our father does not punish us because we sin. He does not rain on our parade because he is disappointed. He carries! He holds our hand! He wipes away the tears! So keep on climbing. Reach for the mountain. You will discover that God is already there and he has been holding your hand thru the entire season.
Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
I Love you!
Perry
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.
That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
Jesus answered them, “Do you finally believe? In fact, you’re about to make a run for it—saving your own skins and abandoning me. But I’m not abandoned. The Father is with me. I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world.”
And that about wraps it up. God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This is no weekend war that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels.
Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.
May 21st, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Morning Prayer!
Father today, use me, until you can’t use me any longer. All I have to give, is my life in service to you. I lift up my hands and I praise you… again and again. I feel so weak, and so inadequate to be your child. I struggle daily to understand the path… the reason… the world. I want nothing more than to reflect your love and kindness to those around me. Give me the wisdom, the knowledge, and the tenacity, to stand for your love, regardless of what the world thinks. Give me the strength to be a rock in this crazy storm called life. A rock that is secure in your never ending love, when so much hatred abounds. Give me strength to share your message of love for all, when so many seem to not understand. Allow me to have the courage to stand against hatred, prejudice, and all kinds of tyranny against your children. Open my eyes to the injustice that so many of your children show to each other. Place in me the strength and faith of Peter, to stand up for those who can not stand up for themselves. I fall at your feet, and I offer my knowledge and my resources, when I know in my heart all you really desire is my love. Allow my love for you to grow to new heights, and new depths. I ask that you allow that love to grow to the point, that loving others is as natural as the breath I take. Most of all allow your light to shine from my life.
I Love You!
Perry
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
“You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.
You were running superbly! Who cut in on you, deflecting you from the true course of obedience? This detour doesn’t come from the One who called you into the race in the first place. And please don’t toss this off as insignificant. It only takes a minute amount of yeast, you know, to permeate an entire loaf of bread. Deep down, the Master has given me confidence that you will not defect. But the one who is upsetting you, whoever he is, will bear the divine judgment.
Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins;
Christ will show you the light!
So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!
“But there is another urgency before me now. I feel compelled to go to Jerusalem. I’m completely in the dark about what will happen when I get there. I do know that it won’t be any picnic, for the Holy Spirit has let me know repeatedly and clearly that there are hard times and imprisonment ahead. But that matters little. What matters most to me is to finish what God started: the job the Master Jesus gave me of letting everyone I meet know all about this incredibly extravagant generosity of God.
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.
Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping.
Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it’s needed. Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it! Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them had happened to you. Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. God draws a firm line against casual and illicit sex.
May 14th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Fixing Christianity!
Day to day I see people, who call themselves Christ followers, doing everything but reflecting the heart of Jesus. As my day progresses I think: Everything I do… everything I say… the way I conduct business… the way I treat others… is a direct reflection on the one I follow. When I wear the name Christian. When I profess to follow Christ. Others look to me to see what HE is like. Do I truly understand his heart? Do others see him in me? Since 1974 I have walked side by side with Jesus. So close that I long to be by his side. I have been involved in churches and even as a worship pastor. I deal daily with church leaders who are deceitful… hurtful… and self-serving… Is that Christ? I work with Christian schools who claim to teach our children in the ways of Christ then turn around and throw the golden rule out the window. I was asked by a fellow pastor “what needs to happen to fix the brokenness of Christianity”. My answer was: “there are 4,000 religions world wide. Basically divided into five groups. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. I have studied and read most of the books of each religion and I find one common theme. The Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. If we lived by that one simple law. Practiced that one simple idea. How things would change. It has to start now. It has to start with Christ and his people.
“Our lives begin to end, the day we become silent about things that matter”. – Dr. King.
I Love You! Perry
“Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God’s Law and Prophets and this is what you get.
Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
But that’s no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.
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.
“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
As it is, you are full of your grandiose selves. All such vaunting self-importance is evil. In fact, if you know the right thing to do and don’t do it, that, for you, is evil.
Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here’s what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn’t wisdom. It’s the furthest thing from wisdom—it’s animal cunning, devilish plotting. Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.
But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.
He Took on the Status of a Slave
If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.
Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.
Rejoicing Together
What I’m getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you’ve done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I’m separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.
Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing.
Even if I am executed here and now, I’ll rejoice in being an element in the offering of your faith that you make on Christ’s altar, a part of your rejoicing. But turnabout’s fair play—you must join me in my rejoicing. Whatever you do, don’t feel sorry for me.
May 7,2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Respect!
As his children… born in his image… we have in our DNA the ability to love and respect everyone around us. Regardless of our differing views, differing beliefs or differing lifestyles, respect and love should always go hand in hand. Certain situations deserve, in fact demand, ultimate respect. As I stood in the Lincoln Memorial I was appalled at the lack of respect for the monument, and for the meaning it holds. People laughing and yelling. Others letting their kids run around uncontrolled. Still others sitting on parts of the monument not intended for human contact. I was trying my best to let the full meaning of his existence sink in. As I prayed a prayer of thanksgiving for God sharing him with us, I thought of the disrespect that is given to our God. When you disrespect others. When you call names. When you degrade someone, you are really disrespecting their maker. You are disrespecting the image of God that is in them. Every human deserves ultimate respect and kindness. You may not agree with their lifestyle. You may not agree with their actions, but God lives in them, so things said in hatred reflect on the God that made us. When you disrespect by talking when you should be silent. Ignoring when you should be attentive. All these things create a barrier to love for the children of God. I will return to the Lincoln Memorial one day. I pray others will come to the understanding of the importance of his presence. And thru God they will see the respect we all deserve. Ephesians 5:21
I Love You!
