Humble and Open

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Here is an invitation to prayer!

This winter we are offering the DTS in Ogden. Now, I would love to be the guy that jumps up and down about every detail with great charisma, but that is really not who I am. I approach an impossible world with faith. Some days, the impossibility of this world is a real challenge to faith. And, it is a challenge worth answering.

Running a DTS in Utah is one such challenge!

Our prayer is that we have students, additional staff, and community housing by January 8th!

The reality of this is that it is a huge ask on behalf of many people. The faith part about it is that we’ve seen God provide in situations just like this. I believe in a God that can move people to grow in faith with Him and do things that should, by all rights and sense, be impossible. If it doesn’t happen this year we are going to trust God to do it in the future, and if there are more setbacks, we keep on going. Don’t give up.

This was a lesson Grandpa taught us on the farm. While our Dad got to do cool things like us a skid-loader to dig up post holes we were following behind with posts for the holes. Tamping the posts was slow and boring. Hit the ground over and over again with the small end of your stick. Eventually, it will pack down, make a good foundation for the post, throw in rocks and dirt and keep tamping. Slow work, but work that puts a post down for years to come.

As we do this work in Utah it can certainly feel like tamping, but we are trusting God to do the impossible – make a good foundation for YWAM in Utah for years to come.

Do you want to learn more about the DTS?

Learn more about the school at our page, Utah Discipleship Training School.

The short version.

The Discipleship Training School is focused on helping people join YWAM, find God’s call on their life, live a life that champions others, and grow in relationship with the God who created them. Not only that, there is a ton of teaching focused on sharing your relationship with God with others who need to grow in their relationship with God too.

The school lasts between 5-6 months with phases devoted to learning, outreach, and debrief.

There are no white horses for any of us to ride in on to save the world – lets work together.

Thoughts of a quote, from a letter, used to clarify a misquote…

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One of the awesome parts of getting to be in YWAM is the emphasis on continued learning – that learning may come through, schools, reaching out to people older than you, listening to people younger than you, and, one of my favorites, paying attention to what goes on around you.

Ok, maybe that is my take on learning, but this is a cool movement of folks to do that alongside of.

In that spirit I was reading a Christianity Today article sharing about a book to be released sometime next year, titled, the Misquotable C.S. Lewis. You can read the article for your self here. As I read through the list I found the insights interesting, but when I came to number seven, something in its explanation caught my eye.

The quote in question was this, “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

Now, the article explains, if you drop the “far, far”, it does read as written by C. S. Lewis. However, its context is a little unclear. The writer explains that it is more than just a suck it up moment or quotable phrase, its context is that it was written to a lady that feared her own coming death. The quote is preceded by this, “Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret?”

As I process this there is a deep calling inside myself that what was questioned and said is true. Has this world been so kind that I should leave it with regret?

This isn’t just a broken way of thinking, questioning existence, but it feels like this is a question processed in experience, with heart. I am not an expert on C. S. Lewis at all. Though, what I do know of him is that he is held in high regard as a writer and a thinker. I also know of him as the young man who went to World War 1, the man who lost his wife, and the man who served through the bombing raids against London. Even in all this he is famous enough that a book would get written of the misquotes attributed to him.

We live in an amazing world created by an amazing God, don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful for that, though, I am much younger than C. S. Lewis and I can see that this world is not as it was intended. We ourselves are not often inline with what God desired. He saw the World Wars and we have seen some of the world created by them. War is seemingly unending. Peace is short-lived. We live in a broken world.

What then should be our response?

This may be a divided opinion, and each of us may be called by God in different directions, but I find my place in embracing the brokenness in hope that God will show up and turn it around. I have incredible hope for northern Iraq and for people in the middle-east. The places that are the worst and the hardest get my attention. There is no human answer for the difficulties that we face other than our cooperation with God.

In my humanity I can show preference and value one beautiful thing above another to a fault, that is something that God needs to change in all of our hearts, and there are times that I’ve looked back and saw that. Yet, God does keep working on that. Having hope for another nation (let alone state) is something that God did in my heart.

