From the time we were babies we were taught and learned to depend on ourselves, even while we depended on parents and others. Coming into a relationship with God we often have to “UNLEARN” our self-dependency and learn to “LEAN INTO” God’s presence for guidance and values. Becoming a child of God happens when we surrender to Christ’s saving grace.However, learning to walk as a child of God is normally a huge learning curve, especially if you were not raised in a Christian home.

You would think sharing the love of God with others and telling how God sent his only Son into the world as a baby would be an easy thing to do, yet many believers never share Christ, even during the Christmas Season. I want to look at just a few of the reasons why so many Christians struggle with expressing their love for God even when the Holy Spirit sets the stage for communicating our own salvation experience.

When we find ourselves in a struggle that seems we must have a miracle to overcome, I think we often jump to conclusions about what that miracle is meant to look like. All to often God works miracles in tandem with natural means and thus we often don’t think they are miracles at all.

Before Jesus died on the cross, he revealed that he would be going back to the Father in heaven.  At a time, decided by our Heavenly Father, Jesus would be coming back to earth a second time, only this time he would not be coming back as a sacrificial lamb for our sins but rather as a king to judge the living and the dead. John, the last living apostle of the original 12 that walked with Jesus for 3 years, wrote in the book of Revelation that Jesus would be coming back on a white horse to wage war with humanity. 

There are a lot of times scripture says God’s voice spoke and more times than not people either didn’t listen or they didn’t hear correctly, or at all. I wonder what God has spoken to us that we either didn’t hear or we just ignored? I like to say that it is always easier till see the will of God in the “REARVIEW MIRROR” than when you are either heading towards it or going through it.

I find that many people today hear what they want to hear rather than hearing what another has spoken. There seems to be a disconnect because many people listen to others and then arrive at a totally false conclusion. This can happen often between married couples but it also happens with friends, business people and the general public. We can hear people on the news and misunderstand what they said and then go around telling people our false conclusions. If people don’t learn the art of listening they will keep coming up with those bad conclusions.

When you see someone who is brilliant at any type of sports and beating everyone they compete against, people often say “They Are On Fire.” The word fire depicts intense passion and ability, and the same could be said about believers who are baptized in the Holy Spirit.

I have to confess I hate waiting in line at stores or restaurants, especially at the checkout line to pay the bill. The other day I was at the checkout line at Cracker Barrel and a lady before me was paying for her meal and buying some gift items. The checker was messing up her bill and had to ring her bill up several times with multiple tickets – O brother! I have just started walking with my special boot since my left foot Achilles surgery and I gave the bill to my wife and walked outside to sit down because I can’t stand long in one place.

In the first article on Mustard Seed Faith I unpacked how the idea of the Mustard Seed was taught by Jesus as presented in the book of Matthew. There were three passages were Matthew let us know the context of how Jesus taught this topic and it had nothing to do with how most Christians view its focus.

There is a lot of scripture that believers just pass over as poetic and sounding nice, yet God spoke these words for us to incorporate into our daily lives. One such passage is in John’s gospel were Jesus said he is the bread of life. So many in the body of Christ have taught that this is some metaphysical concept that human reasoning cannot explain or engage with so it becomes poetic theology.