Living from the Father's Heart

My Parents I have been writing to believers. It is our job to call our lost friends, neighbors and family to Jesus but today I want to focus on a different audience. There are many of you that have been in Church at one time. I know a lot of you that were active in youth groups and Christian activities when you were younger but as you approached adulthood, you drifted away. You heard a lot of things about Jesus but the Church did not reflect the things that you heard. Life offered you other options and you took them.Now, some of you have accomplished everything that you hoped to at this point in you life and you still are not satisfied. Others of you have faced difficulties and wondered how you got where you are. You are in a hole and see no way out. It does not matter. The call of Jesus to is the same. It is to come home. You may know the story of the Prodigal from Luke 11 or you may not but it is still my story and I want to share it with you. The prodigal demanded his shar...

Dulce's future is worth fighting for. 2Co 5:14-21 ESV - For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made h...

With my parents and youngest sister, Alicia For many years I have noticed a trend in our nation. Masculinity has been under attack. I am not talking about machismo which is not the same thing. It is a perversion of it, as well as many of the other misogynistic ways of thinking that have been popular over the years. A lot of people seem to think that the way to level the playing field is to knock manhood down instead of elevating the position of women in society. While it has been wrong for women to feel subjugated to the desires and demands of men, it is not a good reaction to diminish the role of the masculine in society. We are seeing many social ills today because some have ridiculed the role of men in society and because many men have abdicated their roles, not feeling like they have anything important to offer. I am not proposing a return to barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. That was not God's design for us. It is a creation of men that wanted control and power over...

I could not get rid of the ants and they overtook my coffeepot This morning I came into the Youth Center to have  a quiet time before anyone else came in and then I wanted to write today's post. I had a plan before I came so I thought that it would only take a short time to write but God spoke to me as I was making my coffee. I noticed there were lots of ant in the building and they were on the counter as well as on the floor where some food had not been swept up from the kids last night. As I swept up and I cleaned the counter and the drink jug, I noticed the ants. I would sweep or wipe and then, as soon as I stopped, they would start to scatter again. If I stopped before they were gone, they would be right back, all over everything again. I am not a fan of ants so I needed to get rid of them. I felt like God said that is exactly what He is doing in our lives. When everything is clean, ants are not a problem for us. They are looking for something to eat and as long as every...

I started this blog because I believe God wants to reveal the love of the Father to us and transform us because the world is hurting and men especially are disconnected. I am going to link a couple of articles and I think that they reveal much of the heart of the problem. We have killed the masculine heart in many ways and men are feeling isolated and lonely. Jesus came to change that. Jesus came to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.  Today, most men are disconnected from their hearts. I am not writing a lot today but do want to encourage you to read these two articles. They are very eye opening. Later on, I will write about the what do we do about this problem Mal 4:6 ESV - And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction." Luk 1:17 ESV - and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the childr...

I have been talking about love and service a lot lately and how receiving the love of Jesus compels us to love and serve people. The connection is clear. If we receive love from God, it impacts everything in our lives. It changes how we view people and how we treat them. As we are made aware of how much Jesus paid for us to be able to receive His love, it motivates us to share that love with others and to grieve when they reject that love. His love is such a great gift and it is given freely to all so we want people to receive what we have. The question that I have been asking then is how does that affect our unity in Christ? I have seen two extremes in this and both of them are problematic. In one extreme, people look for a group that aligns with every possible doctrinal and often times even political position and they choose to fellowship with these people only. They have unity because they are so like minded. The other group says that we have to create unity at all costs and we a...

I have been thinking about the call to serve as you probably have figured out. As I think about I realize that I serve a lot but it seems like often my service is to organizations or Churches and seldom is it to individuals. I know that you are probably thinking; "Does it really matter? Isn't service the same regardless of who we do it for or even why we do it?" I had not thought about it much myself until just recently but now it seems like there is a big distinction to me. I want to see who agrees with me or who thinks that I am crazy. when I post this blog on facebook, please reply with your thoughts. I would be interested to hear. In my life I have found that it is easy to serve a Church or an organization. I will have tasks to do that may or may not involve other people directly but these tasks do not make me connect with the people. The goal of the task is to get something accomplished. It is not wrong to want to accomplish something or to see a problem and work ...