Perry
Make the Master proud of you by being good citizens. Respect the authorities, whatever their level; they are God’s emissaries for keeping order. It is God’s will that by doing good, you might cure the ignorance of the fools who think you’re a danger to society. Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government.
And now, friends, we ask you to honor those leaders who work so hard for you, who have been given the responsibility of urging and guiding you along in your obedience. Overwhelm them with appreciation and love!
Get along among yourselves, each of you doing your part. Our counsel is that you warn the freeloaders to get a move on. Gently encourage the stragglers, and reach out for the exhausted, pulling them to their feet. Be patient with each person, attentive to individual needs. And be careful that when you get on each other’s nerves you don’t snap at each other. Look for the best in each other, and always do your best to bring it out.
Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift.
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.
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
April 30th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Rules!
We have come to believe that the “rules” in scripture are for God. The rules have to be followed in order to please God, to create salvation. Wars and certainly arguments among Christians seem to breakout daily, based on different interpretations of the rules. Could it be that the rules we find in scripture are for us, and not for God? Could it be that the directions of life he laid down, are for our benefit and not his? God and Christ do not need us to perform, in order to be pleasing! Their love for us could not be increased by anything we do! The guidelines of life found in the bible are to help us create a better journey for ourselves. A better path to happiness and joy. I encounter many people who spend a tremendous amount of time, pointing to the sins of others. “They are living a life that is not pleasing to God”. What gives that person the audacity to believe that one persons life is more pleasing to God than the other. What size ego do you need, to think that your lifestyle is better than that of another? I have friends who have multiple children. In some cases as different as night and day. One cooperative…one defiant. Ask them if they love one more than the other. The answer will always be, “I love them equally”. Is God’s love not deeper than that of a parent? Currently there are 45,000 different denominations of Christian Churches. Which is right? Which is wrong? God loves them all!
I Love You!
Perry
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
Be a good citizen. All governments are under God. Insofar as there is peace and order, it’s God’s order. So live responsibly as a citizen. If you’re irresponsible to the state, then you’re irresponsible with God, and God will hold you responsible. Duly constituted authorities are only a threat if you’re trying to get by with something. Decent citizens should have nothing to fear.
But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.
April 23rd, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
A Lover’s Life
The light of Christ that shone from her, illuminated the room. We had a rather trying day. Airport mishaps and hotel mistakes. As we checked into yet another hotel, she greeted us with open arms. Her smile was contagious, and her first words to us were “I’ve been waiting for you”. She offered us love… kindness… and special treatment. She threw open her arms and embraced us as if to say: I know we have the same creator and that makes us family. She said “I am from Ethiopia and as we may be from two different worlds we have love for each other”. As I stood in the middle of such warmth, such goodwill God spoke to me. We are to treat our fellow man, no matter who, no matter where, with love such as this. A love that says: Don’t care where you came from. Don’t care what color your skin is. Don’t care if you are clean or dirty. Don’t care what your lifestyle preferences are. Don’t care. I am going to love you with all that is in me. I am going to show you respect and I am going to shine the light of Christ upon you. Being Christ followers, means we spend each day, trying to imitate our Savior. Being kind and loving, as he was. Being meek and lowly, as he was. Looking for those to help, as he did. As you do, you will start to see the holy spirit in everyone. And they will see Christ in you. Philippians 1:9
I Love You!
Perry
Remember, our Message is not about ourselves; we’re proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are is messengers, errand runners from Jesus for you. It started when God said, “Light up the darkness!” and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful.
“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping.
“I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. 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.
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.
It pleases me that you continue to remember and honor me by keeping up the traditions of the faith I taught you. All actual authority stems from Christ.
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’sman. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”
April 16th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Condemnation!
She looked at me as I sat staring out the window. “Are you okay” she asked? “I am weary”. I cry sometimes uncontrollably, as the burden and weight of that weariness sets in. I want so badly for everyone to truly understand the heart of Jesus. Sadly, so many that call themselves Christians do not. Christians who judge. Christians who condemn. Christians who have contempt for others.
Where is Jesus in your judgement? In your lack of love? Where is Jesus when you degrade or demean someone because they live a life that you believe is wrong? Do you realize those are his children? How would you feel if someone degraded one of your children? How are we ever going to convince the world that a God they cannot see loves them, when the Christians they can see don’t even like them? When Christ said “don’t point to the spec in your brothers eye, when you have a log in yours”. He was talking of condemnation. Some may think that they don’t have a log in their eye, but the judgement and contempt is what Christ was referring to. Christ lived… studied… and walked with people, that in his time were considered the worse sinners. Today he would walk with all the people so many Christians want to condemn. LGBTQ community. Drug users. Prostitutes. The list goes on. Let us look on each other, regardless of lifestyle, as children of God.
