Blessings
Recent weeks have felt like a time of great blessing. Several new kids have come around the west side ministry including 18 in one Saturday. Furthermore, I challenged the handful of teen guys being discipled/mentored to memorize Scripture, and I am pumped that several have come through on this commitment. However, it's in times like these that the enemy packs a sucker punch like a teen meltdown to keep us distracted from God and what He is doing. That's why people (especially those "in ministry") should seek God for revival rather than seeking revival for God.
This week I gave a ride to a guy named Eric, his wife, and his brother. Ended up sitting with them in the car and talking for a while. Eric called me tonight, and we met up. (I'm trying against my nature to act and speak love, pointing Him back to the love of Jesus.) Tonight he admitted to struggling with heroin and that all the things he's tried in life have left him unsatisfied. Like many of the teens, Eric was sympathetic to church and God. Sadly though, he's like many around the church culture who talk up God, learn about God, and look busy for God and completely fail to know Him.
Some people 1. don't care, others 2. know about God, but it seems like so few 3. know Jesus personally. The ultimate blessing is and must be relationship with Jesus through His love. (This is the prize of heaven.) So why do people (including teens, Eric, and myself) gravitate away from relationship with Him? And if relationship with Jesus is so good, why do we settle for cheap thrills? It seems stupid to wade in halfway and "know about God"; this can only be the evidence of a will bent against His love. We love God when we stand under the waterfall of His love for us, the impetus of relationship with God.
1 Corinthians 13:8-10
This week I gave a ride to a guy named Eric, his wife, and his brother. Ended up sitting with them in the car and talking for a while. Eric called me tonight, and we met up. (I'm trying against my nature to act and speak love, pointing Him back to the love of Jesus.) Tonight he admitted to struggling with heroin and that all the things he's tried in life have left him unsatisfied. Like many of the teens, Eric was sympathetic to church and God. Sadly though, he's like many around the church culture who talk up God, learn about God, and look busy for God and completely fail to know Him.
Some people 1. don't care, others 2. know about God, but it seems like so few 3. know Jesus personally. The ultimate blessing is and must be relationship with Jesus through His love. (This is the prize of heaven.) So why do people (including teens, Eric, and myself) gravitate away from relationship with Him? And if relationship with Jesus is so good, why do we settle for cheap thrills? It seems stupid to wade in halfway and "know about God"; this can only be the evidence of a will bent against His love. We love God when we stand under the waterfall of His love for us, the impetus of relationship with God.
1 Corinthians 13:8-10
"Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an
end; as for languages, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For
we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will
come to an end."
1 John 4:9-12
“God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.”
1 John 4:9-12
“God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.”
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