Homemade cornbread or kale chips, anyone? (Because we’ve already eaten through our emergency Girl Scout cookie stash.)

If you could see the tiny, rundown building we started in, then you would marvel just as we do . . . at what God can do and how He takes nothing and turns it into everything.

Thoughts today are about why we should be inviting people.  When God calls them, are we making sure they have a place to go where they can hear His voice?

Share this with a friend who’s rooted and grounded in the truth.

#truthsaves  #unbreakableanchor

Hold tight, God will see us through the storm 🙂

Turn the Page

When I was a child, I spake as a child (I Corinthians 13).  We  grow.  We turn the page to more mature things and more faith as we progress through every chapter of life.  Haven’t we all learned:  you might not get what you want, but you have to grow anyway?

Our goal is to eventually get what we want to match what God wants.  When you look back on the things you used to want, have you ever thought, “Wow, I can’t believe I ever even loved that?”

If There’s One Thing Brother Nobles Has Taught Us This Past Year . . .

We’d better be found fighting the right fight.  Whatever we’re fighting other than ourselves is a waste of time.  Leave it.

We also learned years ago through the Elder that the church doesn’t need to fight across the aisle about things God has already solved.

God is doing more than you think He is.  He’s moving, so keep turning the page.  You might not understand it all or know what He’s doing or how He’s going to do it, but you know that He is in charge and faithful.

Be a light.  People desperately need to find the ministry, the mouthpiece, through which God is speaking to this generation.

I Chased You Until You Caught Me

You didn’t find God.  He found you.  He came to you.  He whispered to you.  He called you.  He revealed himself to you.  He spoke life into your darkness.

He moved upon the person who witnessed and invited you to church.

He called you a new creature.  Old things pass away and all things become new.  You can’t change yourself, not just with human effort.

God knows how many times a lot of us have tried.  Just look at New Year’s resolutions (because well, they’re the funniest).  People half in the tank make promises about how good they’re going to be, how they’re going to become healthier, or what a nice person they’re going to be.  They promise to be a better person—they mean well—and by ten minutes after 12 they’re blasting someone out.  Everything has gone to the wind, but they were sincere, just powerless.  Like a dead man in a coffin, powerless.  He can tell you all he’s going to do tomorrow, but he’s dead.  He’s not gonna be able to get up, and nothing is going to change.

Only the spirit of God can bring you to life and only the truth can make you free.  The truth gives you what it takes to change.  You cannot overcome without it.

What Voice Are You Listening To?

In Genesis, God had to speak and his spirit had to move for life to happen.  Today, the spirit has to move on us and we have to hear His ministry and get revelation in order for eternal life to happen.  Suddenly, we begin to hear the voice of God.  Our words without Him can do nothing, but God’s words can create a universe and bring life.

Psalm 29

He’s above the words others speak of you, above the critics, and all those places of confusion.  His voice is above your self-view.  His voice is over all the doom sayers today.  All the things that have tried to attach to you and weigh you down, the voice of God is above it all.

His voice is above the things in our lives that are rooted deep.

Some just rot, but others are like cedar in the ground.  Build a fence with cedar posts, and it will be there when you leave the farm to your children.  Brother Nobles recently taught us about these things that get entrenched–they’ve been there a long time.  The voice of the Lord can break them into splinters, dissolving these strongholds.

His voice opens the window.  Hear it.  Let His spirit lead you, and watch where He will take you.

God could do anything.  He could speak through whatever He wanted, but He chose the ministry to be his voice.  We are his body on the earth through which He is speaking again to this lifeless baron place to produce life.

Speaking About God Or Speaking For God

For a long time, men have built churches with thoughts about God.  You can build things with thoughts about God.  However, we didn’t build a church to speak about God, but we speak for God.

There’s a huge difference.

We recently did a musical production about Acts, and in Acts 2, one hundred and twenty people gathered in a place seeking and waiting.  They didn’t have power yet to be the witnesses they needed to be.  So they sat there praying and waiting.

Suddenly, by the spirit of God and the Word they begin speaking about the power and word of God available to men and women.  Suddenly, 5000 people on their way home from places speaking about God (they heard things and thoughts about God that were true–they probably unrolled the scrolls and read Isaiah).  And here they are coming home from the temple, having been in a place hearing thoughts about God, when they are suddenly confronted by 120 people speaking for God.

As God was speaking through them to a generation, so is He today through the ministry.  This place is where you need to be again, if you’re not here.  Past thoughts about God, while wonderful, won’t win the moment in this generation.  To be able one more time to hear through a people who are walking in unity with God and empowered by the spirit–it’s powerful, and it’s here.

Rise Up and Build–God is With Us

Just like the glory of God once dwelled in the temple (in Ezra), God has always had a place and a people.  The people of God were to be a special people, gifted by God, empowered by God, touched by God, changed by God, given abilities only God could give them, and they were to be a testimony to Him in the earth.  The people in Ezra dealt very casually with their calling.  Because they didn’t take it seriously, they found themselves powerless against Babylon when their enemy surrounded them.

Can you imagine Ezra and Nehemiah with everything going on during that time?  They would have been drinking coffee by the pot or Red Bull if it existed back then, working around the clock to get things in order.

When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin got wind that they were building a new temple, they approached Zerubbabel and said they wanted to help, too, because well . . . they had also been sacrificing to God.

As if.

Zerubbabel dismissed them, saying that the Israelites alone will build—it’s not their place to join in the building.

God has entrusted us to build and is with us.

He has put His spirit HERE.  Are we taking it seriously by building and inviting people?