Then nurture, help and comfort. And simply love. Matt 10:21 (MSG)
I Love You!
Perry
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love.
I, Simon Peter, am a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. I write this to you whose experience with God is as life-changing as ours, all due to our God’s straight dealing and the intervention of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Grace and peace to you many times over as you deepen in your experience with God and Jesus, our Master.
Don’t Put It Off
Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.
So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
Everything in the world is about to be wrapped up, so take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything.
Hatred starts fights, but love pulls a quilt over the bickering.
April 9th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Happy Easter!!
Forty and Three!
He started with forty, and ended with three. Forty days… alone… tempted… fighting… satan in his face each step of the way. Each day was a battle and each step grew harder and harder. He wondered if his father had forsaken him. After the forty days he came out of the desert having dealt with satan. It was not over! Three years later on a distant hill… a guards’ whip… a wooden cross… a crown of thorns…death… again wondering if his father had forsaken him. Satan thought he had his victory. Wrong! Three days. Three days in a tomb, but not silenced. He knocked on the doors of hell and defeated satan once and for all. “You will not have my children.” Three days he battled… knocking down the gates of hell, and pulling us to his side. He could have left us there… but no! He could have called every angel in heaven… but no! He could have used the power of his father… but no. He defeated the evil one with pure love. Love for you… and love for me. All it takes to defeat the liar, is love. Our Savior is Pure. Perfect. Love. Satan had no choice. Want to defeat satan everyday? LOVE like Jesus.
What an amazing Savior! What a perfect Lord! He has RISEN!!
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
I Love You!
Perry
Jesus told this simple story, but they had no idea what he was talking about. So he tried again. “I’ll be explicit, then. I am the Gate for the sheep. All those others are up to no good—sheep rustlers, every one of them. But the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
“Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life—body and soul—in his hands.
So, my dear children, don’t let anyone divert you from the truth. It’s the person who acts right who is right, just as we see it lived out in our righteous Messiah. Those who make a practice of sin are straight from the Devil, the pioneer in the practice of sin. The Son of God entered the scene to abolish the Devil’s ways.
But Jesus didn’t swerve. “Peter, get out of my way. Satan, get lost. You have no idea how God works.”
One more thing, friends: Pray for us. Pray that the Master’s Word will simply take off and race through the country to a groundswell of response, just as it did among you. And pray that we’ll be rescued from these troublemakers who are trying to do us in. I’m finding that not all “believers” are believers. But the Master never lets us down. He’ll stick by you and protect you from evil.
And that about wraps it up. God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This is no weekend war that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels.
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’sman. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
The angel spoke to the women: “There is nothing to fear here. I know you’re looking for Jesus, the One they nailed to the cross. He is not here. He was raised, just as he said. Come and look at the place where he was placed.
What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.
April 2nd, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
A Glimpse Of Heaven!
I could stay wrapped in your arms forever!
Do you ever feel so close to our Savior that it feels like he is wrapping you in love? There are days, after deep prayer, that I feel so close to him that everything else seems to fade away. I can feel his presence… I can feel his warmth… I can feel his love. During these times, as troubles fade and are replaced with his amazing love, I wonder why I would ever want to leave. Father, let me hide in your embrace as close as a mortal heart can be. Even if it is just on the fringes of your perfect love in this fallen world. As I pray… as Christ and I become one in the spirit… I know in my heart that the trials of this earth will try to take me from him. The problems of daily life will pull me in different directions. At times I fall and his embrace slips from me. Then I pray harder and his embrace comes back as if time stood still. His light surrounds me as the world rushes by. As I become closer… as I feel his love… as I realize that no matter what this world does, his love is always there. I start to catch a glimpse of what heaven will be.
“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.
I Love You!
Perry
“Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.” When we seek God with all of our hearts and draw near to Him, we will feel His presence once again.
Jesus answered them, “Do you finally believe? In fact, you’re about to make a run for it—saving your own skins and abandoning me. But I’m not abandoned. The Father is with me. I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world.”
Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.
Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
So be content with who you are, and don’t put on airs. God’s strong hand is on you; he’ll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you.
May the Master of Peace himself give you the gift of getting along with each other at all times, in all ways. May the Master be truly among you!
At that time, this song
will be sung in the country of Judah:
We have a strong city, Salvation City,
built and fortified with salvation.
Throw wide the gates
so good and true people can enter.
People with their minds set on you,
you keep completely whole,
Steady on their feet,
because they keep at it and don’t quit.
Depend on God and keep at it
because in the Lord God you have a sure thing.
Those who lived high and mighty
he knocked off their high horse.
He used the city built on the hill
as fill for the marshes.
All the exploited and outcast peoples
build their lives on the reclaimed land.
March 26th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Jesus Excitement!
