Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Who's doing it?

This morning I read 1 Thessalonians 5. A few years ago I had memorized this book for Bible Quizzing, but to my discredit I have not retained it very well. So I wanted to go back and re-read it. The last few verses are such a good reminder:
23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely;
and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved
blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
24 He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.
This comes right after a list of very good instructions:
16 Rejoice always,
17 pray without ceasing,
18 in everything give thanks;
for this is the will of God
in Christ Jesus for you.
19 Do not quench the Spirit.
20 Do not despise prophecies.
21 Test all things;
hold fast what is good.
22 Abstain from every form of evil.
But verse 23 should always remind us that GOD is the one who sanctifies us, not following a set of rules, and verse 24 reminds us that He will get it done. In other words, it is not up to us to follow a lot of rules in order to make ourselves perfect. God is working in our lives through whatever happens. He will accomplish His plan. Our task is to submit to His working in our lives and to truly live out what we say we believe.
Please pray for me, that I would live out what I have written here this morning. That I would submit to my Father’s training of me and that I would rely on His Spirit, not on my own strength.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

God and Change

This morning in church the worship and teaching hours ended up tying nicely into each other. In the teaching hour, Mr. Deffinbaugh talked about change. His passage was Hebrews 13:7-9. He made the point that God never changes, and that He is not bound by geographical or chronological boundaries. (In my opinion that means God can still work miracles!!!) He then tied that in with the change that has been and will be occurring in the United States. GOD IS STILL THE SAME AND HE IS STILL ON HIS THRONE!!!!!! Which led to the point from the worship service: God can (and does!!!) use evil things and sinners (which all of us are!) to carry out His righteous and perfect purposes. Some examples included Joseph in Genesis 50, the sufferings of Paul and Silas in Philippi (Acts 16) and others. In other words, no matter what happens in our lives, we as Christians can rest assured that God is still in charge and that He will work all things, no matter how bad they seem, for His purposes. Does that mean, however, that we should just kick back and never try to counteract the evils in our world? No, I don’t think so, because YOU may be the tool that God intends to use to turn the devil’s plans upside down!

I just found that encouraging this morning, so I thought I would share it with you all. This is not a very organized post, but I wanted to get it out there. Sorry for a lack of posting…this school year and especially this semester have been VERY busy. Thankfully I will be done (with one step in my life at least) in a couple of weeks. Hopefully there will be more posts over the summer.