Living from the Father's Heart

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...

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...

Some friends in Reynosa. Have you ever thought about your emotions? Why do you feel that way? Why is it that some people just get under my skin so easily? I have been thinking about it a lot. Some people are just easy for me to be around and others are a real challenge. Some people make me feel angry without doing or saying anything. With some people I can't wait to hang out with them and others, I do not want to answer the phone or click on their text when I see who it is. Just hearing the names of some people can make me cringe. These responses all come from somewhere and I have started looking into, and even more, asking God why I respond negatively to some people. Why am I so easily offended and quick to see my temper flare with them. Let me say, I do not think that I ever have a right to be offended by the actions of another. When I came to terms with my offense toward God that put Jesus on the cross, I lost all rights to be offended at people. I have no right to expect...

Pete and Nick, two of the guys I have been privileged to walk this out with We often look at the battles from a short term perspective. We believe that the things we struggle with are the battles that we face. It is easy to say I am overweight and then make my appetite and desire for food to be the battle. The problem is that we will always face those battles. We will always be able to find areas of our lives that seem to not be what we want them to be or a particular sin that we struggle with. While it is true that we want those things out of our lives and we want to walk in freedom on every level, making them to be the battle will never help us overcome in the way that God is calling us to. Let's look at the first battle that man faced. The setting was in the Garden of Eden and we all think that we know the story well but I believe we have misunderstood what was happening and the true nature of the temptation that Eve, and in all reality, Adam faced. We have come to believ...

I miss Dulce, such a sweet little girl. We have battles to fight but if we do not know our identity, we will always be fighting the same battles and never winning. It is when we learn to embrace the identity of son, king, and priest that we can win our battles because that is when we start to fight the right battles and when we enter in from the right posture. When we do not know who we are and what family we belong to, we will continually be fighting against he wrong thing. We will fight with the wrong weapons and we will not get the results that we are looking for. Everyone faces battles all of the time. Some days they are not as evident but they are always present. At times they are staring us in the face but for many, they are beneath the surface, quietly destroying the life that we are hoping to build. We often see them from a surface level and miss out on the real picture of what is happening. We see the less qualified person that is challenging for the promotion that we f...

Welcome to my new blog. I do not want to confuse anybody, this blog is strictly a things from my quiet time. For some time, God has been telling me to write and share them but I always resisted. I journal often but I was not writing to share so this is that and I hope to update several days a week. I will still maintain a missions blog separately. If you are looking to see what God is speaking to me in my quiet times, this is the place. If you subscribe in the link, it will be emailed to you each time I post. This morning I had to go to Midway and drop a friend off. It gave me a chance to sit and talk with God and I had a question for Him. He has been speaking to me about several things but one stood out these last couple of days. In our men's group at Church we have been going through a series about authentic manhood called the 33 series, based on the 33 years Jesus walked the earth. In the last 2 lessons, we discussed 4 faces of manhood. They are King, Warrior, Lover and Frien...