Ok, so, I am driving down the road to bring my daughter to dinner for her birthday and see this billboard sign and it catches my attention. Understand that most signs don’t because they are terrible, but this one is a white sign and on one side says LUST and the other side says LOVE in red letters with the words “I am second” in white on a black patch in the center with the website www.iamsecond.com in the corner. I struck me because I really didn’t know what it was about and yet it was drawing me. I did not know then, but I know now that it was my spirit was that was drawing me to this sign.

It is a day later and I am at my computer and I remember this sign and go to the website. It is also plain, but it has a person on the right and a statement “I am second,” that you can click which takes you to a video of them speaking. Well, I was not prepared to hear the amazing testimonies of how God has changed these peoples lives and then to have them declare that they are second or say at the end “I am second” to God. I sat there and listened to several of them. The one I liked the most is the one from Stephen Baldwin where his cleaning lady told his wife she was not there to just clean the house but because they would become Christians and have a ministry. This is an amazing website. You have to check it out.

And it got me to thinking about how I am second. God is in control of my life and Jesus is Lord of my life and I am happily second to them. I can remember a time before them when I was living for me and how lust and pornography got me into trouble with the law on multiple occasions and was leading me down a very bad path. But God got a hold of me and shook me up because he has a plan and a ministry for me down the road. He has had many people like that maid tell me that God has things in store and for a while like Stephen I ran. But I am not running away from God anymore. On July 12, 1992, in a little church in upstate New York I made Jesus lord of my life. And then several years later, while having Jesus as lord, but still trying to be the one in control, I gave everything over to him and told him that I made a mess of things and that if he could do anything with this life it was his. Since then, he has moved me to Texas and given me a great job. He continues to inspire me in writing and also is developing some interesting contacts. I know that God has great things in store and I am excited. But the coolest thing is that I don’t have to worry about one thing. I just get to enjoy the ride because God is in control and “I am second.”

The enemy formed another weapons against us and tried to come between my brother and me, but God is good and amazing and awesome and caused this weapon not to prosper as he promised he would. You can read all about it on the Daniel Fast Blog site called “A Call To Fast” where I posted the Testimony by clicking here. Our God truly is an awesome God!!

On Monday December 8th, my wife was waiting in the parking lot outside my office when she noticed that the temperature gauge for the engine was almost in the red zone. This was not good so she immediately turned the car off while she waited for me. When I got in the car, she told me what happened. As I started the car, the temperature shot up to well over half. Since we were at my work and had to get home and I have had a thermostat go in a car before, I decided to drive the car home and watch the engine temperature. By the grace of God, we arrived home without issue.

The next morning, we arranged with my brother to have my sister-in-law bring me to work after she got off from working overnight. On the other hand, my wife proceeded to take our car to a mechanic who checked the car out. We had prayed and hoped that the car would cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of about a hundred dollars as we had just put two hundred dollars in the car to get it to pass inspection. We would later discover that the estimate was about $1,300, which was well above the amount of money that we had available to us.

I was at work when Vicky called me with the news. She was in tears and to be honest I was at a loss for words coupled with the fact that I was in the middle of my office and unable to console her anyway. For a moment in time, I was having d?j? vu and I didn’t know what to do.

Allow me to explain. Almost exactly a year ago to the day, we had a Kia Optima that died in the middle of the road when my wife was returning home. She had James in the car when it died. She called me at work, but as it would happen at that moment in time there was no one would around who could bring me to her. She then called the church we were attending at the time and their basic attitude was good luck with that which was not helping our situation or the fact that Vicky was stranded in the middle of the road with a just about to turn five year old who did not understand why he had to stay in the car. Eventually a police office came by and helped to push the car off the road to a side street and then a tow truck came and towed the car to a dealer to get it looked at. Vicky was stuck having to walk home on a major road with James and lugging the car seat.