When she saw the name “Jesus” her excitement overwhelmed… she stop me to say so. I had on a HJD shirt and she made an effort to share her excitement. It was one of the most refreshing things I have experienced in a long while. No pretense. No apprehension about my lifestyle. No worry about this religion or that. No concern for my beliefs other than that I loved Jesus. Her excitement was contagious, and her love was so transparent it made my heart sing. She was from South Africa and would do whatever was needed to make sure she could study, learn, and love Jesus with her whole heart. She talked of how she had to sneak around to worship him. She had to hide inside to fully express her love for our Savior. It gave me pause as to my level of love for our teacher. It is so easy for me to worship him… love him. I wear his name on my person everywhere I go, but do I exude my excitement for him? Do any of us? We live in a world where if we get to excited for the one who saves us we are considered Jesus freaks. Let us be excited about our favorite sports team, favorite singer or favorite actor and we are accepted. You can get excited about a president you might like, but display over excitement for the King of Kings and you will considered awkward. I pray, that just like this wonderful sweet girl, my love for Jesus will make a few people uncomfortable.
Some Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, get your disciples under control! But he said, “If they kept quiet, the stones would do it for them, shouting praise.”
So let’s go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is—not trying to be privileged insiders, but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus. This “insider world” is not our home. We have our eyes peeled for the City about to come. Let’s take our place outside with Jesus, no longer pouring out the sacrificial blood of animals but pouring out sacrificial praises from our lips to God in Jesus’ name.
Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!
There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!
Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!
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.
And now to him who can keep you on your feet, standing tall in his bright presence, fresh and celebrating—to our one God, our only Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Master, be glory, majesty, strength, and rule before all time, and now, and to the end of all time. Yes.
If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
All your life, no one will be able to hold out against you. In the same way I was with Moses, I’ll be with you. I won’t give up on you; I won’t leave you. Strength! Courage! You are going to lead this people to inherit the land that I promised to give their ancestors. Give it everything you have, heart and soul. Make sure you carry out The Revelation that Moses commanded you, every bit of it. Don’t get off track, either left or right, so as to make sure you get to where you’re going. And don’t for a minute let this Book of The Revelation be out of mind. Ponder and meditate on it day and night, making sure you practice everything written in it. Then you’ll get where you’re going; then you’ll succeed. Haven’t I commanded you? Strength! Courage! Don’t be timid; don’t get discouraged. God, your God, is with you every step you take.”
March 19th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Is God Love Or Not?
God doesn’t just love. God IS love. In the greek, God is described as AGAPE love. The highest form. In 1st Corinthians 13:3, Paul gives a definition of agape love. So the question asked of me was: “if God is love then can I put God in place of love when reading that verse”. Sure. So he read it like this “God is patient. God is kind. God does not boast. God does not dishonor others, is not self seeking, is not easily angered. GOD DOES NOT KEEP A RECORD OF WRONGS.” Our God is one who pursues. He chases after us with a relentless desire to be close. He wants nothing more than to have a relationship. To look after our every need. How can a God, who loves so much, as to keep track of every hair on our head, turn his back simply because we sin. Is there anyone in your life that God does not love? What does that mean for our image of God? What does that mean for you? For me? Does God hate? Only the things that could harm his children. Does he condemn the one he loves? Do you believe Corinthians or not? The way we have always looked at God, and his wrath, is dependent upon him keeping a record of wrongs. Scripture teaches that this love, that is God, is larger than we could ever imagine. According to Paul: “NOTHING CAN KEEP US FROM THE LOVE OF GOD”! There are many people who I think don’t believe that. Is God love or not? Luke 15:4-6
I Love You!
Perry
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, “The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone.” Bending down again, he wrote some more in the dirt.
Hearing that, they walked away, one after another, beginning with the oldest. The woman was left alone. Jesus stood up and spoke to her. “Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?”
“No one, Master.”“Neither do I,” said Jesus. “Go on your way. From now on, don’t sin.
Jesus looked hard at them and said, “No chance at all if you think you can pull it off yourself. Every chance in the world if you trust God to do it.”
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
Have you ever come on anything quite like this extravagant generosity of God, this deep, deep wisdom? It’s way over our heads. We’ll never figure it out.
Is there anyone around who can explain God?
Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do?
Anyone who has done him such a huge favor
that God has to ask his advice?
Everything comes from him;
Everything happens through him;
Everything ends up in him.
Always glory! Always praise!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along. Who ever knows what you’re thinking and planning except you yourself? The same with God—except that he not only knows what he’s thinking, but he lets us in on it. God offers a full report on the gifts of life and salvation that he is giving us. We don’t have to rely on the world’s guesses and opinions. We didn’t learn this by reading books or going to school; we learned it from God, who taught us person-to-person through Jesus, and we’re passing it on to you in the same firsthand, personal way.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
March 5th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
A Love Shower
I find myself in most situations looking to others for lessons. Observing, pondering, looking to behavior in an effort to see God. To see Christ.
As I watched from across the restaurant, she walked up with no acknowledgement from him. Kids in tow, but still no pause to smile or look in her direction. My heart dropped. When your married, not another person in this world is more important. The only person, place, or thing that could ever take my attention from my wife would be Jesus, if he entered the room. My wife Lorna, apart from Christ, is the center of everything that I do. So it should always be with a union between two people. We are made to serve. It is in our DNA to help, to love, to care for and nurture, just as Christ did. As James Taylor would say: “shower the people you love with love”. By doing so we are giving honor to the one who taught us, how to love. Jesus was pure love, with no hidden agenda or thought of what was best for himself. When we learn to love deeply. When we learn to put aside our differences, and focus on simple love, we will begin to see the kingdom of heaven, right in front of us. When we put Christ at the center of our relationships. When we learn to not base our love on performance, but instead on being as one. Then and only then will we truly understand how God feels about us. Whether spouse, child, friend or stranger. Shower them with love. Ephesians 5:1(msg)
I Love You!
