Do You Really Love HIM?

This morning I sat down in the family room to watch my grandchildren while my daughter went to the store.  As I sat there looking at them I decided to call the one little boy, who always seem to get in trouble, over to me and asked him for a hug.  I said “Grammy needs a hug from you”.  He looked at me with an look of “why, what did I do?”.  I pulled him to me and kissed his forehead and told him “Grammy loves you so much”.  He looked up at me for a couple seconds and then replied, “I love you too”. 

Now you may say “what’s so special about that?” well, two things come to mind:

1. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, have to learn to be intentional about giving these little people hugs and kisses for no other reason than “we just love them”.  You can look all around us and see the effects of little people (now adults) who did not get hugs, kisses, affirmation or anything. The lack of this genuine affection, tend to develop low self-esteem and the propensity to gravitate to anything good or bad that would give attention – usually to the extreme.

2. I was reminded of the love I have for God and recalled an experience I had during a night of prayer and intercession.  I was leading the prayer in a gathering and when I got up off my knees, I was so overwhelmed with the love of God and I said to myself “God, I love you so much. I wish I could put my arms around you”; knowing that was impossible because God is Spirit. You have to understand that when we try to relate our love to God, we only know how to do so by the way we relate love to each other.  As I spoke that in my spirit, the Spirit of the Lord spoke back to me. He said, you can’t put your arms around me but you can go to your sister or brother and put your arms around them and hug the God in them.  WOW!!  That statement astounded me because my mind quickly began to judge who had God in them (the flesh/carnal mind) and I had to rebuke that spirit of judgment that wanted to rise up. Thank God, however, I immediately got busy and started walking around the church to everybody, then I shared that revelation with the entire body that was gathered, everyone was blessed and God was exalted.

This brings me back to the title of this blog.  Do you really love HIM – God, that is?  If we really love Him, we must show it to those who we see everyday.  The scriptures tell us that we are made in HIS image.  All humankind is made in the image of God.  We may not all act like the real thing (God), but we all are in HIS image.  Those who do not have this revelation will only begin to draw closer to receiving this revelation as we, who understand who we are, begin showing others by how we love them. 

You say, there are some folks who are unlovable.  It could be that they have never been shown love, therefore do not know how to give it nor receive it.  Consider the common story told about the mean dog who brought terror to everyone and because everyone feared him and thought him to be a mean old dog, no one did anything for him.  They shunned him, went the other way when they say him, ran from him and anything to keep from coming in contact with him.  Then one day someone decided that he could not be that mean. He began throwing him food, from a distance – everyday, until the dog started looking for him everyday around the same time.  In a short time, the dog allowed the man to draw closer and closer to him until finally, he was able to pat the dog on his head with no adverse repercussion.  The moral of the story, love conquers all.

As Christians, we must not shun away from the undesirable, the mean spirited, or find ways to avoid those who do not look like us, dress like us or even think like us.  Be kind, show love and above all if we are consistent we will be able to draw close enough to really make an impact on their lives.  Of course, none of this will happen if we don’t really love HIM. Let’s look at a scripture - 1 John 4:20 “If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

If you read this and feel that you are not there yet, it is alright.  This just give us another measure to strive for in our spiritual walk with God.  The thing that is so wonderful about our God is that we are not held accountable for what we do not know.  However, once knowledge comes to you, it is our responsibility to begin allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us into those truths.  Then, if we know to do good and do not do it – to us, it is SIN.

May the Lord bless you as we all strive to reach another level in Christian maturity.

Be blessed!

Pastor Orean Cosby

Mashiyach Ministries

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It's Time To Change Your Thinking - About...

 Where We Are

Let's examine the following:

WHERE WE ARE -

"Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end" Eccl. 3:11 (NLT-Bible). You have an inborn instinct that longs for immortality. This is because God designed you, in his image, to live for eternity." (Warren, 2002)

Wow!! God did not create you for time; He created you for eternity.  Time (your lifetime on earth) provides us the opportunity to get acquainted with Him and develop a relationship that will carry us into eternity. Likewise, because of the fall of man, it is an opportunity for Him to develop our character in His likeness so that we truly become Sons of God (St. John 3:1-2). The tragedy is we live as though we are only living for time as we know it.

What happens when we live for time?

1. We miss the ultimate purpose of creation - to become Christ-like and live with the Father eternally..

2. We allow our past to mold and shape our lives for the present - instead of for eternity.

Our lives, as children of God ought to be shaped by the future (what you will become - Sons of God).  God uses your present time to mold and shape your future usefulness here on earth and in eternity.  Remember - Jesus has gone away to prepare a place for us. 

Take a moment to reflect on some of the things in your past that is currently having a strong limiting influence on your life today. Physical handicaps, troubled family background, failures, shame over some personal or family "dark secret", or even such things as pride, success, fame recognition, excessive wealth, and the list could go on and on.  But, really - think about it!

We have to change our thinking about where we are.  Yes, we live in time, but we must remember that God lives outside of time and He sees, He knows and He cares about where we are. When you change your thinking, your thinking will change your words.  No longer will you talk about the results of the past and relive every dreadful event that keeps you bound in the past. See yourself  LIVING FOR ETERNITY!!!!