As I was praying about what to write today I had no clear idea. I knew that it had to do with the love of God and how it impacted our relationships but I did not know exactly what that would be. As I was having a quiet time this morning, the answer became more clear to me. I was reading in Titus and the words jumped off the page to me. I want to share a little of what I read and my thoughts about it as God was speaking to me. Tit 3:3-14 ESV - For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the h...

Hanging out with some friends at Playa Bagdad. We have looked at several of the ways God loves us. He is committed. He is near. He is tender and compassionate. He is not angry with us but grieves over the high cost of sin in our lives. God's love for us is selfless. He endured the cross because He knew the joy He would experience as the way was open for men to begin to turn to Him. While He walked the earth as a man, He knew the suffering that was coming and He continued moving forward to fulfill His destiny and to open the door for us to embrace ours. This selfless act calls for a response from us. What should that response look like? We are created in the image of God. We are adopted into His family and we have been given a new heart, capable of responding to God and to others with the same love as Jesus showed to us. He opened the door for us to step into this love in every aspect of our lives. We have been sold a lie that we cannot love and live like Jesus but the realit...

Happy Mother's Day!  My parents Much of this week I have talked about the practical aspects of the love of God. He is committed to us. He is faithful even when we stray. He always pushes us to step into His best plan for us. He pursues us and desires fellowship with us. Since tomorrow is Mother's day, I want to look at the more tender and motherly aspects of the love of God. I know some people may be up in arms to hear that. They may think I have joined a Godess cult or started worshiping mother Earth. Neither of those is the case but there is a maternal aspect to the love God has for us. Let's look at some of the verses and see where such a crazy notion comes from/ Gen 1:26-28 ESV - Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in h...

At Crossroads Cafe with Jean and Lauren Yesterday I talked about love being a commitment to another's best interests but today, I want to look a little at what that commitment looks like. It is easy to say I will pray for you or I will be thinking about you but if that is all we ever do, we are not very committed. It is also easy to be around people when they are on the upswing and things are going well for them but what about when everything is falling apart, when the are depressed or feeling hopeless? Sad, depressed people can be difficult to be around and often we avoid them. What about the person in the nursing home or the friend that has gone to prison. It can be hard to remember the good times with a person while looking at their current state but to avoid them, while easier, is not love. Love acts on the behalf of others. Jesus really was the best example of love that we can find. Looking at His life will help us understand what love is supposed to look like. He was p...

We throw the word love around fairly easily and we use it a lot more than we probably should. We love wives or girlfriends. We love our Church, school, or job. We love pizza and porterhouse. What don't we love? It seems like we say that we love everything that causes us to have any positive emotion or favorable opinion. We have watered the word down so much that we use it for anything that we remotely like. Unfortunately, when we use it so much that it becomes commonplace, it loses its force. Many people today could not even give you a real definition of love when asked. I know because I have asked lots of people that question. Let's look at what love really means. Webster starts by calling love a strong affection or a warm attachment and to some degree this is true but it is way short of the Biblical understanding of love, the one that I hope to use whenever I write the word. There are a couple passages in Scripture that give us a good look at what love is from God's p...

This morning, when I was thinking about what I was going to be writing today I was reminded of the movie Star Wars, The Force Awakens. There are many heroes in the movie, many who fight and even die for noble causes but there are a couple that do not believe the description of hero is for them. They both feel like they are less than up to the task. Their pasts almost keep them from embracing their calls. I know lot of people feel that same way. They look at the things that they have been through and feel like they could never be anyone different than they believe they are. Let's look at them. When we first met Finn, He did not have a name. He had a code. He was a storm trooper that ran from the Republic. He rejected who they told him that he was but still could not see himself as somebody else. Even as he is actively working against Kylo and the First Order, he could only see himself as a storm trooper. He hated the identity but felt trapped in it. The truth is that he was never...