Perry
Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?
Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.
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.
He answered, “Haven’t you read in your Bible that the Creator originally made man and woman for each other, male and female? And because of this, a man leaves father and mother and is firmly bonded to his wife, becoming one flesh—no longer two bodies but one. Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate his art by cutting them apart.”
February 26th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
My Prayer To See!
Here I am closing my eyes again. Trying so hard, not to see, all the things that I see. Closing my eyes to the things, that are not as I think they should be. Then here I am opening my eyes again and I see you. The love in your eyes, is the thing, that I most want to see. I’d be willing to die, to know of a place and a time to be always with you. Then I look into the eyes of those around me and there you are. I say a prayer and it’s you that I see. In everything and everyone. I open my heart again and you come into view. Your peace… your compassion… and I know that is how it always can be. Your kingdom is here… is now… when our heart finds you. When our heart becomes one with yours. Even in the middle of much hatred…much violence… you are here. When we learn to put aside judgment. Put aside hatred of what we don’t understand. Put aside our beliefs and simply look, see, and feel with your heart, the hatred and indifference slips away. The judgement of your children simply fades into the grace that is your heart. We see others as you do… with empathy. When we look thru your heart, at those around us, we see the image of you and your father. We no longer see people different than us, but people who were made by you… for your glory. Jesus train me to see as you see. With eyes wide open and a heart of compassion. Galatians 5:22
I Love You!
Perry
So let’s go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is—not trying to be privileged insiders, but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus. This “insider world” is not our home. We have our eyes peeled for the City about to come. Let’s take our place outside with Jesus, no longer pouring out the sacrificial blood of animals but pouring out sacrificial praises from our lips to God in Jesus’ name.
“Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God’s way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.
“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”
May the Master of Peace himself give you the gift of getting along with each other at all times, in all ways. May the Master be truly among you!
“I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.
Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.
God’s kingdom isn’t a matter of what you put in your stomach, for goodness’ sake. It’s what God does with your life as he sets it right, puts it together, and completes it with joy. Your task is to single-mindedly serve Christ. Do that and you’ll kill two birds with one stone: pleasing the God above you and proving your worth to the people around you.
This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:
Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best—
as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
“Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a musty cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!
Then I heard every creature in Heaven and earth, in underworld and sea, join in, all voices in all places, singing:
To the One on the Throne! To the Lamb!
The blessing, the honor, the glory, the strength,
For age after age after age.
February 19th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Imagination!
Imagination. It has always fascinated me. I spend my days inside my imagination. In everything I do, I imagine it in my mind. I picture it in my inner being. When building something, or creating things, my imagination has always served me. I use my imagination as I deal with others. I imagine Christ in them. Regardless of the lifestyle they lead, my heart and my imagination sees the image of God. I use my creativity when looking to my understanding of God. My understanding of Christ. It is only thru our imagination, that we can start to see his heart, and understand the depth of his love. It can not fully be understood from scripture. It is deeper, and wider, than we are able to comprehend. It is only through our imagination that we can start to catch a glimpse of it. Many times we have a weak imagination, when it comes to God. We want clear answers. We want non refutable rules. We want step by step instructions, as if we were building a piece of furniture from Ikea. It’s not that simple… Gods love goes so much deeper. The God of my imagination does not turn his back on those who think different than us. Those who maybe have a different idea of right and wrong then we do. Those who chose a different lifestyle than ours. To imagine the true depth of God, is to see a Savior who loves everyone, regardless of where, who, or how they live. The God of my imagination loves me with all my sin. And you with all of yours. AMAZING!
I Love You!
Perry
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”
My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us.
There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!
Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.
We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
February 12th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Love Never Rests
Our ability to love is never at rest, and so therefore can never be complete. We were in Denver for a long weekend. Sixteenth street, with its’ homeless, moves my heart in the way of Christ. He simply had several five gallon buckets and a discarded skillet or two. With two drumsticks, the sound coming from his make shift drum set was incredible. His sense of rhythm was impeccable. So much talent, but all he knows is the street. Having played music all my life the beat caught my attention, and drew my soul to the place he was. Lorna and I listened for quite sometime and applauded after each number. Others would stop briefly, but his talent warranted spending time watching and listening. After enjoying for a while I handed him a blessing and asked if we could give him a hug. He kindly accepted the hug and as for the money you could tell it made his night… maybe his month. More than that, we took time to acknowledge his talent and give him a feeling of self worth. A feeling that he mattered and that God loves him. It is important to all of us, to be seen and to be heard. Love can be shown in so many ways. However, nothing compares to being given honor and being noticed as having worth. Christ did that throughout his ministry, sometimes with just a look. He does that still. As his love fills your spirit, it produces in each of us a since of belonging. This young man said “I will never forget you”. Doesn’t Christ say the same thing? Romans 8:31
I Love You!
