Monday Musings .../ Tuesday Thoughts ...

We enjoyed another outstanding day yesterday. God really took over the service and people responded. Our time of singing was great and the worship team made a seamless adjustment. Our normal worship leader found out Saturday night that he wasn't going to get back home in time to lead worship. I made a call got someone to take over, we had some people missing from the worship team and someone stepped in Sunday morning to help and the music went very well and the spirit was wonderful.

This was part 2 of an 8 part series "A Celebration of Healing/Recovery" leading up to beginning our new ministry entitled Celebrate Recovery on September 20. Our attendance was good again this week which was encouraging for the first Sunday of August.

We examined principle #2 from Hebrews 11:6 "Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to him, and that he has the power to help me recover."

It is impossible to heal/recover from our hurts, habits or hang-ups until we overcome our natural denial. We have to admit that there is an issue. A couple of denial busters are crisis and confrontation. Crisis forces us to face the facts of whatever the crisis is, we can no longer there is no problem. Confrontation done by those who care about us should cause us to own up to our issues, especially when several people say it to us. An old Texas saying is "If someone calls you a horse's rear ignore it, if two people say it, look in the mirror. If three people tell you, buy a saddle." If it keeps getting repeated there is a good chance there is a problem. At the very least use the confrontations to take a good look at whatever they are pointing out in your life.

Knowing a principle is nice, but not life changing, we need to put the principle into practice. As I used to tell my kids "don't tell me you know, show me you know". To put principle #2 into practice you must 1) Acknowledge God's Existence - the real question is what kind of God do you believe in? There are some strange ideas about God, there a lot of attempts to create a mixed up God. Romans 1:20 and Psalms 14:1 help to see this need. 2) Understand God's Character - this goes beyond believing God exists and seeks to understand Him. Realize that God knows all about your situation, Psalms 31:7-8 and Psalms 69:5. Realize that God cares about your situation. God goes way beyond just knowing and in fact cares deeply about you and your situation, look at Psalms 103:8-13. Realize that God can change you and your situation. Or he can you in your situation look at Luke 18:27.

The longer you postpone your pain the further away from healing you get. In fact you are shortening the number of days in which you can be all that God created and has called you to be when you postpone giving control to God.

3) Accept God's will and allow him to heal you and help you recover, II Timothy 1:7. So how do you plug into God's power? Believe, receive then surrender and follow him, his Word and his will.

Will you surrender and follow?

We had our youngest grandson with us for 5 days including Sunday. It was a blast and we are blessed by all 6 (soon to be 7) of our grandchildren. Last night without hearing a little voice say "good night grandpa" followed by a smile and a twinkle in the eyes that is remarkable. There were many times of our home being filled with the unbridled laughter of a child. The kind of laughter that comes from deep within and is completely unashamed, it is just pure joy. I pray for him, as I do for all of my grandkids that they will surrender control of their lives to God and follow him at an early age. Some of them already him and my heart is full as I think of this and my eyes are filling up as well.