By Trevor Bradley                                  Picture provided courtesy of www.trailblazer.co.za

However tall the mountain looms.  As the song says “through it all, He is Lord… Lord of all”.  Why then, I ask myself, is my heart so prone to doubt?  Why do I allow him, the deceiver/liar, such a foothold?  Why do I land up in the space of fear, which is driven by doubt, only to have Him come yet again, and again, and yet again, to speak and bring peace, to my troubled, unbelieving heart?  Why do i forget His blessings and interventions, His amazing miracles on my behalf so easily?  

Read Mark 6 vs 32-52.  Firstly 5000 people are fed out of a basket containing but 5 loaves and 2 fish.  Then right after that, a storm that threatens to take the lives of the disciples, were it not for the intervention of the Lord.  Yet as we further proceed through the Gospels, we see not too far down the road, when a bunch of soldiers arrest Jesus, those very witnesses run.

I don’t want to dwell on lack of faith here.  Rather what I want to say is this: No matter if it is a storm or if it be a situation of “supply”, He will come through for you, to settle or provide.  He will be there, even if your heart is in the place where at first you cry ” is that you LORD?” I read in 2 Timothy 2 vs 13 where He says this (paraphrased for effect)

“If we have little or no faith, yet He will remain faithful – for He cannot deny who He is and what He has promised”.

So today, WHATEVER the mountain that stands before you, know this, as that song goes: ” Saviour, He can move the mountains, My God is Mighty to save… He is mighty to save”.

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Written by Josh Squires from DesiringGod.org

“Put the screens away!”

If you were a fly on the wall in my family, you would hear that sentence, again and again. And it only gets worse in the summer. Because of the lack of a school routine, boredom turns to binge-watching.

I feel like a class-A hypocrite writing an article on this topic, but we’re not the only ones struggling to get a handle on it, either. Over and over it comes up in counseling sessions, phone calls, messages, and discrete conversations in the halls of the church. What does it mean to rightly parent a child of the “on-demand” generation?

Do we have to choose between the luddite lifestyle of banning technology altogether, or is there a way to make “screen use” a shepherding opportunity?

The New Neighborhood

Everyone remembers the constant cries of “I’m bored!” It’s as much a part of summer as lemonade, barbeques, and beach trips. In times past, however, there were social systems that worked to help alleviate boredom. They were called your neighbors.

Neighborhoods were alive with children playing pick-up basketball, or riding their bikes, or doing anything they could to fight the specter of boredom together. It wasn’t a perfect system by any means, but it brought kids of various ages and abilities together to battle a common enemy.

These days, it seems impromptu play in neighborhoods has all but disappeared. The result is that a child’s entertainment and play needs — and yes these are needs for a child — fall to the parent rather than being distributed across a neighborhood of resources.

Eventually, parents get burnt out or their paychecks run out, so part of the easy solution is to park the child in front of a screen. Instantly, children are both contained and entertained. It’s almost too easy. And our hearts loves easy.

Our Appetite for Easy Pleasure

Whatever the sociological causes for increased media time, there’s always a heart issue at play. Between chapters 6–26, Proverbs addresses the “sluggard” fourteen times. In fact, laziness is one of the primary foils in the wisdom literature.

The human heart wants as much pleasure as it can get for the least amount of work it has to put into it. It’s called the “pleasure principle.” When our children pick up a screen, the pleasure principle starts paying in spades.

It pays off for them because they do not have to do the hard work of socializing with others, or learning to share, compromise, and play by the rules. Their world is their own, and it goes wherever Netflix, Amazon, or YouTube will take them. And it pays off for us too. We do not have to worry about the constant nag for entertainment, the coordination of schedules and events, or the disorder of a well played-in room.

Constantly, our sin sick world invites us to indulge our sin sick heart. But the good news is that the power of the ministry of the word enables us to reign in our appetites for ease (Hebrews 12:1).
Read More…

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Author & Blogger Tim Challies explains to us what it means to work with a good will.

Paul began by saying in Ephesians that Christians are to work and followed that by saying Christians are to ensure that they always complete their work with a view to pleasing God.

But even that isn’t enough. Paul says that you are to complete your work (“render your service”) with a good will. That is quite the command because it indicates that not only does God expect you to do good work, but he expects you to have to have a good attitude while you do it. And remember that in this letter he is not writing to executives in corner offices but slaves who draw no salary and receive no benefits!

What does it mean to work with a good will? It means that if you are working for a business, you should want that business to succeed and do everything you can to make that happen. You should even want your manager or your boss to succeed and do your utmost to help them forward. Wanting the company to succeed means you want the people around you to succeed, even if they achieve greater levels of success than you do. This may be the most unusual and godly character trait in the work-a-day world—a person who genuinely wants his peers to succeed. But what a mark of a person who has been transformed by the gospel! This is dying to self, this is working as unto the Lord instead of working unto men. Can you rejoice with those who rejoice, even if the person rejoicing is the one who got the promotion you wanted and maybe the promotion you deserved?

No matter who you are or what you do, you’ve got something to learn here. Your work, every bit of it, is to be done as unto the Lord. You don’t work ultimately to please men but to please God. God is your ultimate boss and he wants your work to be a reflection of your relationship with him. How will you work for him? Will you do shoddy work? Will you do just enough? Will you cut corners and see how much you can get away with? Or will your gratitude for all he has done compel you to joyfully give your best work every day?

At this point Paul has told you to do your work and to do your work in such a way that you please God. He has one thing left to say: Wait for payday.  Read More…

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Written by Marshall Segal with Desiring God

We tend to think our dreams were too big when we were young, say when we were six, and too small as we get older. But maybe our dreams never reach high enough.

What is God’s dream for our lives? What are the highest peaks he’s put out in front of each of us? “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). In absolutely everything we do — even down to how we drink that Gatorade after we work out or sip our favorite Starbucks — we do it for the glory of God. In front of the mountain of purpose and happiness hidden for us in his glory, every other dream and ambition begins to look pale and stale.

What does it mean to live for glory like that? Paul goes on to say that he seeks “to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved” (1 Corinthians 10:33). We drink and eat, work and play, love and serve in ways that strive to win the world for Jesus. Whatever we do, we do it to say something about what God has done for us and about how much he and his love mean to us. We do it for his glory, and not our own.  Read more here.

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