Whats your motivation for being a “Christian”?

It really comes down to just two different reasons:
1) The right one- Because you are eternally grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice, & you know beyond the shadow of a doubt, that without His death & resurrection, you would be damned to spend eternity in hell because of your sinful nature. Consequently, you want to spend the rest of your natural life serving & pleasing Him.

OR

2) The wrong motive- Because you know that God is capable of making your life better, & giving you the desires of your heart, & you need a new car right about now, & some extra cash for gas money cuz the prices are crazy high, & a new boyfriend or girlfriend wouldn’t hurt, & maybe a new job that pays more…etc ,etc.

The point is: Are you a Christian that seeks to serve, or that seeks to receive? What is your motivation?

To all the “thugs”:

Imagine u & ya daddy were separated at birth, & he’d been relentlessly searching 4 you. Turns out, he’s a supreme court judge, & yall finally meet cuz u got caught up. Now he’s so happy to have you in front of him…finally; & u got all these incredible feelings rushing over your body cuz u get to meet your dad, who never actually abandoned u like you’d thought.

But, being who he is, he’s forced to send u to prison for what u did. He’s sad, your sad, but worst of all, you’re in prison for life now, & you’ll never get to build that relationship with your father. Turns out, he’d been trying to reach you all your life, but since you never truly set out to find him, all his efforts failed. In fact, your own mailbox was full of his letters, but you never opened any; you were too busy gettin ready to hit the club, or the mall, or rollin another blunt. You didn’t have the time to open one & read it.

God is your Father. And He’s been diligently seeking a relationship with you; he even had his first born son die in your place, so if you did come to Him, He could accept you…your punishment was already paid for. You have Bibles all around you, everywhere you go. A Bible is God’s love letter to you, but you never read it to find out what He’s saying. And now, since you never built that relationship to where He could pull some strings for you, when you finally do meet Him in Court, He’ll be forced to sentence you to death, not life, but eternal death; a separation from Him, set in the lake of fire. If only you would’ve taken some time to read those letters & seek Him!

Open your mailbox. Seek & you shall find.

Taken from Disciple’s Creed:

“…It’s the Great Commission/
But its gon’ take persistence/
To make Disciples of all nations & take ‘em fishin’/
We gotta make ‘em listen/
They don’t know what they missin’/
Remove the scales from our eyes & consecrate our vision…/

In Acts 9 (the conversion of saul), verse 18 says: “Immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, & he received his sight at once…” I believe this is a picture of how our spiritual eyes are opened when we receive the Holy Spirit.

Lately, I’ve been “seeing” a whole lot of activity in the Body. God continues to strategically place certain people within my “circle” or path, & I sense things are really about to bubble. I see it happening all over, & hear stories about it in other’s lives as well.

It’s like the world is a great big chess board, & God is on the move; bringing all the necessary pieces together to prepare his final “checkmate”. The enemy is so shook. But again, it makes me fall back & just wonder at the sovereignty of the Lord. He is just completely in control; preparing his troops for battle, & his reapers for the harvest.

My eyes are open. I’m continuously seeing God move in my life & I give Him all Praise & Glory & Honor.

Are your eyes open? Can you see Him clearly?

Have you ever looked at God’s creation & just stood in awe of Him? I have! In fact, I find myself doing this more & more. For example, I love to look at the clouds. The Bible says that we will “see the Son of Man returning in a cloud with power & great glory” (Luke 21:27). What a befitting vehicle for His arrival! I mean, I just get awe-struck gazing off into the vast Arizona sky, with its rolling clouds & pink sunsets; imagine Christ’s return! That’ll be some kind of an entrance, huh?

I think, in a certain way, we’re a lot like clouds; let me paint you a picture…Early this morning as I was gazing up at the sky, & the sun was behind a group of clouds, I felt the Lord speaking to me. Now, this thing with the clouds happens all the time, but we notice it most when the sun fully disappears behind a bunch of dark rain clouds, & our world gets just a shade darker. But what I saw this morning were white clouds, & as the sun was behind them, it caused them to radiate! I mean these clouds were almost too bright to look at.

[Think about Exodus 34: 29-35, when Moses’ face was shining. The glory of God’s light caused Moses’ face to shine so much that he had to put a veil over it ‘cuz folks were buggin’ out’!]

We’re like clouds in the respect of reflecting glory. Just as those clouds reflected the light of the sun, we too reflect the light of God as we draw nearer to Him. So much so, that it’s almost too bright to look at! On the same token, if we’re filled with darkness like those looming rain clouds, then we’ll blot out the sun’s brightness & remove its visibility.

Those dark rain clouds are made dark by what they contain….what’s inside them. (see Matthew 6:23) That darkness they carry in them nullifies the effect of the sun. Our sun, at its core, burns at around 27 million degrees, but is blocked out by a few rain clouds that pale in comparison to size.

See how all this corresponds to spiritual matters? If we are full of darkness, then we not only block out the light of Christ, but we also make it harder for others to see! But as He has made our sins as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18), when we draw nearer to Him, we emanate His light, & others are able to see His power working through us. To summarize: all creation points to the Savior, the Light of the World! (Romans 1:20) Dig that!

I was watching the National Geographic channel awhile back, the show was about how modern canines came to be what they are today. Back in the day, there were these wild dogs that people kept, & over the years, they figured out hot to breed them to bring out certain desirable characteristics, & how to decrease, or eliminate others.
The guy gave an example for a hunting dog called Argentina Dogo. It resembles a pit bull, but this dog is a hunting machine! Over the decades, they bred in some hound dogs for its superb tracking abilities, bull mastiffs for size, & pit bull terrier for its docile demeanor (its true, evil owners in the hood gave this family dog a bad name). They even brought in a particular breed just for the white coat, so Dogo would be easier to see in the hunting fields.
So this dog’s ancestral family tree is crazy, but-this dog can run fast, track down wild boar plaguing pasturelands, kill it, & then go home & play with the kids. On that note, it can tolerate the unintentional mistreatment that toddlers & young kids dish out, without ever lashing out!

My point is this:
Over the centuries, God has brought certain people together to add certain qualities to your gene pool. He has prepared you for such a time as this, & all that you need to complete your assignment has been placed inside you.

Want an example from the Bible? Look at the book of Ruth. Seemingly negative circumstances, followed by her loyalty to Naomi, brought Ruth into the path of Boaz. you can read the full details in the book, which is only 4 chapters long. But what happens is that she ends up being King David’s Great Grandma; & who descends from this line but Jesus Himself!

So, this being the end times, over the coarse of history, God strategically positioned certain people together & you & I are the end result. He is the Master breeder. Certain qualities have been amplified, while others have been removed. So go on in faith knowing that you have all that you need to succeed in your calling, & that you have been made the way you are for a specific reason. God took a lot of thought in to who you were going to be & what he planned for you to accomplish. Run your Race!!