Relational Bridges

  Persecution of those following Jesus Christ will increase because of where our allegiance is grounded. It's not grounded in economics, politics, education, influence, power or prestige, but in the Person of Jesus Christ and His kingdom.

  Animals do not bear the image of God, so they are not the devil's targets. Satan twists things so that he deceives those who are still devoid of true spiritual life, those he still rules in, that whales and eagles' eggs are of greater value than growing humans in the womb. The devil then makes his demonic reasoning a "moral issue" in culture so that those who espouse his lies are deemed truly "enlightened" when actually the "light" they have is darkness.

  The world is desperate for real life, real humanity, and it has no eyes to see it and no ears to hear it. You who belong to and who follow Jesus Christ, you have been called and given His authority to bring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf by speaking and by living the reality and power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Proverbs 24:11-12 "Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will He not repay man according to his work?" This is not a threat; it is a call to join with the One who gives seeing eyes and hearing ears in the rescue of those who do not yet know that He loves them and has made the singular way for them to be reconciled to God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ specifically for them. Come and join the rescue!

  FATHER'S DAY I pray for all of you who are Fathers today. I have asked the Lord God, our Heavenly and Eternal Father, that He would fill you with courage, perseverance, wisdom, kindness, strength, hope and His peace that surpasses our ability to understand. I believe that He wants to pour out His Spirit upon you all in power so that His authority is not only be lived in you but lived through you. I have prayed for your encouragement and for your joy, the Source of them being the Lord God, Himself. May He put "heart" into you, cause you to see as He sees, to understand with His understanding and to love with His love. I pray that His Living Water may fill you fully and overflow so that all who are in the sphere of influence He has given you may become soaked with the Lord's life. The Father of all Glories wants you to know that He knows you, your circumstances, your concerns, the weight you bear on your shoulders and in your hearts and He is both with you and for you...

  NEW WAY TO BE HUMAN Satan had told Eve and Adam that their eyes would be opened, and they would be like God, knowing good and evil. In one sense he had been right. Their eyes were opened, but in a grotesque way. They knew good but also that they were now separated from it. They knew evil because they were now saturated in it. They knew good and evil in a way God never intended them to know it. It has made all humanity after them spiritually deaf, blind and dead to the life of God. But...Jesus came to make the blind to truly see, the deaf to truly hear and to raise the dead to New Life for all who would but trust and believe Jesus Christ and all He has done for all of humanity. It's a relationship and a gift. It is never forced on anyone but can be received and entered into by all who will honestly admit their brokenness and real rebellion and receive His forgiveness. He has already covered your debt in full. Come home!

 TRINITY SUNDAY The early church fathers made it clear that to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, you must believe in the Trinity. It is a mystery revealed in time, in human history, recorded throughout the pages of the Bible. We can strain all we like, but what we know of God, Who He is and what He is like has come to us by God revealing it to us in His Word. We can thus know God truly, but never fully know Him as He is in Himself…eternal and infinite. We bow before Eternal revelation and mystery. The ”Shema”, the Hebrew declaration of Who God is does not contradict the revelation of One God in Three Persons. “Here, oh Israel, the Lord (Adonai is in the plural) our God (Elohenu is in the plural), the Lord (Adonai is in the plural) is One (Echud does not mean singular but One)”. Rabbis would say that the words here are in the plural to denote the fullness of Diety. I couldn’t agree more! In Genesis the Lord God declares, “Let Us make Adam in Our image, in Our own liken...

  The Purpose of Pentecost On the night of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, He breathed on those gathered followers of His, and said "Receive the Holy Spirit..." At that moment they were regenerated by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit united them all to the death and to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They were put INTO Christ Jesus at that moment and given authority, His authority, to forgive sin. The indwelling Presence and Power of His life gave them a new spiritual DNA. They became "new creations". That was for them; the promise of their lives being transformed by the New Life that had begun to work in them. That was God's work in them, for them. Pentecost was God empowering His New Creations to live out the new life they had already received for the sake of the world that had yet to hear and see the Gospel manifest in power as it had been manifested through Jesus Christ in His earthly ministry. THAT mission is to be carried out through His Body, still here on...

  NO ELITE When we get emmeshed in ecclesiology, we can lose sight of the fact that whether you are a follower of Jesus Christ who has been ordained by your denomination or you are an un-ordained follower of Jesus Christ in your respective denomination, you are both members of Christ’s Body here on earth, His church. Being the church, all followers of Jesus Christ are living in a world that desperately needs to be in the same relationship with Jesus Christ that you know by grace through faith. Whether you are called “lay, Deacon, Priest, Bishop, Pastor, Evangelist, etc.” you are to be IN the world as “salt and light”, but not “OF” the world. You are OF God’s kingdom, not the world’s. Believers are meant to be “thermostatic” …changing the “atmosphere” in the sphere of influence God has called you to work and function in. There was never meant to be a “class of believers” who engage the world and then come to communicate the needs of the world to the rest of the church. The churc...