Conversing

My kids were telling a neighborhood kid about Jesus yesterday. They get so excited. I am amazed at the atheists that enjoy this conversation. It definitely draws people... for good reasons and contrary reasons. If your religious conversation doesn't draw in the curious then maybe you need a new conversation. Every kind of people you can think of was drawn to Jesus. If you are only surrounded by people who agree with you and are never controversial or questioning then you are not challenged or growing in Him. You are stagnate. And don't even try to label it "persecution" if someone disagrees with you.

#detox #crushyourbox #askquestions #invitequestions

Record Keeping

Think about this series of questions.

1. Do you believe love keeps no record of wrong?
“Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-5

2. Do you believe God is love?
“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:8

3. Do you believe God keeps a record of your wrongs?

#detox #thingsGodneversaid

Why so demanding?

In times of turmoil we can have peace in the emotional storm. In times of literal storms we can have peace also. It's not so much demanding "peace be still in Jesus name!" but it's the comfort in knowing He is here with me always, regardless of the storm. ✌🏻#detox

We don't get it.

People idolize Justin Bieber and the Kardashians and Lady GaGa and Regie Hamm... I could go on. 📝

Fan girl. Sing all their songs. Watch all their shows. Read all their books. Buying the tshirts.

It doesn't equal relationship. We know this.

Fan girling worship on Sundays. Singing all the hymns. Watching all the sermons. Reading all the devotionals and inspiring books. Buying all the religious gear.

It doesn't equal relationship. We don't know this.

#detox

I hear You calling...

I've been searching for things I didn't know were searchable. Questions I always had that were dismissed as "we can't and don't know." Then I find a trail I was drawn to full of tiny answers that exploded in my mind like the most amazing expression of love and realness and fullness. I found a quiet place in the path to stop and think about everything. Process time. I needed a break from all the information that I know I still haven't fully comprehended. Weeks later with friends seeing what I'm seeing.... I took a huge leap and went into uncharted deep water. I needed to know. I had to know. It wasn't acceptable not to know any longer. I felt led to read. The book called to me from the basement totes. I had read it before. I needed to read it again. I never went to dig through my totes. I could still feel it pulling me. We went to the Goodwill for Allie to spend birthday money. Danny and I just roamed around playing with stuff. I glanced at the books to see if I saw anything educational. There it was. Screaming right at me like a love note begging to be ripped open and read with absurd anticipation. The book. I bought it for $.50.... saved myself the trouble of digging through my totes. My mind is blown. Reading this book with new eyes. It's a completely different book. It's gospel. Amazing news. His mercy is literally new every single day. I am overwhelmed with His presence that I can't explain it. In Him I move, breath, and have my being. Totally free. I have everything I thought I had been missing. Pieces I needed to continue down this path. I'm ready. Let's go! Let's go! The journey is grand!!! It is NOTHING like I was told. It's more. So much more. #detox #rambles

Think about it...

"I’m paging through a travel magazine that features safaris in Africa. The pictures are stunning… and normally I would find these images very engaging, yet I skim through the magazine with little interest. The reason is simple: I’m sitting a few feet away from a campfire overlooking a vast african landscape. The magazine is thrown to one side as I notice the elephants that have just arrived at the watering hole, about 50 meters in front of us. Being in the middle of this experience renders the magazine irrelevant."

#detox #idols #profound #relationship

Who are we listening to again?

"In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects."

#detox

Mind Blown

"Nobody wanted God in a box, just a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?" #detox

YESSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!

"I no longer try and make Jesus fit the Bible, but let the Bible fit around Jesus. I see Jesus, calling us out of our boat-like systems, onto the water where we can stand, against all logic and laws – with our eyes on him."

Yessssss!!! #detox

Word made flesh

"In every religion and philosophy- word remains word, religion remains a theory, and philosophy remains a guess. But in Jesus Christ, the Word is made flesh, reality is revealed – God’s thought is concluded in human life. The ultimate destiny of the Word, was never a book or an institution, but the image and likeness of God displayed in human life."