When I reread C. S. Lewis’ question to the lady approaching death, “Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret?”, my response is no – this world hasn’t been kind. There have been kind people, incredible moments of beauty, but it hasn’t been kind. The greatest kindnesses have been shown by God who has continued to stand kind and beautiful when this world failed to do so. And, in return, I press into God and seek out ways to champion that kind and beautiful world. There is no regret in that.

God has put a call on each of our lives to Him and each other, it is a real privilege to get to do that in Youth With A Mission. Since coming out my own heart for God, people, and the nations have increased. I encourage you to ask God if the life of full-time service is for you as well!

Devotions on Grace

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Hello!

This last week a couple of us from Ogden headed over to YWAM Salem for leadership training and visiting friends and family. If you are looking for a place to do a DTS or take some training as a YWAMer they have a lot of opportunities over there! I’ve benefited from their team out there a few times now and love the whole lot of them.

Grabbing the Grace We Need for Leadership

One of the speakers on my DTS, just for a night, was Jim Stier – he and his wife were some of the first YWAMers to Brazil and gave leadership to the pioneering process of YWAM there – he spoke about quiet times. The next time I heard him speak he also spoke about quiet times. At other times, he led discussions at big leadership meetings, I remember him challenging us to go before God in our quiet times. And this last week was really one big corporate quiet time. Each time he taught there was a depth to the topic at hand, but it always comes with the challenge to take time out of you day to intentionally spend time with God.

The point of the leadership gathering was that if we ourselves are not actively seeking God’s grace for continued grace we are going to run ourselves dry. We processed the question of how do we seek God’s grace and it was a fun discussion that caused us all to do a lot of processing.

The big point that I felt God drawing us to is that we find grace when we find Him.

Finding Him may look different for each of us, but it should be real. When Jesus came He really did come. When He sent the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit really did go. He’s created each of us, uniquely demonstrating the image of God, and each of us have really been created. We found God when He revealed Himself to us – it wasn’t by our own effort, bloodline, or spiritual heritage – and when we found God it turned out that He was full of Grace and Truth. He is still filled with Grace and Truth today. As we continue to serve Him, He shows up and changes the desire of our hearts from evil to love.

We can tell when it is real or not – when it is by our effort that we try or when it is by His presence that our heart undergoes its transformation from a heart filled with darkness to a heart ready to love His light.

That’s coming from John 1:1-18, Luke 17:5-10, and several passages of Paul’s letters.

Walking away from the conference, I’ve found that it helps me put both my own commitment to quiet time and walk with God into perspective – and it helps inform what I am looking for in outreach.

Try it out!

We spent our time looking at scripture, asking God to speak into our lives, and then sharing it with the group. Jim would give commentary and share pioneering stories, add some depth to the topic. It was something that was really good for me to reflect on again. There were lots of take away points, but it started with John 1:1-18.

If you’d like to check it out, I’d challenge you to read through that bit of scripture a bit slowly, ask God what He’d like to share, and check back in on the insights I’ll write down below. I’ll share what I got and it will be fun.

Ready?

Jesus, through whom God created the world, who John the Baptist spoke of, came among us.

The people who received Him and believed in His name – to them He gave the right to become children of God.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us … full of grace and truth.

The Law was given through Moses (which was true), grace and truth came through Jesus (because that is who He is!).

What are some of the things that stood out in a special way to you?

Creating through Communication

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Last night we had an awesome time with our life group and as we were closing we had this question to pray through and meditate on – what does total surrender to Jesus look like to you?

We were encouraged to ask God about the season we are in right now.

As I closed my eyes I had a memory of a cave in Indiana. It was the third cave of the trip and it featured a 30′ rappel right into its mouth. I would like to say it was just like the movies, but I haven’t seen any movies where the actor just bounces against the side of the cave and gets scraped up. Others were more successful at rappelling than I was that night. From there we hiked and climbed further down and I got to lead a couple excursions. Being the first light into the darkness is an incredible feeling. The one cavern I headed into dropped another 50′ – 60′ feet to the floor, fallen jagged rocks were every where, at the bottom was another hole going another hundred feet, and the scene would repeat over and over again.

That beauty would have remained hidden had someone not gone there, and it would have remained unknown to the world unless that person opened his mouth and shared what he or she saw in the cave.

That is where I see total surrender worked out in my life.

