Forgiven By God

The other day my kids were playing a game in our living room. Cord had walked into the other room to look for something. He was only gone about 10 seconds but that was long enough for his turn to come and go. Upon returning to the game he found out Zellie and Elijah had skipped his turn because he had not been in there. Cord of course got upset. Elijah being the plainspoken boy he is tells Cord, “That’s just life Cord. You should have been in here. That’s just life.” Cord was still upset and Elijah kept repeating “That’s just life Cord.” This got me thinking about our lives. We go along serving God and then we get distracted. We see something that we feel like we need to do and it ends up getting us off the path God has for us. It may be something sinful or it may just be everyday life that gets us distracted. In that moment we may lose an opportunity that God has laid out for us and the scary thing is, we may never get that opportunity back. The story of the virgins in Matthe

#1) Always show respect to God’s chosen. David was chased by Saul and his life was almost taken many times, but David would not kill King Saul, because that was God’s chosen. He knew there would be consequences if he acted without God’s approval. #2) You have never sinned too much to earn forgiveness from God. David was God’s chosen man, but he was also a murderer and an adulterer and let’s face it, sometimes he just didn’t get everything right, but God chose to forgive him when David asked. The same is true for us, if we will just ask God; He will forgive us of our sins. We have never gone too far to receive forgiveness. #3) When facing the giants in your life know that God is always with you. David could not believe that no one would fight Goliath. David’s trust was in God. His words can be found in 1 Sam 17:45-47: 45 Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God o

Shadows This week was groundhog week. At school we taught the kids all about shadows and we even watched the ceremony to see if the groundhog saw his shadow or not. This got me to thinking about us as Christians. You see a shadow is a reflection of the person that the sun is shining on. A shadow goes everywhere a person goes. It does everything a person does. If I take off walking, my shadow follows. If I jump my shadow follows. If I reach over and hug someone, my shadow follows. We need to be like a shadow of Jesus. We need to do the things Jesus would do. We know that while Jesus was on Earth He helped others. He talked to them, prayed with them, and fed them when they were hungry. He met every need they had. He showed compassion and love for them. If you look at your life are you being a shadow of Jesus? Opportunities come our way everyday to help others. People are hurting everywhere and just need someone to help them. Will you be a shadow of Jesus today?

Killing flies is like trying to defeat the devil. Have you ever noticed that when you don’t have a flyswatter that flies buzz around your head and annoy you to pieces, but get a flyswatter and they begin to fly off. If you actually kill one, the flies disappear completely. Then we think they are gone, we put the flyswatter up and sit back down only to realize that without a weapon we no longer have a defense against the flies. Imagine if we kept our flyswatter beside us all the time. Flies would not fly near as close. In relating this to our spiritual walk, some truths stuck out at me. Sometimes in life we are just ambling along without really a care in the world when BAM! A bunch of flies in the form of tests and trials come our way. At first they may seem like pesky annoyances or maybe even some minor inconveniences and we don’t really think much of it. Then more and more things start coming at us and we begin to look around for something to help us. Sometimes we look to p

Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Psalm 51:7 I love cleaning my kitchen sink. I fill it up with hot water, pour in some bleach and let it sit for about an hour. You can just see all the crud that has accumulated coming off. After I let it soak, I drain the water and then scrub a little bit and voila it looks like I have a brand new sink. If you looked at the sink before I cleaned it you would have never realized all the impurities that were stuck on the inside, but once it is cleaned it is very obvious that it should have been cleaned sooner. The same is true when we become Christians. We’re like the dirty sink. We may not realize that we have so much crud and junk inside of us until we meet the Savior that cleanses us from the inside out. You see as we accept Him into our lives and ask for His forgiveness He begins to do a work in us and starts to remove all the impurities in our life. Our job is to let Him have the time