Perry
Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”
If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.
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.
Make the Master proud of you by being good citizens. Respect the authorities, whatever their level; they are God’s emissaries for keeping order. It is God’s will that by doing good, you might cure the ignorance of the fools who think you’re a danger to society. Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government.
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”
In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are Christ’s family, then you are Abraham’s famous “descendant,” heirs according to the covenant promises.
So reach out and welcome one another to God’s glory. Jesus did it; now you do it! Jesus, staying true to God’s purposes, reached out in a special way to the Jewish insiders so that the old ancestral promises would come true for them. As a result, the non-Jewish outsiders have been able to experience mercy and to show appreciation to God.
February 5th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Love Matters More!
How does a man find his own heart? We look in the mirror and we see our reflection looking back. We see pictures of the shell that God granted us. That shell, we spend so much time on, simply doesn’t matter. Our mission… our goal… is to find our heart. When God, with Christ, said in Genesis: “We will make them in our image” he was talking of the spirit of God and Jesus that resides in them both. The same spirit that resides in us. We look to beautiful people. Some with talent, as well as some with amazing beauty. This to shall fade… but the beauty that is a life of love, and a heart of joy, will live forever. My grandson asked “why does God give so much talent and looks to someone such as Justin Timberlake, but not to everyone.” My response was: “I see a heart of pure gold in your soul. Just as God does. So Justin Timberlake has nothing on you.” As our lives progress it is up to us to find our heart. To find that purpose that drives us to love others. The purpose that God designed us for, and the reason why he breathed life into our soul. The purpose is not about earthly gain or ambitions. If it doesn’t involve love, it is of no use. I heard it said: “if all you think of is writing, then you’re a writer. If all you think about is dancing, then you’re a dancer.” I say “if all you think of is how can I love others, then you have the heart of Christ.”
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
I Love You!
Perry
What matters is not your outer appearance—the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes—but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God that way, and were good, loyal wives to their husbands. Sarah, for instance, taking care of Abraham, would address him as “my dear husband.” You’ll be true daughters of Sarah if you do the same, unanxious and unintimidated.
But God told Samuel, “Looks aren’t everything. Don’t be impressed with his looks and stature. I’ve already eliminated him. God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face; God looks into the heart.”
So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.
The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love—love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God.
Jesus replied, “You’re right that you only have my word. But you can depend on it being true. I know where I’ve come from and where I go next. You don’t know where I’m from or where I’m headed. You decide according to what you can see and touch. I don’t make judgments like that. But even if I did, my judgment would be true because I wouldn’t make it out of the narrowness of my experience but in the largeness of the One who sent me, the Father.
Just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.
January 29th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Removing The Log!
He came into our office looking for a job. Fourteen years ago he stole, and it seems he will never be forgiven. When they brought me his record I said “give him a chance… Jesus would.” They brought him to my office and you would have thought I gave him a million dollars. I have spent my life watching… listening… to people spend so much time, pointing out the faults of others. One religion pointing to another. One lifestyle finding offense with another. Those who think they are exemplary, finding blame with those that make mistakes. We spend so much time pointing to others sin, without thinking of our own. Until we move beyond the hypocritical insight we are all stuck in, we will never truly learn to love. We are attached to a petty reward / punishment system. That way of life will never lead us to love, because it produces in us an ego, to think we are better than the other. It produces in us the inability to see the sin in our life, but only the sin in others. Richard Rohr said “Those who respond to the call and agree to carry and love what God loves—which is both the good and the bad—and to pay the price for its reconciliation within themselves, these are the followers of Christ.”
Sometimes peoples’ past, and the things they have done, keeps them from seeing what they can be and what God put them here for. Until we love and forgive they will never see Jesus.
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.
I Love You!
Perry
Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—simply come clean about them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you’ll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”
“In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can’t get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God’s part.
Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.
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.
So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
January 22nd, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
His Dream For Us!
We never know when it will happen. We try to orchestrate it, but it must come naturally. It happens to me more, as I live deeper in the spirit. I have a better understanding what it is… when it comes into being. When unmatched beauty brings tears. When being in the presence of God created talent… causes emotion. When thinking of precious memories brings a sense of peacefulness. During those times we are experiencing a glimpse, of the kingdom of God. We are catching a moment in his dream for us. Into the future he has for us. A future when all things will be, as they were meant to be. We had gone with friends to Branson, Missouri. While there we went to an amusement park. As we entered the show I thought nothing of it. I was expecting another carnival type show, with comedy and some music. As the show started I was pleasantly surprised. A group of young people, all brothers and sisters, sang and played instruments to such perfection, that my heart leaped with joy. I felt the presence of God so strongly that tears flooded my face. At that moment… I wanted to be in the presence of God more than ever. Only after we walked away did I realize, I was in his presence… We live our lives sometimes never truly realizing those times when they happen. We dismiss them as worldly. But God made such beauty, out of love. When it happens… rest in his spirit. Rejoice in his love. Then step back, and wait for his next gift.
I Love You!
Perry
Everything in the world is about to be wrapped up, so take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully. Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes!
If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.
“If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?
We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
The same goes for you wives: Be good wives to your husbands, responsive to their needs. There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty. What matters is not your outer appearance—the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes—but your inner disposition.