The car dealer discovered that the timing belt had snapped and took out a good portion of the engine with it and the repairs came to $3,000. Given what happened with the church and everything else, I honestly didn’t have the faith to turn to God for the answers. I didn’t rely on him or wait on him for what I was supposed to do and made a very bad decision on how to pay for the car. A decision that still haunts me today.

We received the car back and less than a month later; it was totaled in a car accident as my wife was driving home from picking up Katie, my oldest daughter. You could literally see the hands of God wrapped around the drivers and passengers seat as the car that hit them hit the front and destroyed the engine and then spun around and hit the rear section totally missing where they were sitting. The down side was that the man did not have insurance and when we went to file the claim, we discovered that we missed with all my medical issues that our insurance had been canceled.

God provided us a vehicle, the one that was now in the shop and estimated to be $1,300 in repairs and my mind was racing back to last year and what to do. I was saying a silent prayer to God that I couldn’t go back to that because I knew that was wrong, but that he HAD to come through somehow and some way.

Vicky called the church and Gayle, our wonderful church secretary, sent out and email for people to pray at the same time I was sending out an email to everyone I had emails for calling on them to pray for our needs. Gayle prayed with Vicky and helped to encourage her that God would come through somehow.

Mark and Dina are friends of ours from church whom God has begun to knit together. Last Saturday night, we had the opportunity to get to know them when we were invited to their Christmas party at which we had a great time. Dina replied to my email within fifteen minutes with the simple message to have Vicky call. The reason she wanted us to call was because they had a mechanic that they knew and trusted. The long story short is that we transferred the car from the one mechanic to the mechanic that they knew. He gave us a new quote. This quote was about $25 less, but included a bunch more work that needed to be done. This was both great and depressing news at the same time.

Maria and Mario are friends of ours from church who we have knit together with because we share many of the same difficulties as well as both of us having been selected by the Pastor to be Connection Group leaders. About thirty minutes after I sent out the email, I received an email from Maria for our phone number so that she could call and pray with Vicky. However, I was in a meeting and not able to get back to her right away. Since I was taking too long, she called the church and got our number and contacted Vicky and stood with her in prayer as well as encouraged her.

To add to this, a member from our church contacted us and told us that they could help us with the bill by loaning us $600 to be paid back as we were able. This was a tremendous blessing because it immediately showed me that God was moving and that God was taking care of this whole thing, which I should have known from the beginning because that is the kind of God he is and always has been. But you know, sometimes when you fall off of a horse, it is hard to get back on no matter how good the horse is. I just thank God that he is patient with us.

This is where God really gets awesome. I was at my desk at work rubbing my head because my blood pressure was up and my head was hurting and a man comes up to me that I have been working with for the last almost five years and asks how am I doing. I told him that I was not so good. He asked what was up. I told him that the car was busted and that I had hoped that it was be inexpensive, but that it was going to be a lot of money and then he did the most unexpected thing. He moved in real close and said, “Do you need some money?” I was shocked and was not sure what to say other then I didn’t know when I could pay him back and he told me not to worry about that. Now, this happened less than an hour after finding out that the estimate of the car was going to cost as much as it did. In the end, when I found out the actual price of the car the next day, I needed to borrow $600, and I went and asked for the money. This man, who is a sweet and wonderful man asked if that would be enough and then offered me a $1,000 to make sure that I had enough to get by to be paid back when I can.

So, let me break down what God did for us. I found out that the car was going to cost well more then I had and could even think about coming up with. My best hope was my next paycheck, which was ten days away and spoken for to pay rent and Christmas. When I found this out, I prayed and God did the following IN LESS THAN AN HOUR. Gayle encouraged my wife and sent an email having the church pray for our needs. Mark and Dina called with a much better mechanic that did much more that was needed for a total of $1,189. Maria called Vicky, my wife, and encouraged and prayed for her. A member of my church called and loaned us $600 towards the repairs. A man from my offered to loan me money towards the repairs. He turned out loaning us a $1,000. All of this because I trusted in God to supply my needs and He showed up through these people. I don’t know what your need is right now, but I can tell you without a doubt that if you put it in God’s hands, he will take care of it for you just like he did for me and continues to do for me.