Some of the scariest things that I can think of aren’t the things that you can’t do anything about, but rather the ones you can do something about when God prompts you to do them. The whole goal may be impossible or outlandish, but the individual steps typically aren’t.

For example, seeing a person’s life transformed from someone living on the streets in despair to a life of gratitude, provision, and helping others in turn on your own is impossible. That said, being obedient to love the guy on the street isn’t impossible, rather, it is very possible.

Part of our call in Utah is doing impossible things through starting on the possible ones. And, when my life is in committed surrender to Jesus, He consistently calls me to impossible things.

The most possible start to almost anything God tells us to do is opening our mouths and sharing what He has told us to do with others. That is one of my greatest points of weakness. It is the point where you throw yourself into what God has said, what He has prompted you to do, and trust that He will be faithful with the rest. It may be the prompting to reach out and talk to the guy laying on the sidewalk (what will the other people think of me?) or call out the person on their morning run (what will this person think of me?), or maybe the person is obviously well out of your league (am I breaking social protocol?), or they are on their tablet siting next to you on the train, on the bus, or standing in a line (this person obviously wants their privacy…) – fear and insecurity can tag us out of obedience.

More often than not, I find that when we do throw ourselves into whatever God has told us to do He does work it out for the best.  A lack of trust on either our part or on the part of the other greatly impacts the effects of our obedience, but God is faithful to back up what He has said.

The only thing that didn’t bounce against those cave walls so many years ago were the bottoms of my feet – face, hands, arms, shoulders, chest, knees all bruised – and that was because I didn’t trust the guy on the other end of the rope. Many of the dreams and hopes God has for this world remained unexplored and unheard of because we are unwilling to really trust Him in committed surrender.

If our trust falters, it gets harder, but God is still willing to take us there.

By the end of our moment of prayer at life group I had a couple of ideas of where God wanted me to go and this principle, trusting Him to communicate what He wants to do, was key to that. It also reminded me of my young heart for making stories and the desire to share those with others. So, that desire and call really has been there since I was a kid. I may go ahead and sign up for National Novel Writing Month as well – there is a project that I’d love to finish and it will be good prep for our creative writing side of the Discipleship Training School.

Looking forward to an awesome season of committed surrender!

 

Communication in Genesis

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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth – earth had no form, it was empty; the Spirit paused in ready anticipation for what was to come next. Then, God spoke light into existence.

And so the story goes.

The first section of Genesis has always been one of my favorite portions of scripture. It is simple and it speaks poetically of things that will have ripples throughout our human history. The incredibly powerful God speaking things into existence until He comes to mankind. He takes dirt into his hands, forms us, breathes life into us, and creates us in His image. His masterpiece that He gives such strength to is small, weak, and frail compared to the creatures, trees, oceans, planets, and stars that He has just spoken out of Himself, but this one is special in a different way.

In our frailty we show of His nature, being just an image of it. In our freedom we have the we have the opportunity to share His character with each other, the families that we create, and the world that we form.

Our history is enough to show that our story could have been better than it now is, but it also shows a God who is willing to keep speaking life into His creation to bring us back to Him. When we hear His words and live by them we get to walk in that original hope and bring His life and beauty to a world that is broken. When we reject Him and His words we add to the destruction of everything we love until there is nothing left to save. We are able to justify ourselves in this until we look just like the very enemy of God.

This battle of communication starts in Genesis and continues throughout scripture. God speaks life – it is accepted with blessing or it is rejected with destruction. This happens with the first of mankind, the nations that spring up following the great flood, and over and over again through to present day. This is still the world that we raise our children in – the world where they will grow up in, find husbands and wives, create families, and form their part of world in the love of God or in the rejection of Him.

This communication is what Genesis is all about. We get to see God’s heart in intimate detail as He addresses sin with Adam and Eve, when He pleads with Cain to choose the good and reject temptation, when He shares His broken heart with Noah, when He consults with Himself at Babel to preserve mankind, and when He speaks a blessing and a promise over Abram that will put the words of God into the family of Abraham.

We enter into this battle when we speak.

Do we speak words that are true to God’s heart? Do we speak with His heart and with His passion? Do we seek His values in the world around us?

Whether we speak plainly or poetically, with common sense or intellectualism, our words will leave ripples in the lives of those around us, in the families that we raise, and in the world that we are forming. The best place to start learning the difference is in the Bible and in His presence.

