I LOVE MY CHURCH FAMILY!

I love my church family.  I enjoy spending time with them.  We actually enjoy spending time with one another. We enjoy our times of fellowship. I say that from the depths of my heart.

My church  family is a very diverse group of people.  They range from people my age (mid 50's) to people in their 80's. We come from different backgrounds and have had different upbringings. Most are retired but some still work.  They have varying talents and abilities from singing, teaching, cleaning, mowing the church yard, taking care of maintenance issues, changing light bulbs, working in the kitchen, planning, praying and really whatever else needs to be done.

Some have funny personalities, some are serious most of the time. Some can sometimes pull a prank on you. Some have a very dry sense of humor. Some it's hard to tell, by their facial expression, if they are joking or not.

We come in various shapes and sizes from tall to short, from skinny to, well, uh....let's say not so skinny. (I fall under that category).

The one thing we have in common - the one common denominator we have is JESUS! If it weren't for Jesus most of us wouldn't be around each other. In fact, most of us wouldn't even know each other. You see, we are family. The blood of Jesus makes us family. I like that old chorus:

Oh, yes, Oh, yes, I'm a child of the King,

His royal blood now flows through my veins;

And I who was wretched and poor now can sing,

Praise God! Praise God! I'm a child of the King!

Because we are blood bought born again children of God, because we are joint-heirs with Jesus, it causes us to love one another! Are we perfect? Not at all.  Not a one of us is perfect, especially me. You see, I'm one of those Christians who knows and freely acknowledges I NEED JESUS! I need Him every day and every hour. We're not perfect, just forgiven.

When our church family gathers together, we laugh, we share, we enjoy the presence of Jesus, we hear the Word and hopefully, we leave with a nugget to chew on until our next encounter.

By the way, we don't only gather in a church building. We may share some fellowship in someone's home, we may share fellowship around a meal in a restaurant. You certainly don't have to be in a building to have fellowship with the family of God.

I trust you love your church family, as well. Spend time with them. Get to know them. After all, if they are born again, blood bought children of God they are going to spend eternity in heaven.

For those in my church family - you think I'm loud down here...you ain't seen nothing yet!

Until next time...enjoy the journey!

Ray

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HOW FAITHFUL ARE YOU?

What if God was as faithful to you as you are to Him? Have you ever given that any thought? Faithfulness is important in every area of our lives and in every relationship of our lives.

If you love someone you like to spend time with them. You spend time in conversation with one another. You spend time sharing things with one another. You enjoy each other's company. You are faithful in your relationship with that individual.

So it is with God. If you love Him, you will want to spend time with Him. How do we do that? Well, we can spend time in His Word, we can pray, we can meditate on His Word. He often speaks through songs or music. We can even spend time with His people. We can gather with our brothers and sisters for the ministry of His Word. God speaks to us through all of these areas.

Think about this - Jesus was faithful to us all the way to the cross! He was faithful with unconditional love for each of us. That love took Him to the cross. It wasn't a pretty sight. He suffered unthinkable torture. He did that for you and me. The leaders of the day thought they took His life, but the fact of the matter is Jesus voluntarily laid down His life for you and me. He was faithful to each of us. 

I, for one, acknowledge I didn't deserve the faithfulness and sacrifice Jesus showed toward me. Then grace entered the picture.  Thank God for grace - His Grace! Grace is God's unmerited favor. That is, God giving me what I don't deserve. I didn't deserve it, but I sure am thankful for it. Again, God was faithful to me in providing His grace. He has been faithful to each of us.

The reality is, God has been much more faithful to each of us than we have been to Him. What if the roles were reversed? What if God showed the same faithfulness to you and me as we have showed to Him? What if He showed the same degree of faithfulness to us as we show to Him in our lives right now? Is that a disturbing thought? If so, what are you going to do about it?

Let's be faithful to the One who has been most faithful to us! He deserves it. We owe it to Him. If we are Christians, we have been redeemed by the shed blood of Jesus.

Jesus gave His life for us. We ought to live our lives for Him. We have been called to present ourselves as a "living sacrifice...which is your reasonable service" (Romans 12:1). Let's do! Let's live for Jesus! Let's give it all we have. If we have a God worth serving, He' worth serving wholeheartedly!

Until next time...enjoy the journey!

Ray

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ENCOURAGE SOMEONE TODAY

I want to take a moment to encourage everyone to be an encourager to someone else. You never know who God might send across your path and what that person may be facing in their life at this particular time.

I have a good friend I have known for somewhere around twenty years. He lives in another state so we don't have the opportunity to see or spend time with each other often.  Most recently, it had been some three years since he and his wife and Cindy and I were able to spend any time together and then it was a brief time. The neat thing about this is that even after three years without seeing each other and very few phone calls, when we were together it was as if we had just seen each other the day before. We had the joy of spending several hours of several days with them last week. It was wonderful fellowship. Of course, there was eating involved. Eating is always a big thing on my agenda!  Ha. Ha.

This trip was a spur of the moment trip. It was nothing we had planned even a few short weeks ago. However, the time was right, everything fell into place and they were going to be home so we planned his trip in a matter of days. Guess what? God was in this trip! I love it when God puts things together!

We were able to sit and visit and he shared with us some things he and his wife were recently discussing in regards to expanding the ministry God has given them.  One involved needing a piece of equipment for his radio broadcasts. As it turned out, we had the exact equipment he needed. I purchased this a few years ago and have never used it. As it turns out, it wouldn't work for what I was hoping to use it for.  I was able to pass this piece of equipment on to him for use in the ministry. Is that God or what?

In addition to that, he mentioned some other things he desired to do but had no idea how to go about doing it. Cindy had the knowledge to do that and to help instruct them on what to do and how to do it. So now, this brother not only has the equipment he was praying about for his radio broadcasts, he now has a website along with a You Tube channel.

The next thing was obtaining a video camera for him to use to upload videos to You Tube that he wants to record. We put the word out on Facebook and before we returned from that trip my brother-in-law replied that he had a video camera that he would donate.

My friend was so excited he made arrangements to come up to our place Saturday afternoon to pick up everything. He was amazed and thrilled to see how God had met his needs. Again, I absolutely love how God does this!

He and his wife stayed over and I asked them to sing Sunday morning at church and he preached, as well.

I said all that to say this, God used us to be an encouragement to him and his wife. It reignited a fire in him. He is excited and can't wait to get to work.  We stand ready to encourage him and offer support to him in any way.

Another thing happened as a result of this trip. It reignited something in me, as well. I haven't been blogging much.  That's going to change. I have completely revamped my personal website that the Lord led be to set up back in 2012. I am in the process of updating it. I have felt led to start a podcast for a number of years but up to this point I have not yet done so. That is going to change. I will be looking in to information on how to do that. I will be setting up a personal You Tube channel that will not only have preaching on it, but will include other things such as interviews along with other thoughts and teachings that I have.
This is a new day. We must be about our Father's business.  Stay tuned!

Until next time...enjoy the journey!

Ray

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