God is so awesome. This weekend, we tried a new church and I will just tell you that I hate trying churches. Especially when you try churches that are good ones. Because bad churches are easy to spot for the most part, but good ones that are just not where God wants you to become a part are much harder to tell. So, I hate the process to trying churches and praying and trying to determine if this is the church for my family. If this is the church that God is calling us to make our new home. So, in a way I was dreading going to church this weekend and I hate that feeling as well.

In fact, the night before, I asked God that this be the church just because I hate having to look for a church. I know that is the not the right reason to ask that the church I was about to visit be the church that God wanted to be our home, but I just wanted the search to be over. I am sure that any of you Christians who have had to search for a new church know exactly what I am talking about. So, I asked God to make this church the church that was to be our home church and to confirm that for us. Of course, I did tell god that not my will but his will be done and if this was not the church to let that be known to me as well, but the majority of my hour of prayer time was making my request known to God.

Before I get into what the church service was all about, I had spent much of the week prior contacting my father in the faith, the man who lead me to Jesus who now pastor’s a church in Utah. He was at a conference, but was ever so gracious to find time to converse with me over email which is a real testament the love of God that is in his life because I sent him what amounted to about an eight page email just unloading about everything that had been going on and how I felt and what I was going through and how I need some advise and direction. He replied that night, in the middle of the night burning the midnight oil on my behalf (Lord continue to richly bless him) with some initial thoughts and a question that really got me thinking. The question was simple, “What is the main goal of a Christian?” I quickly fired off an email reply with some trite clich? response.

However, the question did not leave my mind. I spent the better part of the day thinking about the question over and over and about Jesus and God and the Scriptures. I knew that I knew an answer and to be honest I really didn’t want to get this wrong. That is not that I was too proud to admit that I could be or was wrong, just that I really didn’t want to get such a basic concept of Christianity incorrect. So, the question just kept going around and around in my head until I had come to what I believed was the answer and just had to fire off my response to my father in the faith. Here was my reply.

I believed that I was right, but I can not tell you how good it felt to have my father in the faith confirm it for me. With all that I had been through lately, there was a great sense of peace to know that at the core of everything I had not strayed from God or the truth. My father in the faith added that now I had to find a church that believed this and lived.

This brings me back to this past Sunday morning. We arrived at the church a little earlier then expected because I misjudged how close it was. That is not a bad thing, but there was a sense of perhaps we had arrived too early. So, we waited for about five minutes in the parking lot asking God to show us if this was to be our church home before going in. As we walked in, we were greeted by several people, which was nice. Then things began to change.

A man walked up to introduce himself; I wish I could remember his name, but there were just too many names to remember. As he did, another man said, watch out for him because he is from New York. Well, we quickly informed him that we were from New York and New Jersey and immediately struck up a conversation. There was something very home feeling almost brotherly that came from talking with this man.

Soon the service started and we stood up to sing. As we did, people were still coming up to introduce themselves to us. In addition to this, both my wife and I commented how even though there have been good churches that we have been in since we left New Jersey, we have not felt the power and flow of the Holy Spirit as strong as we did in this churches worship service. On this alone, we were strongly feeling that this might be our new church home.

Something that amazed me was that during that worship time, the pastor made a point of walking up to me and introducing himself and speaking with me and there was just something in his eyes that I knew was genuine. It was not out of obligation of being pastor, but just out of love that he walked over and spoke with me and I could feel it in his handshake and his speech and it make me feel good inside and in my spirit.

The service was great although the pastor mentioned several times that this was not a normal service. In fact, at one point he even turned to me and asked if there was anything else that I would need to know that God was calling me to know that this was a good church to be my new church home. I believe that God set this particular service up for our need so that we would know that this is our new church. And if all of this was not enough, God did one more thing.