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
January 15th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
The Mission
When she asked me about Happy Jesus Day tears filled my eyes and a lump formed in my throat. As she placed her hand on my arm she said “I didn’t mean to upset you”. I explained the burden that weighs on me. The burden that comes with this mission. A mission that others have felt, which weighed heavy on them as well. To teach LOVE. Pure… unfiltered…compassionate… love. Not just to those around us, but to the world. To teach the true meaning of the heart of Jesus. A heart that loved everyone without judgement. A heart that saw more potential in a prostitute, than in a religious leader. A spirit that looked past the behavior and saw the heart. I think of all the hatred I see daily. Hatred for the gay community. Hatred for differing political parties. Hatred for those that may be of a different race. Hatred for anyone that believes different than we do. We live in a world were everyone is more concerned with themselves, than with others. A world were we have bombs pointed at the next guy, with bombs. A world were everyone carries a gun, with the thought of having to kill another soul. The message of our Savior is more about love than about being right. To learn of the heart of Christ, means to learn to put our hatred and weapons down and become as one. One with each other. One with the world around us. One with the spirit of God. You may say I’m a dreamer. So be it! I will be happy to carry that burden!
I Love You!
Perry
There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.
“I’ve never, as you so well know, had any taste for wealth or fashion. With these bare hands I took care of my own basic needs and those who worked with me. In everything I’ve done, I have demonstrated to you how necessary it is to work on behalf of the weak and not exploit them. You’ll not likely go wrong here if you keep remembering that our Master said, ‘You’re far happier giving than getting.’”
If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
“Don’t let this rattle you. You trust God, don’t you? Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live. And you already know the road I’m taking.”
God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one can resist God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what.
You’re cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. And do you suppose God doesn’t care? The proverb has it that “he’s a fiercely jealous lover.” And what he gives in love is far better than anything else you’ll find. It’s common knowledge that “God goes against the willful proud; God gives grace to the willing humble.”
So let God work his will in you. Yell a loud no to the Devil and watch him make himself scarce. Say a quiet yes to God and he’ll be there in no time. Quit dabbling in sin. Purify your inner life. Quit playing the field. Hit bottom, and cry your eyes out. The fun and games are over. Get serious, really serious. Get down on your knees before the Master; it’s the only way you’ll get on your feet.
Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”
January 8th, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
It’s All God’s Gift
Cowboy hat. Boots with holes. Large belt buckle, made him look like a skinny cowboy. He was on the corner, near the supermarket I always visit. Weather had already turned cold so he was shivering with his cardboard sign. As I rolled down my window to bless him with twenty dollars, I asked about his situation. Randy was homeless. I told him I would pray and that I was worried about him with the cold front approaching. He seemed puzzled, then it hit me, he would not have a way to know about the coming weather. As he walked away he turned… smiled… and said God Bless You! As I drove away my heart hurt! What caused him to be there? What brought his life to this point? How would he ever get back on his feet, and back to comfort? So many times when I help someone such as Randy I think “but for the grace of God go I”. Do you realize that it is only by Gods grace, that any of us have a home and a loving family? I don’t ever think, for even a moment, it has anything to do with what I have done. It is only by God that my abilities… my mindset… my circumstances… are favorable in my direction. I sit in my comfortable chair, in my warm house, and I pray for Randy. There are many times I wish I could help each of them, and give them a place to stay. But for now, all I can do is pray, and let Jesus direct as only he can.
But because God was so gracious, so very generous, here I am. And I’m not about to let his grace go to waste. Haven’t I worked hard trying to do more than any of the others? Even then, my work didn’t amount to all that much. It was God giving me the work to do, God giving me the energy to do it. So whether you heard it from me or from those others, it’s all the same: We spoke God’s truth and you entrusted your lives.
I Love You!
Perry
This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called. I take it that you’re familiar with the part I was given in God’s plan for including everybody. I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief.
So don’t be embarrassed to speak up for our Master or for me, his prisoner. Take your share of suffering for the Message along with the rest of us. We can only keep on going, after all, by the power of God, who first saved us and then called us to this holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. But we know it now. Since the appearance of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light, all through the work of Jesus.
Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us. God reminds us, I heard your call in the nick of time; The day you needed me, I was there to help.
It’s the same today. There’s a fiercely loyal minority still—not many, perhaps, but probably more than you think. They’re holding on, not because of what they think they’re going to get out of it, but because they’re convinced of God’s grace and purpose in choosing them. If they were only thinking of their own immediate self-interest, they would have left long ago.
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.
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.
May God, who puts all things together,
makes all things whole,
Who made a lasting mark through the sacrifice of Jesus,
the sacrifice of blood that sealed the eternal covenant,
Who led Jesus, our Great Shepherd,
up and alive from the dead,
Now put you together, provide you
with everything you need to please him,
Make us into what gives him most pleasure,
by means of the sacrifice of Jesus, the Messiah.
All glory to Jesus forever and always!
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
January 1st, 2023
Happy Jesus Day!
Heaven Here And Now!
