Category Archives: Faith

Faith is a topic which is widely misunderstood. This is largely due to it’s being treated like a religious topic or a “tool” to manipulate circumstances and ultimately God to make our own lives more satisfying.

Any Biblical idea which has been stripped of its relational context is doomed to mislead people in the end.

Faith is nothing more that relational, whole-hearted trust placed in God as a RESULT of Him taking the initiative to reveal Himself to us in any area of our live. The trust we place in Him, initiates from Him. As He reveals Who He is to us, the heart response of trusting Him to be Who He reveals Himself to be is what faith is – nothing less and nothing more.

Store up treasure value

Storing up what you Treasure Pt. 1

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Today we continued our teachings about pursuing the inward work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

We have so far studied loving the Lord our God with all we are, Fearing the Lord, Acknowledging Him and this week we are focused upon valuing and treasuring.

Now really we are looking at treasuring, but valuing is included in this concept. The English translations of the scriptures use the word treasure for several concepts, but in the scriptures we will be looking at today, the word treasure means to “store up”.

In the end, we store up what we immediately value.

Storing something up just because it possesses value isn’t enough. Storing it up because it has immediate value to YOU is another matter entirely and doing this evokes actions out of us which God rewards.

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Acknowledge Him

In all our ways… Acknowledge Him

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This is nothing more than the next step or the “how to” if you will, of the last few previous messages on Loving the Lord our God and fearing Him.

Proverbs 3 encourages us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In ALL YOUR WAY Acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.”

The way we acknowledge God is very practical. It is no different than the way a married couple thinks on one another. In every arena of life – work, friendships, worship, purchases, where and what they eat… all of these are ways in which we know our spouce and deliberately make choices with THEM IN MIND.

In doing this there are certain things we leave behind when we get married, certain activities, certain habits and sometimes even certain friends because they are NOT conducive with the one we have chosen to live our lives with.

When we think on, defer to, honor and respect our spouces in the decisions we make we are ACHKNOWLEDGING THEM in all our ways and it is in this relational way in which we keep this command with our Father!

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Fear Respect

Love & Respect for God

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The command to love the Lord our God with all we are holds nearly everything in common with the command to fear the Lord our God.

When you go through the scriptures and study the Fear of the Lord, you percieve it from two perspectives.

First is our perspective as the created and it makes sense. God is Eternal, Almighty and is our Maker. Respect is therefore more due Him!

The second perspective is God’s which we can only know so far as He allows it with our imaginations. But by God shaping the earthly creation after His likeness, we see that our respect for God is a much an expression of our love and adoration for Him as it is for a husband from his wife. To say you love a man and yet do not respect him is as transparent a lie and could be told – and so it is in our relation with God our Maker.

The Fear of the Lord is to wisely percieve who you are in realtion to the Creator and respect it.

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Weight Command

The weight of the Command

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As human beings I think it is an obvious truth that in all reality we don’t do anything for any duration of time with ALL OUR HEART. The effort alone would be daunting as well as physically, mentally and emotionally draining.

As such, I believe if we ever to really focus on the meaning and scope of the 1st and greatest command, it would leave us with an overwhelming sense of discouragement. This is because it is quite impossible for any human being to keep this command for the same reasons stated above.

So how can it be done? Well believe it or not, the gospel teaches us that the first step in keeping any command is being cogently aware and completely convinced in our own INability to accomplish it!

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Spirit Kingdom

The Spirit & the Kingdom

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One day a scribe asked Jesus what is the greatest commandment of all.

Jesus said that to Listen to God with the intent of obeying out of our deep reverence for Him, to love Him with all we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves were the greatest commands of all.

The scribe readily agreed and added that such was greater than all sacrifices and burnt offerings.

Jesus replied to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God”.

Today we began to explore these commands, the heart behind them and the way the Holy Spirit enables the keeping of them that we might be partakers and participants in God’s kingdom!

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