References:

Warren, Rick. 2002. The Purpose Driven Life. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI

God Made Me Chuckle Today - lol!

Over the past few weeks, I have been focusing my bible study teaching on “Faith”. I don’t know if you know this or not, but anytime you begin studying, learning or teaching on a particular subject you are bound to be tested on what you are teaching or learning. And the church said - AMEN!

I was reminded of two things during this time of study. The first was that portion of the prayer model that Jesus taught His disciples (Mt. 6:11) that simply says: “Give us this day our daily bread” . Second, He reminded me of the story of the Israelites in the wilderness when they did not have anything to eat. You can read the account in Ex. 16:15-20. When they did not trust God to supply the next day, they tried to save what they had to be sure they had for the next day. What did God do? Because of their disobedience, God caused the excess manna to breed worms and became useless to eat.

Now, how did God make me chuckle - you ask? Well, I had been believing God to supply my every need, one day at a time - so I thought. Yet, every time I thought about the bills and the lack of finance, it would always take my thoughts and concerns into the next day or next week. Fortunately, I would quicken myself to start thanking God for all of my needs being met. So on Wednesday, I went to the mailbox after not going there for a couple days and to my surprise I had received a check. Of course, I was elated and began to thank God for His blessings. The next day (Thursday) I went to the mailbox. Now before I continue I need to say that I had already calculated in my mind all of the ways that I could possibly receive any money from anywhere. And I concluded there were no other means for surprise money to come.

Continuing with the story...I get to the mailbox on Thursday and I have all sorts of mail. My eyes fall on a small envelope with the perforations on all sides and it is from one of my previous banks. You who are reading this may not be able to relate to this, but some of you may. When I saw the mail from the bank, immediately I began trying to recall the events of this account closing. I said “I thought I closed that account with money in it”. Then I said, “I should not owe them any money”, “Wonder why are they sending something to me”. Listen, when I usually get one of those perforated envelopes from the bank, it is usually telling me about an overdraft. I know you guys don’t get those, but I’ve received several in my time - lol!!

I decide to follow the instructions of the envelope of tear each section off. Low and behold, when I opened each side I discovered a check . I was so surprised - I started checking the front of the envelope to see if it was addressed correctly, if it was truly made payable to me, and if it was a real negotiable check. The answer to all my questions was - YES!!

My response to God was (as I laughed) - “Ok, God are you going to send me small checks every day or one at a time just to show me that you can do things in ways I can’t imagine, even if it is in small doses? He responded back to with “I told you to trust me one day at a time. Stop worrying about what is due next week. I know all things. Stop being afraid to answer the calls from the creditors. You don’t know how I can move on the hearts of others, but you have to trust me”. He reminded again of the story of the Israelites in the wilderness. The purpose for Him telling them not to save anything for the next day was to prove to them that the God they served was able to provide fresh manna the next day and any day. Even when they could not see what they would have to eat, He would provide. Then He said “I will take care of you day by day”. I could do nothing but “chuckle” and say THANK YOU FOR BEING GOD!!!

Now my friends, I know most of you already know that God is able but isn’t it interesting that we HAVE to be reminded of this simple fact -EVERY DAY that we live and breathe. It is the very nature of mankind to very easily believe what we see with the natural eye and feel with our fless. Nonetheless, we who are children of the Most High must remember that we are pilgrims in a foreign land and we walk by FAITH, not by sight!!!(2 Cor.5:7)

There are more events that took place on Friday that shows how God moves on your behalf when you just rest in Him and trust Him. I think I’ll save those events for another blog. If you have some testimonies of how God is sustaining you in these economically hard times, post it on the blog so others can catch a hold of faith and see the same results in their lives.

Longsuffering

My brothers and sisters in Christ, we must learn how to give others their right to think and feel how ever they think or feel. After all, God made humankind to be “free will” agents on purpose. We, as individuals, cannot force our thoughts/thought process or feelings on others. You and you alone are responsible for your own thoughts and feelings. What we, as Christians, are responsible for doing is letting our lights so shine that men see our good works and glorify the Father, which is in heaven. It is our influence on individuals in our world that bring change to thoughts and feelings.

What does that mean? It simple means allowing others to experience what our thoughts or feelings are about any given situation through our responses. This allows them to process the results of God-driven thoughts and feelings. Then, give them time to make changes. Something that we humans do not like to do - have patience. Change does not happen over night. Think about this; it takes anywhere from 10 days to several months for a caterpillar to turn into a beautiful butterfly. And the amount of time depends on the nature or kind of caterpillar it is. So, here we are talking about humans and we are all different in how we think, how long it takes for us to process a new idea, and so on. We are all different.

Too often we want to make others think the way we think and when they don’t, we refuse to give them the right to think however they think. Then we judge them based on our own thoughts. I have seen things such as this turn into people saying hurtful things causing offense to follow. Now, you have another issue at hand because someone is offended and the whole situation is placed in a position of possible breach of friendship and relationship.

Consider this when being confronted with someone’s views that seem totally indifferent to your view and opinion and allow the fruit of the Spirit to show up in your life. That is, the part of the fruit of the Spirit called, Longsuffering.