Kitty stroller

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Poor swaddled kitty

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Shelby awaits to board the roller coaster

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Our God

I shared this quote the other day in church and thought I'd repost it here. I've searched for the author of the quote but I have not found who to attribute it to; none the less these words about our God bring encouragement to me and hopefully to you today...

“He will never leave me, never forsake me, never mislead me, never forget me, never overlook me. When I fall He lifts me up. When I’m weak, He’s strong. When I’m lost, He’s the way. When I stumble, He steadies me. When I’m hurt, He heals me. When I’m broken, He mends me. When I’m blind, He leads me. When I’m hungry, He feeds me. When I face trials, He’s with me. When I face persecution, He shields me. When I face problems, He comforts me. When I face loss, He provides for me. When I face death, He carries me home. He is everything for everybody, everywhere, every time, and in every way. He is God and He is faithful. He’s the first and the last. The beginning and the end. He’s the keeper of creation and creator of all. He’s the architect of the universe and the manager of all times. He always was. He always is and He always will be unmoved, unchanged, and undefeated and never undone.”

Redemption

What do you do when you fail spiritually? What do you do when you give-in to that temptation? What do you do when you've screwed up big time? Our naturally tendency is to run and hide from God. But if you are going to recover from this failure, if you are going to get up when you fall, then you need to accept God’s undeserved love. 

There is nothing that you can do to deserve His love. In the midst of your sin and failures God extends His love to you. This isn’t God turning a blind eye, or simply winking at sin. This is a radical, crazy love. God’s love for you is just flat out undeserved.

Isn’t that different from human love? We love each other - if; we love each other - because; we love each other - when. The world loves conditionally, and if our standards for love are not met, then our love grows cold. It's not that way with God; He loves us regardless, and He demonstrated this by paying the ultimate price to offer us the opportunity of a relationship with Him. When we fail it's important to remember that we were bought with a price. 

Jesus would come and live and die and buy us back – redeem us from slavery to sin and death. It’s a picture of God’s love for us.

We've all fallen, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23 He’s saying that all of us have missed God’s mark in our lives. We become slaves of sin and the things of sin in our lives, the Bible describes this as bondage to sin. 

If you read the next verse in Romans it reads, “and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” Rom. 3:24 God presented Jesus as a sacrifice for us. We were in a position of sin and death, then Jesus came as the one who would redeem. He came as one who gave His life and literally paid the price for our redemption to buy us back.

God is a just God. Sin had to be punished. He couldn’t just forget all the things that had happened. God was willing to put the punishment for sin on the shoulders of Jesus so that the mercy and free grace could be delivered to us.


Do you know what you do with God’s love? You receive it. You don’t earn it. You can’t achieve it. You can’t accomplish it. You don’t keep score. You receive it. You begin to live as one who has been bought by a price. It means you hold your head up a little higher. You can even kick your shoulders back a little bit. Why? Because you were bought with a price. It means you stop telling yourself that you are worthless and you’re meaningless and you’re awful and God hates you - because He doesn’t. Because you were bought with a price.

God loves you undeservedly, so much so that He paid the ultimate price to have a relationship with you. When you fall, be sure to return to the One who redeemed you.

Beautiful Things

Have you checked out Nathan Harris' slide show that he created for The Branches Community Church last Sunday (July 8, 2012)? The congregation was encouraged to take photos revealing the beauty in God's creation. Nathan compiled the images and made a great slide show.

Remembering the Lord

Love takes time and attention otherwise it can drift in our lives. When you first become a follower of Jesus Christ it’s so exciting and it’s new; you feel like you have this new lease on life. It’s awesome and it’s thrilling but then as time goes on – if you don’t cultivate and nurture that relationship you can begin to drift in your relationship.


Check this out, God said of His people, "When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me."Hosea 13:6


“They forgot me.” They forgot God – the one who made it all. The one who provided their every need. Aren’t we capable of that? We are all capable of drifting. I’m capable of forgetting.

When we forget God it’s not like we wake up and choose to do it. I think it’s often subtle and slow. It kind of works like this: you get real busy in life; you have work responsibilities; you’re consumed with hobbies, work, and maybe family issues.

Over a period of time your church attendance gets more sporadic. You hit church here and there and then maybe you stop going completely. Your prayer life is almost non-existent. You used to pray more often when it was all fresh and new. Then maybe we get to a place where we stop hanging out with other believers outside of church.

Over time we just remove God from the place that He used to be in our heart and lives and we insert... ourselves. We’re number one. We think about ourselves constantly. We’re the ones we primarily serve and are consumed with. God gets moved to the side and put up on the shelf. Oh sure, we still believe He exists, and we might even take Him off the shelf if we have an urgent need in our lives. But for the most part He is out of the equation. Slowly, imperceptibly, we have forgotten God.

