Understanding God: Beauty

Understanding God: Beauty: After publishing my first book I took a couple weeks off writing and went to the Mountains of Tennessee for a vacation and my daughter’s ...

New Online Bible Study Starting on August 25th, 2014!!

Join our free online Bible Study as we study the book Emerging Faith by Ricky Maye. This will be a six week class that is run as a live discussion group on this Facebook event page on Monday evenings at 8:00 pm EST starting on August 25th and running through September 29, 2014. Class will be held as a discussion format which can be openly accessed any time, so you can participate even if you can’t make the live class. This study will explore our beliefs, God’s love, and our journey in faith. All are welcome to join! https://www.facebook.com/events/906793392669754/906793396003087/?notif_t=like

You May Not Get A Second Chance to Offer A First Welcome

I am on vacation! YAY! I am so happy to be spending some great quality time with my family. I am also excited about the opportunity to worship in a new place and meet some new people. I show up about 15 minutes before worship starts and am greeted by two people. Once they find out that I am from out of town and am only visiting their enthusiasm to get to know me fades. My family gest seated and notices that about 70 people filter into the sanctuary. Not one turns to offer a smile, a good morning or a handshake. They file in like they are on a conveyor belt taking their seats and sitting quietly waiting for the service to start. Service begins with some great worship music. I anticipate that a time will come soon to greet one another. NOTHING. The message begins. The message ends. Everyone gets up and leaves. What happened?!!  I gather my family and leave. I don't remember much about the sermon, other than it had a theme based around the fourth of July. The only thing I remember is how I felt....like an outsider. Not really welcomed. I know that if I would have moved to this area I would not have come back to this church again based on how I felt there. This made me wonder, how many times this happens in other churches. How many opportunities do we miss to welcome "outsiders" to be part of our church community and to experience God's love? Are we doing everything we can to extend the hand of friendship and fellowship to newcomers? Or are we missing a great opportunity?

Finding Gratitude in The Darkness

A few months back, I had the fortunate opportunity to find the silver lining on a dark cloud that was hanging over me and come to a better understanding of what gratitude brings to our life. On a trip to visit my father, I had the rather unfortunate luck of blowing a tire driving on I75. It was a Sunday afternoon and we were about 5 miles from the next exit to get assistance. My husband, who has a bad back, was unable to change our tire, so I proceeded to call our insurance company for assistance. They told me that they would send someone out and to expect a call from emergency road services in approximately 30 minutes to get our location. As we sat and waited for our call we noticed our van was beginning to overheating. So we turned it off and opened the windows to let some of the hot "fresh" Florida air circulate through our van. My 6 month old was fast asleep in the backseat and was oblivious to what was going on. My fourteen year old started complaining about being bored and hot. I was waiting....waiting....waiting for that call so we could be on our way again. Ten minutes after my initial call to my insurance company, I received a call from emergency road services. They said they should be there in about 45 minutes. Wonderful ...... Sitting around waiting, I decided to instigate a little game of I spy with my 14 year old. At first he was not very interested, but after awhile he started getting into it and it helped to pass the time. About 25 minutes later the tow truck pulled up and a very nice young man assisted us with putting our spare tire on. He advised us that we needed to get a new tire as soon as possible as our spare was rather old and probably would not get us the 35 miles we needed to get back home. He suggested we try a Walmart the next exit down. We got back on the road and made our way to Walmart. We pulled up to their service station at 5:04 pm. When we approached the counter we were told by the clerk that they closed 4 minutes ago and that they could not help us with our situation. My husband explained that we just blew a tire and that we were 35 miles from home and could not make it home on our spare. The clerk again repeated that they closed 4 minutes ago and they could not help. As we began to walk away the manager of the department who overheard our exchange came over and told us they could could not reopen a bay, but that she would send someone out to change the tire for us in the parking lot. She told us to give them about a half hour and it should be done. A mere 20 minutes later we were paged saying that our van was ready. 90 minutes after our initial blow out we were back on the road and headed home. When I look at this scenario I can view it from two mind frames. The first is the negative: we blew a tire, it cost us $80 to fix, it took us 2 hours to drive 35 miles, it was hot and our van was overheating..........The second is to look at all of the blessings: our insurance company reacted quickly and covered (with no cost to us) to have our spare tire put on , the gentleman who put our tire on was very nice despite the fact that it was hot out and our spare gave him some difficulty, Walmart helped us despite the fact that they had every right to decline to help us (believe me I never thought I would say that I got EXCELLENT service from them), and the simple fact that we could have gotten seriously hurt when the tire blew out at the speed we were driving, yet we were fine. Although life may not be perfect and things happen that upset or frustrate us it is important to realize that despite our difficulties God is with us. We may not understand what is happening to us at the time, but many times there are hidden blessings in what we are experiencing, that gratitude can help us see. By viewing this situation from a stance of gratitude rather than frustration and anger, I felt more at peace and was able to feel God's presence with me. The darkness is where my frustration, anger, pain, control and anxiety dwell. If I allow that darkness to overtake me it clouds my perception of my circumstances and distances me from God's amazing gift of grace and peace. By partaking in the light of gratitude the darkness can no longer dwell in my heart robbing me of the great gift of my heavenly Father's presence and love.

