Unexpected opportunities to minister the love of God can be challenging. For example, you pass an acquaintance in the grocery store and in an effort not to be rude you ask them how they are doing. You fully expect to get the standard, “Fine how are you?” response but instead they begin to cry and pour out their hearts. How do we respond to those situations? How do we shift our focus off of whatever we were do
How do you choose your friends? My word says that they who feared the Lord spoke often to one another. I listened in to their conversation wrote a book of remembrance for those who feared me and thought upon my name. These are my special treasure, and you want to be in this book. This depends on your conversation and that depends on how you choose your friends. For you are prone to find a subject agreeable to both. Those who do not have this hunger in their hearts will not want to discuss me. Your choice of friends is a decision with eternal consequences. If you hunger for me you will seek those who have my presence in them as you do and I will find them for you.
To the crowd wanting to stone a woman caught in adultery I said let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Do you take this to be a universal principle or intended for this incident only? You normally think of my pronouncements as being universal, and in a literal sense you should not throw rocks at people. Yet taken in a broader sense, who then can give correction at all? Those who are too eager are automatically disqualified, yet I have placed some in spiritual authority for whom this is a duty. It is a fearful thing for anyone to bring correction to my children but if your motive is love from a broken heart I may allow you to steer others back to the path of righteousness.
Todd Engwall, a fellow spiritual traveler, submits his journals with
our Lord to me for verification. Recently, he asked our Lord to tell
him more about faith, after watching the movie, The Bible, where he saw
the faith of Abraham in action. Todd agreed to share this journal with
others, so here is what he received:
Lord, do you want to tell me more about faith?
Yes Todd. Faith is not hope. It is the substance of things hoped for.
Do you ever visit other churches? Do you think that yours does things the way they should be, so doing them another way is wrong? There is more than one way to do things right. In my Father’s house there are many mansions, and in my church there are many local assemblies. I want you to feel at home in my Father’s house because you are among brothers and sisters of your own kind. There is liberty in the expression of observations and worship. I am willing to accept things that may not fit your taste or comfort level. I still receive them as worship in spirit and in truth. I want you to grow to share my joy in every manner of worship that is pleasing to me.
Does it bother you to encounter closed doors, both in the physical and figurative sense? You sincerely ask me for guidance and want to receive it. Do you realize that encountering closed doors is a form of guidance? This is not what you were looking for but it is a part of my plan. Timing is as much a part of my plan as pathway. When the time is right the right doors will open. The patience you develop in the mean time is a fruit of the Spirit. Are you impatient because you think that events around you are not happening fast enough? What about events inside you? Trust me to complete my work in you and through you on time.
There was a forbidden tree in a garden and eating from it was the first mistake. It was desirable to make one wise, but it brought separation from me. Prior to this my children walked with me in my garden. I put my redemptive plan into action to restore this relationship. The world is full of the consequences of this mistake, those who reason by themselves apart from me. You may claim that you didn’t eat of this tree, but it is possible to partake of it in a figurative sense. Do you try to figure out right and wrong on your own? Come and let us reason together. Come and walk with me again in my garden.
You know better than to curse other people. Do you know better than to curse yourself? For it is not socially acceptable for you to curse others, but it is considered modest and humble to belittle or denigrate yourself as if to prove you are not boasting, yet this is not true humility. You are my child, and every parent hates to hear his children pronounce defeat or failure upon themselves. You can limit and disqualify yourself by making such statements and reap a bitter harvest of your own words. Don’t deny the reality of your family heritage that you can do all things through my strength within you.
Jesse works in Florida on a paramedic team and rides the rescue vehicle that goes out in response to 911 calls. Jesse comes face to face with cardiac arrest along with a host of other calamities, so as a Christian, he has lots of opportunities to pray for those who are in crisis situations. I met Jesse for dinner two weeks ago and was blessed by his humble and passionate heart. He shared that over a two-year period, every single person he delivered to the hospital was alive. Because, in fact, God had used him to raise at least eight people from the dead in the ambulance on the way!
For some of us the very idea of praying for a stranger is enough to make us sweat. For others, it’s the idea of praying for a specific need or illness that causes us to quake. Specific “mountains” that make us wonder if our God is indeed big enough.