At almost the end of the service, the pastor talked about a member of the church who was in need and how the family was in financial need because of medical issues the family was going through. He spoke about the fact that we as Christians should be focused on loving on another and that we should be known by our love. That Jesus told us to love and that was our “Goal” as a Christian to love. I was sold. Not that I needed more at this point, but that was the nail in the coffin for me and the final confirmation that I would need to tell me that this was the church that God is calling me to be at and I am very thankful to God for having this church there and calling us to it.

As a side note, as a parent, you want your kids to enjoy church. This is especially true when you have teenagers. The pastor mentioned that our oldest was a teenager and two amazing things happened. First, we discovered that God had us sitting in front of the youth group and second more then half of them came up and introduced themselves and invited my child out to youth. They made her feel so welcome that she not only wants to come back to the church but she is really looking forward to coming out to youth on Wednesday night.

God is so awesome and I am so thankful that he has led us to this church and I am looking forward to becoming part of this church as we move forward. I want to encourage you that if you are looking for a church or find yourself looking for a church in the future pray and keep searching because God will bring you to that perfect church where you will feel the love and presence of God flowing.

I have been thinking a lot about the following verse:

The Bible tells us that God is love and I think that this is very important if not the important thing that we need to understand and realize about God. The reason begins with understanding that the Bible does not say that God just shows love although he does. Or that God just has love although he does. But that God is love. In other words, God’s nature is love meaning that it would be impossible for God to be separated from love. It is like the fact that we are humans. We are never not human and every minute of every day we are humans. Nothing we ever do will ever separate us from being human because it is in our nature it is in our being it is who we are. The same is true with God being love. It is in his nature it is in his being it is who he is. Therefore, God is never separated from being love. Every minute of every day, God is lover. Put another way, God never ever does anything without doing it in love.

For some of us that may come as a bit of a shock to think of God as always being and acting in love but that is the truth. We may not always understand how God’s actions relate to love at the moment we are in them, but they do. Take Mary, the mother of Jesus for example. When we think of her, we hold her with the highest of respect and reverence as well we should for she was chosen from all women from all time to carry the very son of God. Think about that for a moment, God looked down on the Earth throughout all time because God was not limited to a specific time and found Mary because, as the Bible says, she found favor with God (Luke 2:28-30) that alone deserves our respect. Then God placed his only begotten and unique son within her to carry and raise on this earth until it was time for him to be revealed to everyone who he was and what his mission was. But before Jesus was revealed think about what Mary had to go through. Sure today, we give reverence to her as the mother of Jesus and the great miracle she got to carry and raise, but think about what life was like for her after the angel left her. Think for a moment what the conversation with Joseph must have been like. Teenage pregnancy has become fairly accepted today in our society over two thousand years later, but think about what it must have been like way back. Heck only forty years ago women would have had to drop out of school and had been shunned with almost a scarlet letter pasted on their chest imagine what it would have been like over two thousand years ago. This is one of the reasons that the Bible tells us that Joseph had “being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.” (Matthew 1:19) The second reason would be that the punishment under the Mosaic Law would be death (Leviticus 19:20) because we must remember that in the time of Jesus’ birth a betrothal was seen to be just as binding as a marriage contract. So, in the eyes of the Jewish law, the Jewish society and even in the eyes of God, Mary and Joseph were for all intent and purposes married and if Mary had been with another man she under their law should be put to death. Now, we know that she had not been with another man, but that God supernaturally placed Jesus inside her, but whom do you think would believe her. If that even happened today who would believe you? And today you would have the benefit of at least the fact that it happened once before, but back then it had never before happened ever and here comes Mary, who was pure and innocent by all regards favored by God, telling her husband to be that God was the one who placed the baby in her belly. There is not a man that has ever lived who would have believed her prior to receiving the vision from God. In fact, Joseph would have had to be quite the man to not have blown up at her right there on the spot. And I am not speaking physically, just shouting at her at being a harlot for lying with another man because by all accounts in his mind she would have had to be with another man and the story about an angel was a cover. No matter how convincing she sounded, he would have felt betrayed and hurt and angry and yet this pregnancy was done out of love. But do think when Mary was standing there after explaining this to Joseph and having those condemning eyes staring back at her she was able to remember and hold on to that? Perhaps she was and perhaps that was why she was so favored by God, but I can saw it was not easy.

