Welcome all readers, new and old! This is my (new) blog. It really is not so much new as much as it is a continuation of an old blog site. Unfortunately, I have left all my old blogs and not brought them to this site, but if you are interested in reading them please comment and let me know. I have a feeling that I am going to enjoy this much more than my previous blog (or at least for a few weeks until it becomes a burden).

I hope that you enjoy this as much as I will.

Most of us have been told, or at least heard that God loves us, that Jesus loves me this I know for the bible tells me so. But do we really understand this, or has it become a passing issue that we look over. This Love is something which we need to experience like we do in worship, we must encounter this Love. Eph. 3:16 – 19 says that this Love that we have access to is something that surpasses all knowledge. This is a love that does not have a top a bottom or sides; it goes on through all eternity. Get this:
-We live in one galaxy called the Milky Way Galaxy. There are more than 100 billion known galaxies in this universe. God created this with the word of His mouth. God spoke this very universe into being.
-Think of how many stars are in the whole universe. Think as big as you can and have that number in your head. There are more than 70 sextillion stars in this universe. That is a 7 with 22 zeros. Isaiah 40:26 tells us that He knows the stars by name. So God knows 70 sextillion stars by name, every single one and He commands them where to go and what to do. One time I heard a preacher say “… if all those stars were put into Websters dictionaries you would get 40 quadrillion dictionaries. 40 quadrillion dictionaries is enough to build a highway to the moon and back.”
-But hear this, none of that moves Him. The only thing that moves God is you. His heart is ravished by tour simple desire to look to Him. The heavens are the works of His hand and He loves you.

We are sinners doomed to die without the grace of God. The only reason this grace is available is because of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to the earth and died for our sins. Listen to me, Jesus Christ hung on a cross for you.
You ________________, were on His mind when He hung there on the cross. He was replaying the picture of you in His mind. He was scoffed at and beat so that He could have you. Nails really did go through His hands and feet for you. God sent His only son down to the earth, but more than that Jesus came to earth, knowing that He was going to die a slow and painful death. Something we cannot even grasp is that Jesus was seated in Heaven and was in perfect fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit for all eternity past, and then he suffered the loss of eternity so that He may have us. He was siting on the throne forever, in perfection then He came to earth for YOU. He loves you. Let the conviction of the Lord pierce your heart now with His consuming fire of Love for you. Amen.

Today as I look at the lives of some who claim to be Christians and even go to church my heart begins to break. As believers in Jesus, we have access to so much, yet we are settling for so little all the while the Lords heart is breaking over each one of us. He desires that His children would just come before Him and seek His face, but because of our sinful nature, we get so caught up with the cares and pleasures of this life. Most of the time its not even deliberate sin, its normally seeking other cisterns that cannot satisfy our soul. We place things that need to be below God up before God. The Church of America must begin to wake up. Most Americans today want to go to a good college, then get a good job, maybe marry after that, and then live a comfortable life until they die. Beloved, I beg you to reconsider that dream. There is a much better life than this. Those of us who are Christians are embracing an upside down kingdom, which is completely different from any other kingdom. Jesus displays this is Matthew 5 with the B-attitudes. His definition of being blessed is different from Americas definition today of being blessed. He says that your blessed if you have a broken life basically. Your poor in spirit, living a lifestyle of mourning, being lower than everyone else and servant of everyone else, in the midst of searching for God. This is what the Lord is calling us into today; this is what the true Christian lifestyle is supposed to look like. Money and wealth is not something we need to seek, they will only corrupt us. Jesus says in Matthew that we cannot serve both God and money. I tell you that if we even somewhat learn to obey this command God will do what He promises and provide. He compares us to the birds of the air who do not reap or sow anything, yet the Lord still provides for them, but how much more will the Lord provide for us, His bride, who are much more valuable than birds. I tell you the Lord is faithful and will give you what you need.
In America, we as the church are wasting our lives. We say we believe in Jesus yet we do not live like it. If Jesus really was a real man and really is now at the right hand of the Father we must fall down before Him in reverence giving Him our lives. Our lives need to be lived like that of the great evangelists: David Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, George Whitfield, A.W. Tozer etc. in a place of a holy consecration to the Lord seeking for an encounter from Him. The need of the hour is preachers and teacher who are set apart for something greater, who have the grace to sustain long hours in prayer and fasting. We need those who weep between the porch and the altar, who hide themselves from the world and pray. There is a phrase that most everyone has heard which goes, “we cant be so heavenly minded that were of no earthly good,” but the truth of the matter is that so many of us are so earthly minded we are of no heavenly good. The greatest impact that a believer can have is not with his talents or his giftings, but it is in a place of prayer asking that God would begin to change the way things are and send revival. Leonard Ravenhill says, “Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you damned?”

This is something I wrote awhile ago on The Bride of Christ.

 

Men are the brides of Christ just as women are. The bride describes a position of privilege and of nearness to the heart of God. We must have a revelation of this bridal Paradigm to understand it fully. Beloved, the truth is that the Lord God, Jesus Christ, The God-Man, Loves use, He is ravished by our weak glances, even in our weakness He goes crazy for us! His enjoyment for us is not based on our achievements but on His own heart and your sincere response to Him. This isn’t something that you need to strive to achieve, but it is an awesome key that can unlock power in your life.

 

The Song of Solomon is a great book to show this Bridal Paradigm. I think it can be understood three main ways. First, it can be understood as married love between King Solomon and his Shulamite. Second, it could be a spiritual love song between the glorious relationship between Christ and the church. Third, it could be again a spiritual love song, but between Christ and the individual. The third way just makes me go crazy as I am reading through the book. Just thinking about it being a love song between me and Christ exhilarates me.

 

God is often viewed as a strict coach, that isn’t emotional until we sin then he gets angry with us. Also He is viewed as a God who is just trying to discipline us by calling us to things and then letting bad things happen to us. We never realize that his heart burns for desire for us.

 

It takes God to love him. We love him with the supernatural power of his own imparted love. We are used as a vessel, when we get a revelation of his love we are automatically filled with love towards him, and we hunger for him, then we get another revelation of how he loves us as our weakness, and our love for him at that moment just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the cycle also keeps getting bigger and bigger.

 

The power to love is its own reward. Imagine a couple with a 2 million dollars and a 2 million dollar house. They have a daughter who gets sick and the doctor tells them it will cost them everything to help her the 2 million dollars and the house. They do it. Then one day someone comes up to them and says, “It was amazing what you did for your daughter,” and they say, “No what we did for our daughter was love.” They were despised for doing this. This example also applies to scripture if your were to give up everything for God do you think people would say something like, “Yeah I did that last week,” no they would give the reaction of you being crazy. Paul says his sacrifice for God is nothing compared to the excellency of experiencing the beauty of Jesus, Philippians 3:8. The reward for someone who is truly in love is the power to love, and by now no self recognition is sought or wanted.

 

Jesus desires us! Nothing is better than the revelation of the God filled with pleasure, the God who has intense desire for human beings and the God who woos us through spiritual pleasures. Paul preaches on the revelation of the Bridegroom in 2 Corinthians 11:2

“For I am jealous for you with a Godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.”

In this ministry indentity as friends of the bridegroom we operate differently than those Christians without this revelation. We are fearless. A Bridegroom God is a God who has indescrible desire and delight for us as human beings. Something profound happens to us in our weakness, we feel wanted, and longed. The Bridegroom God actually enjoys us and takes pleasure in us even here on earth.