Send me a Text Message!

Psalm 77 is the heart cry of a person who is waiting for bad stuff to stop and good stuff to start. He has found himself in a season of deep trouble, days when God seems absent at best, times when he cries out to God but finds no comfort for his soul. But even in this deep trouble, he finds a way to practice gratitude.

How about you, have you find a way, even in deep trouble, to still be grateful? That's the focus of this gratitude pause.

Send me a Text Message!

As we enter the holiday season, I just want to focus for a moment on the word, bless. Psalm 67 uses that word alot. "May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us." "God our God blesses us. May God bless us still."
I'm sure that they aren't the only ones who use the phrase, but a family that used to attend Calvary, the Norwood's are the first ones who I heard use it, --BBB-- "Blessed Beyond Belief." It's not a bad phrase to carry around in our hearts as we make our way through the Christmas season, as we shop and sing and bake and eat...and eat...and eat...

It's a good thing to be reminded that in so many ways that don't require a credit card or a receipt, we have been blessed beyond belief. In this episode and the next I just want to give us a pause for gratitude!

Send me a Text Message!

"Seek first the Kingdom of God." That's our final challenge for this series. We don't use the word Kingdom very much today, but in Jesus' day they used it all the time. They understood a little bit better than we do, what a Kingdom was all about. See in a biblical sense, everyone has a kingdom. Your kingdom is whatever you control. Your Kingdom is that part of your life where what you say goes. Dallas Willard calls it "the range of your effective will." Throughout life we have this inclination to protect and maybe even expand our kingdoms.

So what are your little kingdoms? You might have more than one. Some people are bold and obvious about kingdom-building; some people are sneaky and subtle about it. But we all have a little kingdom or two that we are trying to build. The question is am I living for my little kingdom, or am I living for His Big Kingdom?