If that was not enough, imagine what it must have been like to be Mary. After the first three months of staying with Elizabeth, we can only assume that she returned to her home obviously showing. Whether married to Joseph at this time or not, you know that she was now know as the woman who was found to be with child. People then are as people are now and people will talk especially when there is gossip to be had and while I am sure that Joseph, a righteous man as the Bible declares, probably said the baby was his, people still murmured and rumored and whispered. How Mary must have felt as people constantly spoke behind her back and whispered and pointed towards her. Even after Jesus was born and they returned to their hometown, the people speaking and point as Mary had to endure because she knew in her heart that this was not only done out of love and that her son would save the world. Yet, how many times did it not look like it when she had to walk out her day to day. How many times did she have to hold on to the angels words and the things she treasured in her heart because of the way the enemy attacked to attempt to hide the fact that God was love and was moving on the face of the Earth in love. It must have been tough, it must have been unbearable and insurmountable and impossible to achieve on her own. But thank God that we never walk this walk on our own.

But look at how Mary was seen and treated after Jesus began his ministry. See how his disciples treated her as if she was the queen mother herself because after all she is the very Son of God, who is the King of Heaven’s, mother. Today, she is respected and revered and even in some circled unfortunately worshipped which is far more then God ever intended because for all she was she was never more then a servant of the most high God. But she did serve and no matter how hard the walk she had to face was she remember one important face as she walked and that was that God is love and that he never does anything apart from love because that is his very nature. That fact alone allowed her to walk through the darkest of valleys when the times were the toughest and people were the cruelest because she could see the light of love shining brightly in her spirit and in her heart and later in her son’s eyes. Oh, how we need to hold on to the very same things that Mary did and remember that everything that God does he does in love and hold on to that and see the shining light of Jesus’ love in our spirit as we walk through whatever he has called us to walk through.

I pray that I would be able to see that light of love as I continue to walk through what I am presently walking through and I pray that you can do the same.

The idea of being broken is bittersweet to a Christian because we know that when we are broken before the Lord that we are truly open to be his, but we are also shattered to our self and what we perceived was the plan for our lives that it is hard sometimes to see the light of day. This is why whenever we have to walk through a time of being broken again it is a time of pain and yet renewal, a time of sorrow and yet revival, a time of hurt and yet joy, a time of great introspective and great learning. And this is a time that I am finding myself going through again.

There are times in our lives when we come to a point where things are going smooth. We think we know all the angles on everything and have everything safety planned out. We know where we are and where we are going. Everything is neatly on course and we are happy. However, it is in these times that we often fail to see that we are standing in the middle of a frozen pond and the ice is cracking. We should be hearing the sound of the coming disaster as the ice melts, but we are too busy arrogantly telling ourselves that we have everything under control. Then as the cracks in the ice move in, our pride takes hold of us and we refuse to acknowledge what our eyes see and cry out to the Lord for help and instead, we run seeking our own answers. Looking for patches of solid ice on the pond as if we really had any idea at all what was going on when the reality of the matter is we are a sinking ship in the middle of desperate situation over our heads. Finally, everything crashes around us and we fall and shatter into a million pieces.

No matter how long we have walked this walk with the Lord, the fall always comes as a surprise and always causes us pain. I think it is because there is no real growth without some level of pain associated with it even though one would think that as the years go on one would get used to the flow of the Lord’s pruning shears. One would think that after years you would get used to the Lord’s way of raising you to the next level, but then if we did would we really grow, would we really excel and would we really ever fly and soar like the butterfly I mentioned in my last post.

