Relational Bridges

  EVEN THOUGH I AM OLD The Lord God never changes; His Word never varies; there is no shadow in Him due to variance or change for He does not change. He is always the same, never diminished, always and eternally Who He is. Hear His Word to all who have less time before them than they can mark behind them. Isaiah 46:4 NET "Even when you are old, I will take care of you; even when you have gray hair, I will carry you. I made you and I will support you. I will carry you and rescue you." Faithful Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thank you Sovereign God, three in one and one in three, for Your promises never fail but are always fulfilled. Therefore, I will rest in peace and live with courage under the anointing of Your Holy Spirit.

 DYING TO SELF---RECEVING NEW LIFE Dying to self, surrendering the whole of our old self to the Lord and God who created us, He removes our heart of stone and gives us a tender heart. With the new heart, He gives us a new spirit so that we begin to live a new life that only God can give us through Christ Jesus. It is a new way of living, a new way of being, one that we are innately accustomed to. Old things once relied on for identity or a sense of worth fall away, sometimes with great effort and pain. But God gives us the wherewithal to cooperate with Him as our lives are transformed. An old life is discarded, and a new life is entered into. That new Life is actually the Life of God being lived within us. It is by this that we become fully human, fully alive with Resurrection Life, the very Life of Jesus Christ live in us by the Holy Spirit. In order to really live, we must surrender the parody of humanity we have thought was real life, and to believe God, believe what He has done...

 DO NOT BE DECEIVED The longer you follow Jesus Christ with your life, the clearer certain things become. Such as, the whopper of a lie that I need more than God has already given to me in Christ Jesus as well as what He has in store. The corollary to that lie is that I need what God has expressly forbidden in order to have a "full" life. Sin in any form will never fulfill the promise that it holds out in temptation. Living contrary to the clear Word of God will never heal a broken heart. It will never fulfill the dreams and hopes for a lasting, wholesome, enriching relationship. You may not want to hear it, but that doesn't negate the truth that God's design and His timing for human relating, especially marriage, is the only "field" capable of bearing the fruit that will endure both good time and outrageously hard times. All honest relationships have both. God provides, in His will, the power to persevere, to forgive, to give grace, to deliver us from the d...

  THE 4 HORSEMEN White Horse…the Conquering King. Red Horse...war. Black Horse...famine. Pale Green Horse...death. The Lord on His white horse, defeating sin and death has come to the earth, suffered death for our salvation, died, rose again ascended back to heaven and sending His Holy Spirit to live His life in all His followers, this Light of Christ transforming hearts and minds, delivering people from sin and death, exposes the values presumptions of this present world and its deceptions. That Light exposes the spiritual war (RED) at work in the human heart leading to eternal death, the emptiness (FAMINE) presented as necessary and nourishing, and the decay (PALE GREEN) of mind, will and emotions, the dissolution of life as the world presumes it to be. The coming of the Lord Jesus and the empowering His people by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit exposes the spiritual war, the spiritual famine, and the spiritual death that the world lives in reveres and will fight a...

 USEFULNESS Alexander Solzhenitsyn made the statement that people are not equal. There is no "equality" in the sense of ability, talent, gifts and intellect (as wisdom comes in many varied forms, one not more exclusively important that the other). He stated that it is because we are not equal that we are free. It is when all are "made" equal that humanity is no longer free. God does not judge our abilities by the world's standard, but by His own ability and standards which are infinite. A person yielded to God in all dimensions of human living, regardless of their human limitations will find God doing far above and beyond what they could ever ask or imagine by His power at work within them. D. L. Moody, one of the greatest evangelists in the 20th century had little education, terrible grammar, awful syntax and thus not an impressive speaker by the world's standards. That mattered little because he yielded to the Holy Spirit, trusting that the One who had cal...

You’re Going to Have to Serve Somebody I recently watch a small portion of a music concert given by a young woman who is, at this point in her music career, "on top of the world" in acclaim by all forms of media. I watched the faces of her fans (a shortened form of fanatic) and the adoration, the vicarious thrill of basking in her presence, singing along, raising their hands, using their whole bodies in what can only be described as worship. I was witnessing the worship of a person whose music, lyrics and lifestyle seem to define what her worshippers wish their lives were more like. Human beings are creatures who are inclined by design to worship. They tend to worship something greater than themselves, or someone they deem worthy of such attention. Ideas are worshipped, sacrificed to and followed as are certain movements, or even rock singers. The financial cost of a trans-Atlantic flight to watch this young lady sing and strut her stuff is lauded as a worthy expense to b...

  THE GROUND OF OUR HOPE Being a follower of Jesus Christ is no guarantee that life will proceed without complications. Jesus told us, Himself, that in this world we will have difficulties, tribulations, persecutions, and struggles from within and from without. Following Jesus Christ will mean change, radical change in our lives, how we live, what we think, how we choose, and the transformation of our emotional state. Change is always a struggle. He empowers us to surrender and let the changes happen in His timing. Jesus Christ replaces our spiritual death, which all humanity shares as a common heritage from Adam and Eve, with eternal life, His own Life. The Holy Spirit makes His permanent residence in the believer, becoming Life within us. We will not remain the same if we are truly following Jesus Christ and are surrendering to His Word and His will for us. Here is what the Apostle Paul wrote to the young church in Ephesus. Ephesians 2:1-10. "Once you were dead because of your d...