#detox #reflection #perfectexample

Sin isn't kryptonite to God

"When God became a man, He did not pursue sinners to destroy them. He did not run sinners off. He attracted them! How different is God from the traditions we've developed vainly in His name! Sinners found the company of Jesus attractive because they found value there, they discovered their true selves there, they discovered a greater reality than sin – their true design and being in Him."

If sinners aren't drawn to you... then you aren't reflecting Jesus. Sin isn't kryptonite to God. He doesn't buckle under the presence of wrong. He doesn't strike it down with his condemning finger pointing. He overshadows it with love. His fullness washes it away. God is not a fault finder. He wants relationship even with our faults. He can handle it. Why can't we? #detox

WDJD- What did Jesus do?

Isaiah foretold of the birth of a Child who would be something wonderful. The Angels at His birth declared peace and goodwill.

Religious folks need their own spin on the story. He didn't come to enforce regulations and straighten things up. He came to flip everything upside down because we were so wrong and so off course and couldn't even recognize God. But He did it in love and with peace and goodwill. God himself.

He didn't come to be an elevated spiritual ruler. He came to be a man. He came to do life with us. He came to show us that he fully understands everything about us. He came for the rejected, the outcast, the victims... He rebuked religion. He came for relationship. He came for us to have a perfect example. He showed us how to live with compassion and love in peace. He came to take away the sin aspect that was the sole focus of everything religious. He did that.

Then we murdered Him. We murdered Perfect Peace. Where are we today? Pretty much off the same course, with the same focus on sin, looking for another scape-goat for every fault found in ourselves, yet demanding blood from those we want to judge.

Tonight, I'm thankful. Thankful He came to show man that His desire is to be with us, for us to have peace and goodwill, and for us not to focus on sin but have loving relationships with each other and God.

Emmanuel. God with us. He is always with us. He came for this very reason. Nothing else. He just wants to be your everything. In Him we live and move and have our being.

Instead of the old thought, "What would Jesus do?" I offer a better idea... "What did Jesus do?" His example is perfect.

God Incarnate.
A Nativity Revolution!

#detox #WDJD

Oh Jer-Bear.. no one is listening.. still.

Jeremiah could deliver the same message at the entry of "church" across America and it would fall on ears that can hear but refuse to hear. #rebellion#detox

“The Message from GOD to Jeremiah: “Stand in the gate of GOD ’s Temple and preach this Message. The Message from GOD to Jeremiah: “Stand in the gate of GOD ’s Temple and preach this Message. “Say, ‘Listen, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship GOD. GOD -of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God, has this to say to you: “Say, ‘Listen, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship GOD. GOD -of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God, has this to say to you: “‘Clean up your act—the way you live, the things you do—so I can make my home with you in this place. Don’t for a minute believe the lies being spoken here—“This is GOD ’s Temple, GOD ’s Temple, GOD ’s Temple!” Total nonsense! Only if you clean up your act (the way you live, the things you do), only if you do a total spring cleaning on the way you live and treat your neighbors, only if you quit exploiting the street people and orphans and widows, no longer taking advantage of innocent people on this very site and no longer destroying your souls by using this Temple as a front for other gods—only then will I move into your neighborhood. Only then will this country I gave your ancestors be my permanent home, my Temple.

“‘Get smart! Your leaders are handing you a pack of lies, and you’re swallowing them! Use your heads! Do you think you can rob and murder, have sex with the neighborhood wives, tell lies nonstop, worship the local gods, and buy every novel religious commodity on the market—and then march into this Temple, set apart for my worship, and say, “We’re safe!” thinking that the place itself gives you a license to go on with all this outrageous sacrilege? A cave full of criminals! Do you think you can turn this Temple, set apart for my worship, into something like that? Well, think again. I’ve got eyes in my head. I can see what’s going on.’” GOD ’s Decree!