I’ll share more about that later.

Communication

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Hello Friends,

We’ve been pretty quiet over here and we are hoping to change that soon!

The ACTS school was a success – a success largely credited to the students, staff, speakers, and friends of YWAM who pulled the school off! My thanks go out to you!

We’ve spent the last couple months resting, visiting our families, and continuing to learn about what God wants to do out here in Utah, as well as, in our own lives, families, team, communities, and world. I’m really excited for what the future holds. God is doing a lot in the world and now isn’t the time to spectate, but rather to engage. Each of us have been created for this time – not to watch it drift by, either bewailing it or passively agreeing that “yes, those were the good old days” to our children. Rather, this is the time that God has invited us into to create the world that our children and grandchildren inherit.

It is August, right?

Let’s see, September, October – yes, ten years ago next October several friends and I were standing around a map up in Warm Lake, ID. In case you’ve never heard of it before, there is a YWAM campus out there. It’s a beautiful place in the Boise National Forest. As we stared at that map God did something in our hearts – we felt a tug to go. Incredible places with foreign names, culture, and food – and the promise of great risk.

I had figured that we were alone in that tug, but I would keep finding it in other places and with other people too – the most surprising place for myself was in eastern Germany. We were visiting a family that my Father-in-Law had known for a long time. I had heard stories about their family, but this was the first time meeting them.

As they spoke the I found myself somewhat shocked – they swapped stories of trips that they took beyond the Iron Curtain. They’re eyes grew youthful as they joked about the risks they took and remembered how far they had gone and what they had done thanks to God. Incredible places with foreign names, culture, and food – and the promise of great risk, a very real, great risk for all of them. They’re risk helped create the world that I now know and the world that my children will know.

We live in a world with the promise of great risk – if we are willing to take it.

We live in a world of incredible beauty, culture, and food – if we are willing to go.

If you feel that tug on your heart to go and change the world, to create a change in the world with a God who loves to communicate and change the world through what He says, then we want to help. Keep yourself posted about what is going on out here in Utah and ask questions, pray, ask God where your place is in this world.

He has created you for this time!

Many blessings on you all!

In Christ,
Troy – Campus Leader

ACTS: Multiplying YWAM

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Throughout the history of the Church we see it spreading through multiplication – not just addition – it grows where people make sacrifices and give their hearts to Jesus. We read about this in the book of Acts.

The Risk

For my part I felt that God had given me an incredible vision for my home.

Michigan was where my family was,  it was where all my relationships resided. Everything from the roads that we drove on to the kinds of grass that grew along them helped me know who I was. I won’t even get started on the fields and trees. A year before I couldn’t even imagine leaving my county let alone my country for a foreign land – missionaries were the crazy ones. Now, I was one of them.

I was considering leaving all of this again so that I could bring something back. Taking the discipleship training school with YWAM was incredible. I wanted the people in Michigan to experience that too. And, I wanted to be a missionary.

In the back yard of my family’s home I prayed again.

Before me was the opportunity to take a school that would help me become a pioneer – someone who would go where there wasn’t already a YWAM base and start one.

My friends had invited me to come back to India to take the school, it was their second time running it and the first time it would be in India. For twelve weeks we would learn from speakers that had already pioneered. We would work together to build our pioneering projects and then we would head out. It sounded kind of easy, but in reality pioneering something new is at least as difficult as they all said it would be. I didn’t know that yet.

At some point during my night of prayer I felt God say to go for it.

Looking back on that night I can say it changed my life, and I am grateful for that.

The Sacrifice

The Church, in its many forms, has consistently grown when people who love Jesus give up what they know for what they do not. It grows when we take risks. It grows when we hear God say to do something that doesn’t make sense, but in our heart we know it is Him saying it and we do it anyway.

We do not always get to conform to the culture around us, hardly so at times, and we will be considered crazy. That is not a bad thing because so was Jesus, and He turned the world upside down by listening to His Father’s voice and doing what His Father said too.

Now, I am not in my home state of Michigan.