One More Day Until Our Newest Bible Study Starts!

Only one more day until our latest online bible study starts! This bible study features the book Unglued by Lysa Terkeurst and will explore how our emotions effect our communication with others as well as our behaviors. Our class will run for 6 weeks starting tomorrow night, July 2, 2014, at 7:00 pm EST. We will meet on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/events/742458152485548/  and hold an open forum discussion of the first two chapters of the book at that time. If you would like to check out our class please sign up for the event at the link above and visit our page below to get our first week's assignments http://ignitedbible.wix.com/ignitedonline#!unglued/mainPage The first couple of chapters of the book can be accessed there for free as well as our first week's bible study questions. If you like the class order your book and come back again the following week! If you can't make our live class still feel free to participate as our discussion is an open discussion and can be accessed at any time.

Understanding God: Listen to God's Voice

Understanding God: Listen to God's Voice: I often read a book to my son called Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can you?. Its all about the many different sounds Mr. Brown can make from a soft whi...

Are you a Follower or Just a Believer?

The journey of living one's life as a Christian is an ongoing process. In its early stages, we are called to learn and accept certain beliefs pertaining to God, Jesus and our self. This is accomplished by reading the Bible, attending church, participating in small group study, self reflection and prayer. The more we invest in this journey the stronger our relationship with God grows. Being a Christian sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? If that was all there was to it, it would be easy to walk with Jesus. However, without acting on that faith, our journey becomes pointless and we become stagnant and incapable of moving further along on our spiritual path.

As we evolve in our faith, action becomes necessary to continue to progress. Action or inaction defines whether we are just believers of the word or if we are followers of Jesus. Action is not easy. Sometimes God calls us to do things we may be uncomfortable with, don't know how to do, or are afraid to do. This is why many people in the church, who are good people, get stuck in the belief only mode of our faith. Action is hard. Action is scary. Action takes energy. Action believes that through our faith, we can accomplish what God has called us to do. Action helps to strengthen our faith, deepen our understanding of what the Bible teaches us, and develop us into followers of Jesus. Action requires a deeper commitment to God and our beliefs. Without action our faith cannot truly be alive, since we are in fact not really living out our faith. In essence, our faith is dead or nonexistent to the outside world. Faith is like the scientific concept of potential energy. It provides us with many opportunities and holds the exponential possibility of great things. Action is what releases that potential energy, turning faith into greatness and glorifying God. It allows our faith to flow so that the outside world can see it and experience it.

Are you a follower or just a believer? Do you have enough faith to trust in God and what you have come to believe and be moved to action?