Living from the Father's Heart

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...

What are we thinking? We often have many wrong ideas about God and His nature. We think that He acts one way and wants us to act another. We miss that He is a Father and we are created in His image. When we read the Bible, we often look at it from the perspective of a person that is condemned or a servant. We are reading to look for what is wrong with us now so that we can change a habit or be free of a particular sin. We use the Scripture to find the shortcomings in our lives. It is true that the Bible will show us the areas that we do not measure up to the standard of perfection that God has set, but that is not the primary purpose that it was given. All of Scripture is a love story. It starts with God placing man in a beautiful garden and then fellowshipping with them. When sin enters the picture, we see God fighting for the affections of His people and battling to show them His love and comfort. Even though man, in His fallen state misses God's plan and does not see His ...

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...

Many people wonder why it is important to understand the role of a king. After all, we are called to be servants, aren't we? It is true that we are called to live like Jesus and follow His example. He did become a servant of all. He was also a son to Mary, a brother to her other children, an apprentice to Joseph, a rabbi, a friend, and many other things. Like Him, we may identify by our job, our place in the family or community, our role in the Church or hundreds of other influences that we have taken a bit of ourselves from. Most of them are not bad in themselves but every one of them is insufficient to build our identity around. They are temporary and can be taken from us at any time. If they are our identity, who are we once they are removed? Jesus understood His place in the Father's heart, His identity as the Son and His rightful role as Lord of All. He did recognize that He had several roles to play while He was here but His life was guided by His place in the Father. E...

Yesterday I asked what it looked like to be king and we looked Mt 26:39-43. Let's look a little more into this night. I think that we get a really good picture of how a King acts by the way Jesus dealt with everything surrounding His crucifixion. Jesus knew that He would be crucified right after the Passover. He knew the events that would take place because they had been foretold for centuries before His birth. He still continued to move forward with the plan even though it would be painful, humiliating and ultimately, deadly for Him. So what were the characteristics of Jesus, the King that we see in this story? First, as a King, Jesus saw that mankind was in trouble and He planned from the day of the fall to exchange His life for ours. He not only planned to make the exchange but to take on the weight of all the guilt of all man for all time. At the same time, He would take the power of death so it could no loner harm those that would be found in Him. He told repeatedly of this ...

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...