I am in Utah, the home of many other people. I have been setting out on this path for the last nine years to make it back home to do what I headed out to do. During that time God has been faithful. He has shown up in the nick of time and provided for us. He has been faithful to give me time to learn and the time to enjoy the people around me. I have a family that He has given me.

Utah is the home of other people, but I remember my heart for my home and it has multiplied to make room for this place too. It has multiplied to make room for India. It has multiplied to make room for the Syrians who I first started paying attention to five years ago.

As often as I hear His heart break my heart multiplies to make more room for His.

When we make a sacrifice God is faithful to multiply it.

The Response

What is on your heart that you are carrying with God?

How is He telling you to go for it?

There are no small sacrifices in the kingdom of God – He is faithful to see it. If you stay true to His path He will keep showing you where to go next. If this is the life that God has called you to then I challenge you to take that first step with Him – it is worth it, and even more, He is worth it.

Discipleship Training School – Apostolic Catalyst Training School 

Epic Faith – The Start of Your Journey

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On August 22nd we are hoping to start our first YWAM Discipleship Training School (DTS) in Utah! The focus of the school will be on justice, mercy & compassion. Our outreach will be in Hungary and Greece and our debrief will take place in The Netherlands.

Though the starting date is coming close, there is still time to sign up and to start your 5-month journey of faith with us. In fact, if you sign up before August 1st, you will receive a free copy of the book Epic Faith – written by Marty Meyer, the pioneer leader & base director of YWAM Idaho Boise-Cascade!

So, whether you are fresh out of high school or you just retired, if you are ready for a new challenge and you want to grow in relationship with our amazing God – sign up now!

Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or visit our website for more information.

We hope to see you with us in a month!

Blessings,
YWAM Utah Campus DTS staff

“Intentional Living” & Love your neighbor as yourself.

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“If you want to be successful, you need to every day: value people, belief in people & unconditionally love people. If you do these three things every day, you will not only be successful in life, but you will have a life of significance.” – Advice John C. Maxwell got from his dad.

As I was listening to a broadcast on his book “Intentional Living” by John C. Maxwell, it was this advice that stood out to me most. We all want to live a life of significance. But though this advice seems simple enough, I know from my own life that it can be very hard to do all of these things every day. Some days we are too busy, at others too resentful, too lazy, too … Whatever it is, there can be a lot of things standing in our way of truly valuing people, believing in them and loving them unconditionally.

Yet, this is exactly what God does for us every single day, and He too has asked us to do so for others, though with slightly different words.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all you mind; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’” is the correct summary of the law the law-expert gives to Jesus in Luke 10:27.

Our love for others flows from the love we have for God, and out of the love that He has shown us. By reading the Bible, we can be reminded of this. But the Bible also challenges us to love people who we may rather not “value, belief in & love unconditionally.”

    

One specific group that God calls the Israelites to love is foreigners living among them.

Deuteronomy 10:19 says: “And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” Even more, Leviticus 19:34 says: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

This must not have been an easy task for the Israelites, even at the time that God spoke these words to them and it became more severely tested in the time that the Samaritan’s lived among them. The Samaritan’s were Israel’s natural enemies. And yet, when the expert of the law asks Jesus “who is my neighbor,” in Luke 10: 29b, Jesus answers in the form of a story that shows the Samaritan’s are indeed to be loved as their neighbors. (Luke 10:25-37 – The Parable of the Good Samaritan)

Who are your neighbors? Who are our neighbors? Have we justified anyone to be excluded from God’s command to love others as ourselves? Perhaps someone who has wronged us? Or perhaps, like the Israelites in Jesus time, we have a hard time loving the foreigners that seek refuge in our country?

Whatever it is, God can help us. He is an expert in loving those who hated Him. He even died for them. And on Christmas, we again celebrate the fact that Jesus came to live with those who loved and with those who hated Him; calling all of them back to the Love of the Father. Who can we share this news with this Holiday season? Who can we value, belief in & love in ways that we may never have before?

Ask God to challenge you. And I am sure that you will find both value and significance. Good luck!

In the presence of The Lord

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If you have ever been to Salt Lake City, you may have noticed that in the very heart of the city, there where the lowest road numbers all come together, stands the LDS Temple (LDS = Latter Day Saints, or Mormonism). And just like the temple is found in the heart of the city, so temples in general still have a central place in the LDS faith.