“‘Take a trip down to the place that was once in Shiloh, where I met my people in the early days. Take a look at those ruins, what I did to it because of the evil ways of my people Israel. “‘So now, because of the way you have lived and failed to listen, even though time and again I took you aside and talked seriously with you, and because you refused to change when I called you to repent, I’m going to do to this Temple, set aside for my worship, this place you think is going to keep you safe no matter what, this place I gave as a gift to your ancestors and you, the same as I did to Shiloh. And as for you, I’m going to get rid of you, the same as I got rid of those old relatives of yours around Shiloh, your fellow Israelites in that former kingdom to the north.’

“And you, Jeremiah, don’t waste your time praying for this people. Don’t offer to make petitions or intercessions. Don’t bother me with them. I’m not listening. Can’t you see what they’re doing in all the villages of Judah and in the Jerusalem streets? Why, they’ve got the children gathering wood while the fathers build fires and the mothers make bread to be offered to ‘the Queen of Heaven’! And as if that weren’t bad enough, they go around pouring out libations to any other gods they come across, just to hurt me.

“But is it me they’re hurting?” GOD ’s Decree! “Aren’t they just hurting themselves? Exposing themselves shamefully? Making themselves ridiculous? “Here’s what the Master GOD has to say: ‘My white-hot anger is about to descend on this country and everything in it—people and animals, trees in the field and vegetables in the garden—a raging wildfire that no one can put out.’ “The Message from GOD -of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God: ‘Go ahead! Put your burnt offerings with all your other sacrificial offerings and make a good meal for yourselves. I sure don’t want them! When I delivered your ancestors out of Egypt, I never said anything to them about wanting burnt offerings and sacrifices as such. But I did say this, commanded this: “Obey me. Do what I say and I will be your God and you will be my people. Live the way I tell you. Do what I command so that your lives will go well.”

“‘But do you think they listened? Not a word of it. They did just what they wanted to do, indulged any and every evil whim and got worse day by day. From the time your ancestors left the land of Egypt until now, I’ve supplied a steady stream of my servants the prophets, but do you think the people listened? Not once. Stubborn as mules and worse than their ancestors!’

“Tell them all this, but don’t expect them to listen. Call out to them, but don’t expect an answer. Tell them, ‘You are the nation that wouldn’t obey GOD, that refused all discipline. Truth has disappeared. There’s not a trace of it left in your mouths.” Jeremiah‬ ‭7:1-28‬ ‭

When God says, don't even pray for them because I wont hear it. That is a tragic place to be.

“Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house.” Ezekiel‬ ‭12:2‬

Stahhhp.

There are formulas for everything.
A formula for marriage.
A formula for love.
A formula for sex.
A formula for birth.
A formula for raising kids.
A formula for education.
A formula for finding a job.
A formula for religion.
A formula for salvation.
A formula for prayer.
A formula for Bible study.
A formula for goodness.
A formula for friendship.
A formula for health.
A formula for every dadgum thang.

Formulas. We seem to be on a constant search for the next formula to happiness, success, salvation, productivity, wealth, whatever.

What formula are you trapped in that is doing nothing for you?

#detox #formulas #mathonly

Written in RED

I like to use a few different versions sometimes to get the point. This is rolling around in my spirit. I present to you ‭‭John 5:39-40‬.

You keep examining the scriptures because you think that in it you have eternal life. Those very Scriptures bear witness to me, but you won’t come to me in order to have life!

You search and keep on searching and examining the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and yet it is those [very Scriptures] that testify about Me; and still you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.

You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.

#redletters #WDJD #detox

Whose image are you reflecting?

You've created a god in your own image when you decide god disapproves of all the same people you do and he wants to do battle with those infidels through you. #detox

You can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man.

When some wants to "pour into you" something they think you "lack" and they have a "formula" to "sell you" that they "figured out".... RUNNNNN. 🏃🏻‍♀️#detox #thisstatusbroughttoyoubyquotations

Life changing questions

2 Questions:
1. Was Jesus God?
2. Is God like Jesus?
#detoxDISCLAIMER: Careful how you answer... it might obliterate your whole belief system.

Are you repeating history?

Israel became what they were delivered from. #detox

Forgiveness before the big religious event? Hmmmm....

"Father forgive them..." Jesus offered forgiveness while we murdered Him. Before His death, burial, and resurrection. God help me. I desire Your truth.#detox