Journal of Faith: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling Philippians 2:12

If you look in my bible verse app on the blog page you may notice Phillipians 1:6. I have had the both exciting and scary experience of seeing things come about in my life that I had no part in.  Unexpected opportunities and blessings show the loving guidance of God in my life.  They also tempt the controller in me to take hold of the situation to better manage and "maximize" the opportunity.  I felt the Lord telling me today that if he is doing something in my life to simply step aside and watch the show.  This is so hard for me to do, but if God starts it surely he has a plan to finish it too. Lord help us all to rest in the assurance that you won't leave us hanging or sell us short.  It's amazing how we humanize God sometimes, but I am grateful that God is God and not man. He is perfect and he does all things well.  All I have to do is obey his instruction and keep my hands out of his work. 

I've heard so many pastors say "It's already done." People wave, shout, and high five like it's Christmas.  You'd be hard pressed to find someone who showed any form of confusion or curiosity about such a provocative statement.  Have you ever had one of those elementary moments where you know you should just nod along with everyone else that may or may not understand what was just said, but decide not to? The little girl in me started to ask recently about this statement in curiosity.  Young Faith running around inside of me stopped the other day to ask "what's done?  I'm still going through so much, and I know so little. I still have so many decisions to make.  How can I be done?"  She is so analytical and deductive.  The grown up conversation might be the discussion of choice vs. fate.   Do we decide how our lives will go or does God?  This is deep stuff.  We discussed this subject in a Theology class of mine in college.  My pro...

I am starting to understand what my great-grandmother meant when she said I want to go home.  She was tired of being in this world, and quite honestly so am I.  To be here has many blessing, but the greatest blessing is to be with the Lord.  The only reason that I am still in this world is because of my purpose.  If we only existed to know God then when we got saved we would immediately be taken to heaven.  Since I am still here there has to be more to my life then simply getting saved.  My only way out of here now is to fulfill my purpose, and so I am tunneling my vision this year to really dig into my purpose.  The most basic of purposes for any Christian is to tell others about God and show them God's love.  We all might do it in a different way, but if you are wondering what you're purpose is it's basically to introduce Jesus into people's contemplation.  God reveals to us the details of our mission as our relationship with him grows and ...

 Laws are simply rules that make the culture of a society; they are a system that people must operate in if they are to live effectively within the community.  Every society has its rules of engagement, and the Kingdom of God is no different.  In the old testament Joshua was encouraged to not let the law leave from his sight so that they would have good success (Joshua 1:8). We also see that there were terrible consequences to not following the law.  Two of Aaron's sons died because they sent up strange incense that was out of order in the Lord's tabernacle. Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land because he let his anger get the best of him. David's child with Bathsheba died because he took her from her husband and had him killed. The old Testament laws were inescapable and deadly if you deviated. The Lord himself had to follow his laws too. In order to save us God had to go through the universal sin equation ,sin=death, lawfully.  We haven't evaded...