A Christ Follower: The Journey

The Freedom To Choose "I implore you to be reconciled to God."     (2 Corinthians 5:20b.)             Before we can have a different world view, we have got to be willing to surrender our old viewpoint to Christ. Before we can become new creations, we have to be willing to give up our old life or let go of the old life.  Before we can become reconciled to Him, we must be willing to choose to offer God our alienation, sin and isolation.  Before we take on our mantle of ministry, we must be willing to choose to follow Christ.  Before we can become Royal Ambassadors Jesus who is The Christ, we have a choice as to whether or not we will stop following a life that will ultimately lead to destruction. Quite simply we need to decide to follow Jesus.            At first glance, for a Christ-Follower, this seems like a NO brainer.  But take it from one who knows ... The "World" all around us is alluring. It gives an illusion of what is good for us. Sinful re

          As I write these words, it is early in the morning. I have a light shining on a Cross on my desk.  I do this today to remind myself to shine the light and not curse the darkness.  Yet this week, once again, darkness came to our American shores.  A husband and a wife destroyed 14 lives and wounded many others in the name of their God "Allah."   I have heard a great deal of commentary on this, and yet I think, given we are being impacted by religious fanatics, we need to shine the light on this from a Christ-Follower's ability to shine the light of our Lord:          First I want to shine the light on a very important part of the terrorists strategy:  Never forget that the Islamic Terrorist do know the Christian religion, and they do accomplish things on significant dates.  I submit to you that this is the first week of Advent where we celebrate the coming of Christ. And it is significant to them they accomplished their terror on the first week of this Holy

Good Day Ambassador Advent 5           In the U.S. we have an international organizations based here called The United Nations where Ambassadors of the world serve. I am not so sure we actually need this organization, but having Ambassadors serving internationally is absolutely necessary if the world is going to socially function in any meaningful way. These representatives are authorized to speak for their governments.  When they represent their nation, they represent those leaders governing their nation.  In the USA, our Ambassadors represent the people of our nation because, in theory, all of our leaders serve at the behest of the people of The United States of America.  Practically they represent the executive branch of our government.  Today that head of state -- for good or ill -- is President Obama. Therefore, these Ambassadors are the "face" of The United States. The thoughts, beliefs, opinions, assumptions, expectations, evaluations and actions of the Ambas

Advent: The Reasons For Jesus Seasons Day Four Season #1 He Came! Season #2 He Comes Into Available Lives! Season #3 He Is Coming Again!   Another Reason For Jesus' Seasons:              God gave each one of us a MINISTRY.     He even gave this ministry a name.  He called it "The Ministry of Reconciliation."   (2 Corinthians 5:18a)  He gave us a ministry where we pass on what God gave to us.  He gave us a ministry to pass on to our world.  And the disciples started with four types of people to which they passed on "the GOOD NEWS."  They passed it on to friends, relatives, associates and neighbors.  They didn't argue or cajole.  They simply introduced people to Christ.             Think about what could happen to your friend, relative, associate or neighbor, if you looked at them as Christ did... lost, going to hell and in need of a Savior to save them from it all.  Think about how your life was intersected by Christ and the new creation c

ADVENT He Is Coming Back To ... But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying...the supernatural power of God. 2 Timothy 3:1ff The Creator's Warnings are clearly Symptomatic of our  Violent  Evil  Times. Check Out Our Symptoms Narcissist or people that are lovers of themselves increasing. Arrogant people more than before.   A Pandemic of  Sexual, Verbal,Physical and Passive Abuse.      *The Abuse sadly is mostly NOT coming from strangers. Disobedient children of Dishonorable parents. . A Pandemic of entitled or ungrateful people.  Unholy people who don't revere God and joke about holy living. L

The Three Seasons :  He Came, He Comes Into Available Hearts, AND Ready Or Not, He IS Coming Again! Advent: The Reasons For Jesus Seasons Day Three             The   Next Reason For Jesus' Season:   God reconciled us to have a relationship with Him through faith in Christ.  When we first sinned, like our ancient ancestors, we died.  Y'all I mean we really died!!!  That is to say the life giving essence of our being -- each one's spirit  -- died!  This is the worst possible death because each one of us lost our relationship or connection with God. You see it's the spirit that makes a human being aware of God and the things of God. It's the spirit that empowers human beings to have an intimate relationship with the Creator of all that is.           Therefore, our God consciousness was replaced by self consciousness!  We became spiritually divorced from God! Things of God became unimportant to  we who really became the walking dead. Things that benefite

ADVENT:   Reason For Jesus Seasons Two         As I think about these reasons for Jesus having come, coming into lives and His coming again,  I start remembering what happens when our lives have their first Divine intersections with Christ. Our personal advent (personal coming of Christ into our lives) results in us becoming intimate with Him through faith. And this causes a miracle to occur:  Paul says,  "If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.  The old has gone and the new has come."  (See 2 Corinthians 5:17.) All the brokenness and sin that dominated our lives was healed, and it is being daily healed.  He actually works the miracle of supernatural spiritual life transformation, as we place our faith in Jesus who is the Christ. We no longer have to be victims of our past.  We no longer have to suffer for what others did to us. We have God's grace to overcome our victimization.  We can now be victors. We no longer have to suffer for our sins committed.  We

ADVENT:  THE REASONS FOR JESUS SEASONS He Came.  He Comes Into Available Hearts and Lives.  He Will Come Again. THE REASON FOR JESUS SEASON Number One            Most of y'all know that this is the Advent Season.  It is the season of reflecting on the coming of God into the world in the form of Jesus who is His Messiah.  It's the season of Emmanuel --God with us.  It is the season when we hopefully allow God's own Holy Spirit to be like that river of life. It's the season where He is intends to flow up from our inner being producing fruit and gifts. It's the season where these endowments of grace have the potential of making us more and more like Jesus every new day.  JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THIS SEASON.  And He is the reason for OUR season of life.  So why did He leave all that He had in the Holy Heavenly dimensions to wear those "swaddling clothes" or  poopy diapers and live this side of eternity for a while.               One of the reaso