And Love...

Saturday morn… I woke up early-early, like 4am. Wrestled for about an hour on whether to get up and watch SportsCenter or worship God for awhile. Flesh won @ 1st. for about an hour + I watched all what I already knew then started flipping through the channels aimlessly. Too many infomercials & bad preaching on that time of morning. Finally I decided to download some worship music to my iPod and take the villains for a walk. As I was walking, picking up their poop, and worshiping (not necessarily in that order) I started thinking on 1 Cor.13:13. You know that scripture, everyone loves to quote it. 1 Cor 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. It can be a simple scripture or a real deep one. I like to keep things simple. Why love? Why is love the greatest of them all? It was great that I was listening to worship while I was meditating on this script because it made me think of Heaven. When we get to heaven we’re going to be worshiping all the time. When we get to Heaven we’re gonna be surrounded by His love all the time. Faith, we won’t need faith when we get to heaven. Heb 11:1 says “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” We’re going to see everything when get to heaven. Hope, Heaven is our hope. I like how the Amplified Bible put 1 Cor. 13:13 “13And so faith, hope, love abide [faith--conviction and belief respecting man's relation to God and divine things; hope--joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation; love--true affection for God and man, growing out of God's love for and in us], these three; but the greatest of these is love.” That leaves us with one, Love. For once I want to worship like I’m in heaven, not needing faith or hope. This is what I mean. Most of the time when I worship I’m still aware of what’s going on around me. I know the needs that are tugging @ me, the healings that I or my family needs. I just want to worship in love, without need. I want to cry “Holy, Holy, Holy” without crying “Help, Help, Help”! It’s hard to do that when we don’t live in Heaven yet. If we have Christ as our savior then we have the house being built but we don’t actually live there yet.

The Coolest Miracle Ever

Sorry for the long delay. Saige and I have been busy painting. I added a pic of Saige doing her paint thing. It may be another long time before the next entry, I have to turn this computer in for repair. Enjoy the blog entry below.
The Coolest Miracle Ever?
It’s hard to call a single miracle in the Bible the coolest ever. How can you compare one miracle to another? How could any miracle listed in the scripts beat out the Red Sea split? Forget that, nothing beats out Jesus raised from the dead, but this one is pretty darn cool. I have only heard one person talk about it. That one person is Rick Renner and he did so in his daily devotional “Sparking Gems”. The “April 12” devo, page 230 if you have the hardback version.
Here is the coolest (maybe 3rd coolest) miracle ever. Well let me back up, here is the evidence of the coolest (maybe 3rd coolest) miracle ever, but don’t blink cause you might miss it. This evidence is listed in Mark 14:51-52. I say evidence because the before scripts don’t actually describe this happening so you have to kind of dig a little to figure out what happened. Mark 14:43-52 is where Judas betrays Jesus and Jesus arrested. Verses 43-50 is about Judas strutting up and laying the kiss on Jesus but 51 & 52 gives a strange twist to the story that the other 3 gospels don’t record. Here are the scripts: “51A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.” So who’s the kid running around a garden with next to nothing on in the middle of the night. . Some say the kid is Mark cause this story is found in the book of Mark. Some say it’s Luke. Rick Renner says it’s neither. The risk of mentioning someone else’s revelation is that if it’s wrong then you’re not really wrong, it’s the person who you’re quoting that is wrong. I’m taking this one on for myself so if it’s wrong then I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. Vrs. 51 says the kid was in a linen garment. The Greek word used for linen garment is used the only other time in the Bible to describe what Jesus was wrapped in for burial. I made sure to do my own research to verify this. The Greek word is “sindon”. It also describes a cloth worn @ night (pajamas) but again the only other time this word is used is to describe what Jesus was wrapped in. So again who is this kid now running around naked in a garden in the middle of the night? That night Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Garden is near a cemetery. John’s record of the betraying is where Jesus said one of the greatest statements in the Bible, “I AM”. John 4:4-6 “4 Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, ‘Who is it you want?’ 5 ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ they replied. 5 ‘I am he,’ Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) 6When Jesus said, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.” When Jesus said “I AM” so much power came out of Him that the crowd got knocked on their butts. That’s all that was recorded when He said “I AM” but that is not all that I think that happened. When Jesus said “I AM” this kid was raised from the dead. That’s why he was running around the garden with just a burial cloth on. The natural response of anyone raised from the dead, like being raised from the dead is natural, would be to find out who did it. Could you imagine being the parents of this kid? Could you imagine, after having all your dreams smashed your “dead” kid shows up on your front door full of life & naked. I hope they put cloths on him right away.
So just how much power is in Jesus’ “I Am”? Enough! Enough to knock a bunch of losers on their butts, enough to answer some parents’ hopeless prayer, and more then enough for what ever we have to face.
Stay Blessed..it’s your choice!