How He Loves

The story behind a song that is just starting to hit the .fm superhighway… and a powerful reminder why our stories must be told.

waiting…

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
1 Cor. 10.31

I often feel the need to do great things for God to be glorified in me. But the simple truth is that we can and do glorify God in the small stuff, the eating and drinking stuff, the 99% of our time stuff. Big things do come for some of us, but most of us will live normal-crazy lives with normal-crazy schedules in a normal-crazy family. So if we spend our lives waiting until something big comes for our lives to count for God’s glory, then we just may spend the rest of our lives waiting…

Everyday there are dishes, and laundry, and kids, and appointments, and 1st shifts, and 2nd shifts, and 3rd shifts, and brushing teeth, and going to the park, and eating dinner, and taking the kids, and cleaning the bathrooms, and painting the walls, and shopping, and paying bills, and talking to friends, and folding the towels, and making lists, and on and on and on. This is life, and this is where glory is won or lost. God is not waiting for us to get this stuff done so we can get on with glorifying Him. He is waiting for us to glorify Him in doing this stuff.

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Christ is Risen!

What joy, this promise of redemption; what love, this sacrifice given;
What hope, all things made new; what now, but new life for me and you.

Today is the day when all life is promised restoration. The day where all lost hope is given new life. The moment when the forces of evil were put on notice… Your time is running out. May we now be the people of resurrection, the people through whom this new life flows, the people who stare down the powers of evil, the people who live lives declaring that even though there is evil around us there is hope, there is love, there is faith, there is redemption.

Amen.

5.17-7.29

[youversion]Matthew 5:17-7:29[/youversion] |This one word appears in the Sermon on the Mount 15 times. It is in many ways the very point of the teaching Jesus is giving. We can read through this section over and over again and drive right by it every single time because it is not one of those action words we are used to looking for like: love, joy, or worship. No, this word is a little more common. But it is a word that packs immense meaning for every single one of us. It is a word that defines every one of us as a person.

When Jesus uses this word over and over again, I think he is telling us something about what it means to live in the kingdom. After all this section is about what living out the Kingdom of God truly looks like. How do we handle relationships? anger? prayer? giving? fasting? life? Jesus is painting a picture of humanity as the way it was intended to be - humanity as we are intended to live - but none of this can happen without understanding this one word.
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