After we have fallen, the father comes and gently sorts through the pieces that are left. Finding some that are no longer needed, he tosses those away. Others, he careful picks up and places them in new positions while adding new pieces that he specially fashioned just for us making a brand new mosaic that was more brilliant then the one before. As his Son shines through us and illuminates the world, we never looked so good and it is then that we realized that it was all worth the cost and wondered why we ran, why we questioned and why we didn’t embrace the brokenness that God wanted us to go through.

I don’t know if I will ever embrace the brokenness like I should, but I know that every time I am broken before the Lord, be builds me up better then before.

This weekend we visited a church that had a guest speaker from Germany who spoke about the subject of a butterfly or more specific, the cocoon. Before the butterfly can soar high above the ground and go from flower to flower dancing across this great landscape the God created, it’s begins it’s life as a lowly caterpillar crawling along the ground. Seeing nothing but dirt and grim for a time that only God knows and then decides to create the protective shell of the cocoon where it will undergo a miraculous change.

Inside the cocoon, the caterpillar grows it’s wings, changes from a ground creature to an air creature and has it’s purpose completely reborn. In many ways, this is like the born again Christian whom after receiving Christ becomes a new creature. This is also often the process the God will bring us through when he is preparing us for something new and often greater level of service in his kingdom. The cocoon is a wonder and needed life altering process where only God knows the proper time spent within incubating. Too little time, and the new creature would not be formed and strong enough to face the challenges ahead. Too long, and the new creature will be embittered and battle worn before even have flapped their wings for the first time.

While in the cocoon, the caterpillar drastically alters its physical appearance making crucial the protective shell that is spun around during the transformation. Keying the perfect harmony of nature that God created around us as I realize that I am in a cocoon. I feel the pain of changing from one thing to another. I feel the tearing from one way of worshipping to another. I feel the pulling of communing with God in one way to another. I feel the suffocating claustrophobic tightening of the shell that God has encased me in as I transform from what I was to what I will be. As I am cleansed and moved from what I used to be to what God wants me to be so that I am ready to do what God has called me to do.

And I am afraid and excited, terrified and relieved, horrified and anticipating. For the first time in a long time, I can’t see the future. I can’t see where God is taking me. I have feelings and impressions of where I am going. I have had visions of where I believe I am going to end up with no idea of how to get there. It is like the caterpillar that deep down knows it will be a butterfly and knows that it will fly by instinct, but when it is in the cocoon has to rely on God because all it can see is the cocoon. That is where I am. All I can see is the cocoon. I know that I will fly and by instinct I know I am a butterfly, but all I see right now is the cocoon and I have to trust in God that he has all the rest under control.

Last night we had a bunch of storms come through our area and we lost power. Sitting by candlelight between lightning flashes, I began to be marveled by the power of the human eye. It got me to thinking about light and dark and about how much we can really see.

The human eye is really something to be amazed about. Think about it for a moment. It can see in the brightest of days and the darkest of night with very little time to adjust. Imagine for a moment that you are outside in the middle of the day. The sun is out and there is not a cloud in the sky. You eye doesn’t have to work hard to see what is around. Walk inside where there is shade from the sun, but plenty of light and within an fraction of a second your eye adjusts to the level of light allowing you to see in lower lever of ambient light. As the day progresses on, and the sun goes down, your eye makes adjustments however small to make sure that you can see until finally the sun goes down. Inside your home, lights will have been lit in order to see where you are going. Slowly as the night wanes you turn one light off and then another until finally you turn off the last light all the time your eyes adjusting to the new light levels so that you can see. Sure you can see as good as you could see at the previous light level when it was brighter, but you can still see all the way down to almost no light at all. When I sat there with one candle lit in our dinning room flickering, I was amazed at how much I could see and yet at each flash of lightning I was reminded of how much I could not see. If the candle went out, there was still a very small amount of ambient light coming from only God knew where that my eyes adjusted to allowing me to see shadows and silhouettes. I could barely see anything but again I could at least see something again demonstrating the amazing power of the eye a marvel of God’s design.