It happened to the Israelites thousands of years ago. It can happen to us if we are not careful. Those words, “… they forgot me.” echo in the lives of millions even today. Relationships take time and if we don't nurture them we drift. We have to remember God in all that we do.

Substitues don't Satisfy

Substitutes just don’t satisfy like the real thing. You can get substitutes in every area of your life. For instance, when it comes to food you can go out and get all kinds of substitute foods... imitation crabmeat, sugar substitutes, bacon bits. Bacon bits aren't bacon, if you read the label it reads more like a chemistry experiment. Bacon bits - bad; real bacon - good.

Substitutes are not the real thing. You can eat that stuff all day long if you want but it doesn’t match up to the real thing. People will try to find substitutes in their life and put them in the place of God. Money is a substitute many people put in the place of God. Money is a wonderful tool, but it’s a horrible god to worship. Some will substitute a person in the place where only God should be. Others will try to fill the void in their lives with addictive things like drugs or excessive alcohol. In the end all of these are an unnatural, or artificial, replacement for the real thing... God.

Substitutes that we put in our lives that take the place of God just don’t satisfy us or Him.

Isaiah 45:22, ""Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other."

Happy Independence Day!

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Country Kitty

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Hawaiian Sunset

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Surf Lessons

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My ladies at Aulani

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Aloha evening

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Giving it all

The other day Shelby came up to me and handed me this note...

"Dear Daddy, Guess what! I saved up enough money to do a Compassion each month! I already know what girl I want. I will show her to you. Love Shelby :)"

She was so excited when she handed me the letter. Here is the part I'm not proud of - as soon as I read the letter I thought she was asking me for permission. I couldn't see how my 9 year old daughter could possibly sponsor a compassion child. My mind began swirling with questions, "How is she going to sponsor a child at $38 per month? Where is she getting this money from?..." I said, "Shelby, I will talk to your mommy about it." I figured the two of us saying 'no' would make me less of the bad guy. Shelby immediately said, "No Daddy. I'm doing it. I already have the money." I still didn't believe her. (Aren't I just filled with loads and loads of faith?)

I checked with Tammy and sure enough, Shelby had it all figured out. She saved all of the birthday money that her grandparents had given her and several weeks/months worth of allowance. She had 4 months worth of support raised already! Her plan is to save her allowance every week and apply all of it toward her sponsorship, she will also save any extra money that she finds or has given to her. Basically this means that every dime she comes across will be going to sponsor a child. One way or another Shelby is determined to make sure that she sponsors a child in need.

The day after handing me the letter, Tammy and Shelby got on the Compassion website and made all of the arrangements for Shelby's sponsorship. Meet Worekenesh...

Shelby chose Worekenesh because she had been waiting for a sponsor for nearly 9 months. Shelby told me that it concerned her that Worekenesh was old enough for school but couldn't go because she didn't have enough money and no one had chosen to sponsor her yet.

Worekensh is part of our extended family now. Letters have been exchanged, prayers have been prayed, and photos will follow. Because of a faithful little girl across the world, Worekenesh has clean drinking water, medical care, an education, and most importantly Worekenesh will hear about Jesus.

I'm so proud of Shelby. Her generosity to bless someone else by giving all that she has humbles me. Shelby's willingness to give all that she has reminded me of the woman at the temple who dropped in two small coins. Jesus noticed her generosity and remarked that she gave more than any other person; it was all that she had, but she gave it all. Mark 12:41-44

Don't Tell Tammy

Don't tell Tammy but I'm thinking about getting her this for Valentine's Day...

She doesn't have neck problems, I just think it looks very fashionable. I think she will really like it.

Everyone Has a Twin

I had a very interesting text conversation with a friend back in Indiana who is taking college courses. Here's how it went...

Him: WGS guest speaker looked so much like you. Hope all is well.

Me: Poor fella :)

Him: The guest lecturer was not a fella.

Me: haha [Internally I was thinking he was being funny here - but wait...]

Him: Yes, very glad I did not go up and say dude how's it going. Women Gender Studies takes a lot of attention and so far outside the box I can't see the box.

Me: Yikes. SHE looked like me!? Oh my.

Him: Yes she looked like YOU! I have a pic of you in my contacts and showed it to a classmate. She did a double take.

Me: Lol. This conversation is hilarious - I may have to put in a blog post :)

Him: I would have taken a pic to send you but we are not to have phones or laptops out during class.

Me: I will just look at myself in the mirror & picture the poor lady.

*{shudder}*

Love Regardless

Here is an audio link to last week's message (Jan. 29) at The Branches Community Church - "Love Regardless"...

Click HERE

Or you can paste the link in your address bar:
http://mediastorage.cloversites.com/thebranchescommunitychurch/media_player/1%20John%202%207-11.mp3