As found on Mormon.org on 11-12-2015, the Latter Day Saints “Belief nr. 10” states that “Temples are the house of God on earth, holy places where we seek guidance and become closer to our Father in Heaven.”

As Christians, we don’t have temples made by human hands. John Bevere describes why this is as follows in chapter 6 of his book ‘The Fear of the Lord – Discovering the key to intimately knowing God’:

“Chapter 6 – A new sanctuary

Under the old covenant God’s glorious presence dwelled first in the tabernacle, then within the temple of Solomon.
Now God prepares to move into what was always His desired dwelling – a temple not made of stone, but the temple found in the hearts of His sons and daughters.”

He also references 2 Chronicles 6:16 “For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them.'”

The Old Testament tabernacle and temple were indeed a place where God lived among the people – as long as they kept His commands – but it also showed the clear separation between a Holy God and His people. In contrast to the garden where God could walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening, it was now terrifying for most people to be in close proximity of God. We can see this in the Israelite’s response when God shows himself at Mt. Sinai.

Exodus 20:18-20 “Now all the people witnessed the thundering, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. Then they said to Moses, ‘You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.'”

And God agrees (Deut 5:28-29), because in their lack of Fear of the Lord, God’s presence would indeed consume them.

The Tabernacle
When the tabernacle was built according to the exact blueprints that Moses received while meeting with God on Mt. Sinai, God’s presence descended on the tabernacle.

Exodus 40:34-35 “Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle of meeting, because the cloud rested above it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”

When God’s presence descended, even Moses couldn’t go in.

Now we know that God’s presence didn’t rest this strong on His house all the time, but there remained a separation between the Holy God and His sinful people. This separation was made very obvious by the division in the temple. The Most Holy Place, could only be accessed once a year, and only by 1 person.

For years this went on. Sadly, we can see as we read on in the Old Testament that whole generations turned away from God. Many times the temple wasn’t even used to seek God anymore and in the end, the temple got destroyed.

The veil was torn
And then, years after Solomon’s original temple had been rebuilt, the impossible happened. Jesus came and when He died, He made everything that had happened in the temple to that day obsolete.

Hebrews 9:12 “Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.”

Jesus Himself became the New High Priest. Hebrews 7 speaks of an eternal Priesthood, in the line of Melchizedek. A priesthood that will never stop, that will never be passed down, and that will never end. Jesus is our high priest forever. And no other priest could do what Jesus could by His own sacrifice.

No more separation?
So according to the Bible, we no longer have a need for priests, temples or sacrifices – as Jesus is the high priest, our bodies are the temples, and Jesus death on the cross was the one sacrifice that is sufficient forever.

But perhaps this revelation is more scary than if we could keep some separation between us and God. If we could have priests, temples and prophets to stand in between of us and the Holy One. To still be able to say: No, you please go, but if we would be in His presence any longer, we would die. (Ex. 20:18-20 paraphrased)

People, the veil was torn! We do have access to the Holy One and He wants relationship with us. But like Moses, our hearts have to be in the right place. We need to grow in our understanding of who God is and what this Holiness looks like. In addition, we too have to grow in our understanding of the Fear of The Lord.

Jesus Himself understood this – Isaiah 11:1-3 “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him – the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord – and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.”

It is a choice
But it is still a choice – James 4:8 “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

Just remember: God = Holy & God = Worthy.

And though He accepts us as we are, we have to be willing to let Him transform us when we go into His presence. We need to be willing to let go of anything that we might be holding onto, and be convinced that He is both Worthy and Trustworthy – so that we don’t have to be afraid. (No: Fear of the Lord IS NOT being afraid of God)

One last question

Q. Would you want to live eternity in heaven, with those you love, even if God wouldn’t be there?
Sadly, many people would answer yes to this question. But if you do, you may not know God for who He really is.

If on the other hand, you know deep down that no matter how good your life, or the afterlife might be, that it would be empty without God – then you are really ready to grow into a deeper relationship with Him. Ask Him – He is not far from those who seek Him, and I pray that you may find Him and realize that the more you get to know Him, the more wonderful He is.

Recognition: Do you want to grow in your understanding of The Fear of the Lord? Consider reading “The Fear of the Lord” by John Bevere.