As I lay today in physical therapy, I was struck by how our lives are very much like the eye. When we accept Christ, we discover that our lives are fresh and clean by the blood of the lamb and that we are cleanse. It is like we are standing in the sun at noon with the brightest of light around us. But slowly as time goes on, we let some shadows in here and there and our lives, like our eyes adjust to the darkness being there. An unacceptable picture here, a bad word there, an inappropriate scene in a movie, shadows dance and darkness slowly creep in over time ever so slow and again like our eye our lives adjust to the new level of less brightness of Godlessness. After a while, the brightness of our salvation and joy of Christ that used to shine like the sun is barely shining like a single candle in a room. Lightning will flash as we hear a sermon or see something convicting us of our faith reminding us of how bright we once were not to condemn but to point a way back to the father. Tragically, many just let the candle go out and become consumed by the darkness around them.

However, it does not have to be that way.

God does not want anyone to walk in darkness one minute more then you have to. If you have found yourself in darkness all you have to do is turn back to God and call on him. He will meet you right where you are with loving open arms and welcome you back into the kingdom of light, his kingdom. Just ask him today.

I think one of the most amazing things in the universe is that God is love and that is something that has really been hitting me for about the last nine months.

The Bible tells us that God is love.

It is important to realize that God is love. That is that God doesn’t just show love or that he doesn’t just have love, but that God is love. That means that you can never separate God and love. That means that God always operates with love because God’s very essence is love. For many of us, this requires a paradigm (a way of thinking) shift. I know it did for me. I was raised to believe that no matter what happened to you good or bad it was God who did it to you as a way to rewarding you or punishing you for being bad or in a sick way kind of beating you while you were down. This idea is not one that I had alone. When I became a Christian, I learned that God loved me and that Jesus came to make a way to heaven for me, but I really didn’t change the concept that all the bad things that happened to me were God dealing out punishments and temptations and beatings. When you realize that God is love some thing has to change because no longer can you believe in a loving God and see him beating you or tempting you. No longer did the two fit together. I had to change what I thought about God to fit what I learned about God being love.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a concept of tough love. However, what is tough love. Tough love is not beating your child or tempting them with things that would hurt them. No, tough love is when you have to withhold from them a reward they did not deserve because of their attitude in the hopes of correcting bad behavior. God does this in much the same way. God is ever ready to give us rewards in the form of blessings whenever we chose to follow him. When we chose to sin, we effective make the choice to cut God off and God uses tough love to not give us the blessings (some of the time because he does operate in grace and mercy as well).

Although we may not understand it, God never operates without love. Everything he does, he does in love because he is love making it impossible for him to be without love. Furthermore, when God loves, he loves with his whole being because he is entirely love. A revelation for another time. I will finish with this thought. No matter what we may think of God, he is never without love because God is love.

Sometimes you really think you understand something then you learn a new concept about it that kind of blows you away. Take a look at what I recently learn about what part of what being a prophet is about.

Most people when they think of a prophet think of the person who sees the future or sees into a person with divine inspiration and speaks about what they see for the building up and edification of the person or the body of Christ. However, not all that the prophet sees is for the body and this is what I recently learned.

Not long ago, I saw a vision that I knew was from God. This vision had the picture of many people in danger that I knew were traveling. I began to pray and I could not shake the feeling that the danger was not going away. I got my wife and we prayed together and eventually the feeling went away. Later, I discovered that at the time we were praying together, the van, which was pulling a trailer, had jack-knifed on icy roads and was about to plummet off of a bridge and into a frozen river. The people in the van and the van following them said that the hand of God reached down and picked them up and placed them back on the road because nothing they did saved them. I realized that it was not my prayer that did it, but it was God and that God sent me the vision not for me but so that I would pray so that he could move to save them.

When we pray, angels move in the spirit realm. A prophet will often times see into the spirit realm and see the ebbs and tides of things happening and needs to know that is his or her cue to pray and not there cue to run to the nearest mountaintop and proclaim how great they are that they heard from God. I have made that mistake many times in the past and hope that I have learned and grown from it so that in the future, I can pray effectively and accomplish much.