The day was like any other… but on this day I had to spend a lot of time behind the windshield. As always I listened to God music. However, this day it all came together in my mind. In a place in my soul… that only God can reach. I felt a peace that passes understanding. The kind of peace that makes you one with God the father. One with Christ the son. One with the spirit that engulfs both. I thought of all the people in my life. From beginning to now. So many amazing people, who have crossed my path. People who have touched my heart… my life. I thought of all the amazing experiences I have had a chance to be exposed to. Places I have seen and worlds I have encountered. I suddenly saw Christ in everyone. The drivers in the other cars. The people walking along the street. The ones I talked with when I made stops. I saw God in each tree and each flower. When Jesus talked of the kingdom of God he was not talking of heaven. He was talking of his reign here and now, on this earth. I was experiencing that kingdom… that reign of God. When we allow the spirit to guide us. To talk to our soul. When we allow Jesus to invade our being, we experience the kingdom of God. It is here all around us. I do believe heaven is waiting, but I also believe heaven is here and now. We simply have to allow the spirit to guide us there.
Jesus, grilled by the Pharisees on when the kingdom of God would come, answered, “The kingdom of God doesn’t come by counting the days on the calendar. Nor when someone says, ‘Look here!’ or, ‘There it is!’ And why? Because God’s kingdom is already among you.”
Happy New Year!
Perry
“I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.
“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’
Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don’t drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups. You need firsthand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it. I hope the test won’t show that we have failed. But if it comes to that, we’d rather the test showed our failure than yours. We’re rooting for the truth to win out in you. We couldn’t possibly do otherwise.
But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him—and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own.
You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.
on’t suppose for a moment, though, that God’s Word has malfunctioned in some way or other. The problem goes back a long way. From the outset, not all Israelites of the flesh were Israelites of the spirit. It wasn’t Abraham’s sperm that gave identity here, but God’s promise. Remember how it was put: “Your family will be defined by Isaac”? That means that Israelite identity was never racially determined by sexual transmission, but it was God-determined by promise. Remember that promise, “When I come back next year at this time, Sarah will have a son”?
Happy Jesus Day!
Joseph’s Burden!
I’m not sure what I am to do. My future wife is pregnant, and it is not mine. How can I stay with her? She is disgraced among our people. How can I be expected to raise this baby, as if it were mine? There was this angel. I think it was an angel… it could have simply been a dream. I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. How am I suppose to be a dad, to God’s only son? How do I discipline him? How do I teach him? How do I simply talk to him, knowing who he is? I’m just a simple man. Why was I chosen to bear this burden, and be blessed at the same time? There could be no greater honor, but I simply fell in love with a girl. Am I expected to help her deliver this child? Will there be help from above? An angel maybe? What am I to do when he arrives? Will I fall to my knees, or simply shout out, when I feel his beating heart? Just like Joseph, so many times we feel intimated by his presence. Maybe we feel overwhelmed, or we feel as if we are not worthy. Then our Lord takes us in his arms and reassures us… he simply loves. He simply cares. He simply forgives. There is no greater honor than to be one of his children.
“If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you. I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!”
Ponder and meditate on it day and night, making sure you practice everything written in it. Then you’ll get where you’re going; then you’ll succeed. Haven’t I commanded you? Strength! Courage! Don’t be timid; don’t get discouraged. God, your God, is with you every step you take.”
Then Moses summoned Joshua. He said to him with all Israel watching, “Be strong. Take courage. You will enter the land with this people, this land that God promised their ancestors that he’d give them. You will make them the proud possessors of it. God is striding ahead of you. He’s right there with you. He won’t let you down; he won’t leave you. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t worry.”
That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
So be content with who you are, and don’t put on airs. God’s strong hand is on you; he’ll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you.
December 12th, 2022
Happy Jesus Day!
Greatest Love!
So many days, my thoughts turn to the love of our Savior. I think about all the things he did, because he loves us. He made food taste amazing. He made the world look spectacular. He put love in our soul, so we would find joy in each other. He gave us eyes to see, and ears to hear. He gave talents, to so many, in order that we may enjoy each of our senses. However, the greatest show of love he gave, was making himself human. Leaving his throne of glory and becoming just like us. If he had not become human. If he had not rose again in human form. We would not have been saved. We would not have been able to look upon his face… feel his warm touch… or look into his loving eyes. He could have simply came here, corrected our sinful ways, or said “I’m done” and allowed us to die. Instead he came, he allowed himself to see and feel what we do. To suffer as we do. To laugh as we do. He came, in order to produce more sons of his father God. To turn us into himself… so we may call ourselves God’s children. God doesn’t just want better people, he wants children who call him father. The only way that would happen, is for us to see his child in human flesh. That is the greatest love of all.
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us.
Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.
They’ll tell you not to eat this or that food—perfectly good food God created to be eaten heartily and with thanksgiving by believers who know better! Everything God created is good, and to be received with thanks. Nothing is to be sneered at and thrown out. God’s Word and our prayers make every item in creation holy.
He made to be their true selves,their child-of-God selves.These are the God-begotten, not blood-begotten, not flesh-begotten, not sex-begotten.
In the Messiah, in Christ, God leads us from place to place in one perpetual victory parade. Through us, he brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with life. But those on the way to destruction treat us more like the stench from a rotting corpse.
Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!