Late night random thought

I'm sitting here awake at 4:30am thinking to myself, I wonder how many people in my world ( my community) are living not knowing of a God that wants to bless them and prosper them. Jesus says in John chapter 10 that he came and died that we my have a life and live it to the full. Another translation says me came so we could have a more, and better life, better than we could even dream of. Take time to dream of your life, the best you could make it, now understand that that dream is nothing to the life God has planned for you. If you are tired of living an empty life one that you may feel is full of regrets why not take a chance on a savior that took the ultimate chance on you, he took the cross on without complaining because of his passion for you. Passion the root for this word means to suffer and Christ showed that his passion was the price for your life and he was willing to suffer for you, his loved creation. It is my prayer that my life be filled with the same passion, that my life will be driven by the cross like Christ's was, so that through me many people may find their way to Him. I hope you find the same passion too, may The Lord bless you this week, and may you love the ones around you and start living as if tomorrow wasn't guaranteed because then you will gain a heart of wisdom. "Teach us to number our days, so we may gain a heart of wisdom" Psalm 90:12

Live your life with PASSION!

When we think about living passionately I like this version of mark 12:29-31

Jesus said, "The first in importance is, 'Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these." (Mark 12:29-31 MSG)

Love your God with all your PASSION. live your life passionately, have you noticed we are passionate about negative things and are not so passionate about what matters. We find ourselves jumping on someone over minor things but when we see our kids and spouse we ho hum it and dont show it the importance it deserves. Lets live out our week with one word in mind Passion! And have passion for things that matter. Like telling your wife in the morning "I love you" with all your heart, or giving your kids the time they need. Live your live with passion like Jesus did. In John chapter 13 Jesus washes his disciples feet, his passion to love and served came from what he KNEW FROM HIS FATHER. For more about living with passion come join us Sunday at Elk Grove Church of Christ at 10am. check out our website www.elkgrovechurchofchrist.org for more details.

Live out your days well

As we continue to discuss how our lives would change if we thought our days were up I want to draw some inspiration from the bible:

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21 NIV)"

The good news is on earth we are temporary but we serve a God that is eternal and promises us eternity with him. I too want to encourage you like Paul did here in this scripture to allow God to strengthen you and for you to live knowing that the love of God is at work within you, allow that love to shine out and bless others.

As part of my list I wrote on Sunday to start living out, I chose to spend more time loving on my kids, playing and singing with them, showing patience and love. I want them to know how much their daddy loves them. I also spent time doing dishes with my oldest because our dish washer is on the fritz, and this gave us the opportunity not only to work together but for me to instill in Micah that hard work is not a bad thing and that it can be fun. Please send stories so I can hear how you are living out your 30 days.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

God bless you and give you a great day

30 days to live

This Sunday we started a series on living with no regrets, how would you live if you only had one month to live? Our memory verse for the day was psalm 90:12 "Help us to number our days aright, so that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Wen we acknowledge that our days are numbered and that we are not guaranteed tomorrow maybe we will start living in a way were the little things that used to bother us wouldn't bother us anymore. Maybe if we starts to live like we were dying we would invest in more important things like loving the ones around us more. Hugging our children more. Appreciating our spouses more. Making a better effort to grow our relationship with God more. Lets no longer put things on our bucket lists to do but instead let's start moving towards the list, lets live our lives to the fullest. So what I am going to ask you all to do that read this is maybe start putting stories of how you are living out your next 30 days, how are you going to live they out like they may be your last. And also I would ask you to check in here periodically because I will b posting more scriptures we will be using throughout our series. May god bless you and shine his face upon you and give you peace, lets start living this new year I n a way that will bring joy to the world around us a joy that only comes from above. God bless you live your life out loud and make beautiful music with it.

