Relational Bridges

 PSALM 23 A sheep doesn't lead itself; it follows the Shepherd. The sheep trusts, submits to, and obeys the Shepherd because it has learned in following that the Shepherd knows best how to tend His sheep. It is in the Shepherd that the sheep will know rest, hope, confidence and peace. It is in believing the Shepherd that we enter into His rest, the rest He has prepared for all who will but believe Him.  The evidence that a sheep believes the Shepherd is seen in the sheep following the Shepherd. Life for a sheep is a changed life. It is a life of surrendered dependance, not some craven relinquishment, but a surrender that comes from confidence in the eternal love and faithfulness of the Shepherd. It is in living dependance upon the Shepherd that the sheep enters into what it actually means to be a sheep, to be fully a sheep in every detail. Wholeness of life is found in believing and then receiving all the provision the Shepherd has in store for the sheep, day by day.  The...

  KINGDOM LOVE What produces Kingdom Love, the Love of God manifest in His people? It comes from a pure heart, one made clean by the Blood of Christ, His forgiveness. He alone can make our hearts clean as He gives us a new heart and a new spirit. He causes us to stand before Him holy, blameless and beyond reproach. A pure heart is marked by singlemindedness in following the Lord Jesus in every detail of life. It comes from a clear conscience, where God's grace in the forgiveness of all our sin sets us free by breaking the power of cancelled sin. God makes our conscience clear because He makes us see that what He has done for us has been done in us and will be brought to its completion when the Lord returns to take us home at last. Our conscience is kept clear through a life of utter dependency upon God, a life of daily repentance and the acceptance of God's forgiveness as fact, not some "legal fiction." It comes from genuine faith. This faith is grounded alone in what...

PRAYER The purpose of prayer is not to get God to give me what I think I want/need, but to get to know the God to Whom my prayers and petitions are directed. Knowing Him, learning to keep my eyes fixed on Him, is the motivating power leading me to seek Him, to surrender to Him. For He, alone, is worthy of my praise, my obedience, and my absolute trust.

WHERE IS MY SECURITY FOUND? We feel most secure when we know what is going on around us and that in knowing, we have some degree of feeling like we are in control. Being "in control" can be synonymous with feeling secure. But then, how "in control" are we actually? I believe that a great part of human anxiety and insecurity come from the tidal wave of information about what is going on worldwide. I think that we were never wired to know EVERYTHING going on behind the closed doors of nations and peoples. We cannot fix the brokenness and madness around us. Most things being reported by news agencies are things traumatic, chaotic, evil and sensational. That's what sells newspapers and fuels viewer statistics from news outlets. The vast majority of "news" postings serve to emphasis how little control we actually have over life-events. We are deceived into thinking IF I know about stuff, I then have greater control over the terrifying "stuff." My ...

 WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR? Am I seeking evidence of God's Kingdom or am I recognizing that, regardless of what I can see or feel, God's absolute sovereign control is eternal, and nothing can alter it. The fact is, God has been there all along, but I could not see His Kingdom at work until I received His very nature for myself. Then life begins to be transformed. Life transformed, sanctification is the theological term, is not my idea of what I want God to do for me. Sanctification is God's idea of what He wants to do in me.

 WHERE GOD SAVES US Psalm 91:15, God declares that He will be with us IN trouble. God saves us IN trouble, not from it. Jesus made it very clear that in this broken and sin infected world, followers of Jesus Christ will have troubles, tribulations, persecutions and the like. We have to face the truth that the world we live in is broken and hates God. So, since we are His, Christian, the troubles aimed at defying Him, the lies spewed out to defame Him, the hatred for the only truth that can save mankind will flow toward us. Jesus told us that this is so and will be our experience as we follow Him and share the Good News of His salvation. The Lord also told us that He has overcome the world. Satan is a defeated foe, and Jesus Christ has given us His authority to dismantle the works of the kingdom of darkness. As His own, we can only lose in our sufferings things that are expendable, for the Kingdom the Holy Spirit lives out in us is eternal and cannot be defeated. The real "you...

 TRUE WEAKNESS There is no one more ineffective than a dead man. There is no hope for change or renovation if it is to be initiated by the dead person. There is no hope of resuscitation. Everyone born of woman, except for the Lord Jesus Christ, is born with the active DNA of sin embedded in them by heritage and inheritance from Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve lost this indwelling Presence when they rebelled against Truth and believed the damning lie that they needed something more than God had already given them to grow into.  Real human life is to have the Life of God uniting us to Himself and filling us, replacing sin and death with forgiveness and the Resurrection Life of Jesus Christ. True humanity is mankind filled with the Life of God, the Power of God for living each day, and an ongoing adventure of being changed, transformed, and conformed to the Image of Jesus. Weakness is not a random circumstance in me, but the real condition of my life in every aspect. Apart from a livi...