Listening

Have you ever realized how much noise is in our lives? if you have children or work a stressful job, maybe you are a student sitting in class, or listening to the radio in your car to drown out the noise of traffic, we are surrounded by it. The noise can be defining to us. The world sends all of this noise to distract us from the one sound that we need to hear more than anything, the sound of the father directing us to him on our journey. There is a reason we are told to "Be still and know that I am God" he wants us to take the time to sit in silence and dwell upon the glory of his name. When was the last time you sat and listened in your prayer time, we are always laying out our concerns and wants to the father but do we take time to listen to him as well. i want to challenge you all to take time to listen to God and follow where he is leading you. It may be on an adventure to better your physical or mental health, it may be to help and serve others more, it might be to reestablish your relationship with your spouse to make it renewed again, there are so many things that God is telling us daily but we don't give him the time and listen. Lets listen more and drown out the useless noise in our lives to see what GREATNESS God has in store for us.

RUN Ghavinn RUN....

For most of you, you may not have known me when I was younger, but I came from a very athletic family. Most of us still like to engage in athletic endeavors and push ourselves. While I was attending Pepperdine University I learned that running wasn't an awful agonizing exercise that is only intended to help you perform better in sports, but it could be an amazing stress reliever as well. So I took up running and it started slow but by the end of the year I was running close to 45 miles a week. The crazy thing about that is no one was yelling at me to get out there and run, I actually enjoyed it. My junior year however I blew my knee out, and I couldn't do what I once loved. Sure I would go out and jog a bit but instead of feeling free and soaking up the sun and the breeze, all I could think about was the pain shooting up my leg. Now about 9 years later with my knee probably worse then ever (according to my doctors), I decided to run again. It started off with a 3-mile walk jog with my daughter in the stroller, and now I am back to running three days a week 7 miles at a time. When I am out there I feel the same joy and release I did before. I get to think about all the amazing blessings God has given me. For the longest I told myself that I couldn't do it anymore I couldn't push myself because of my physical limitations , but what I know now is that I just had to adjust it. 

    Have you felt this way about your faith also, you found out that prayer, reading your bible, serving others, weren't something that just helped you to be a better Christian it was actually something that made you a Christian. You felt the joy of God within you and you loved it and you did it often, but then something happened. For me in my running it was a blown out knee, maybe in your faith it was a loss of a loved one, or a shaky marriage or you just got older, maybe someone at church hurt your feelings, whatever it is you stopped. From time to time you went out there and gave it a go but you didn't enjoy it like you used to instead you just felt the pain lingering. Today I want to challenge you, challenge you like I have been challenging myself, get back out there on the track, you don't have to run at the same pace you used to just get out there and run. Pretty soon all of the emotions comeback your joy gets reinstated and you become filled with that same grace and love that comes only from Christ. 

     My last run I went on was yesterday, I decided to take my two young ones with me and I would run while pushing them in their stroller. This was a difficult run and my goal was 7 miles, I knew that having them with me I probably wouldn't make it that far before they pooped out on me. However I was presently surprised at not only how good they were but they were my biggest inspiration, to see them smile and enjoy it reminded me of why I like to run. The same is with our faith the youthfulness of others can inspire us to remember why we love serving Christ and enjoy being in his presence. So today get back on the track and fin your way back into the joy of Christ, it may hurt at first but once you get back into it you will remember that the pain in temporary the joy is forever!

Join The Party

I have never noticed someone who was a watching a bunch of people have a great time and said to themselves, "eh, who likes to have fun anymore."People don't want to look at a good time and not join.  As Christians every time we get together as believers it should be a time of celebration and rejoicing because our lord and savior came and freed us from the bondage of sin. Isn't that a glorious thought that our sin not in part but the whole is nailed to the cross and we bear them no more, Praise the Lord! ok so i took that last sentence from a song but we should feel this way, and when we do people that have yet to know Christ see the party and will want to join. Isn't that our mission, to bring people to christ? we should set out to be happier to each other, more encouraging to one another, and most important start showing love to one another because as it says in 1 peter love one another because love covers a multitude of sins. lets start living more fully what we preach about so that others will see how amazing it is to be followers of christ.