I AM

I was regretting the past
And fearing the future ...
Suddenly my Lord was speaking:
" MY NAME IS I AM ". He paused.
I waited. He continued.

" WHEN YOU LIVE IN THE PAST
WITH ITS MISTAKES AND REGRETS
IT IS HARD. I AM NOT THERE.
MY NAME IS NOT I WAS.

WHEN YOU LIVE IN THE FUTURE
WITH ITS PROBLEMS AND FEARS
IT IS HARD. I AM NOT THERE.
MY NAME IS NOT I WILL BE.

WHEN YOU LIVE IN THIS MOMENT
IT IS NOT HARD
I AM HERE
MY NAME IS I AM. "

Helen Mallicoat

So do not worry about tommorrow ; for tommorrow will care for itself Each day has enough trouble on its own. Matthew 6:34

...but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead.
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3: 13-14

And I will restore to you the years that the locast hath eaten....
Joel 2:25

Yes, Salvation is free but we are not home yet.

Salvation is a gift, as free as the air we breathe. It is to be obtained, like any other gift, without money and without price; there are no other terms. " To him that worketh not, but believeth." BUT on the other hand, if we are to gain a crown, we must work on it. Let me quote a few verses in 1 Corinthians (3:11 - 15 ): " For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble; each man's work shall be made mainifest: for the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire: and the fire itself shall prove each man's work, of what sort it is. If any man's work shall abide, which he built thereon, he shall recieve a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire."
We see clearly from this that we may be saved, yet all our works burned up. I may have a wretched, miserable voyage through life, with no victory, and no reward at the end; saved, yet so as by fire, or as Job puts it, "with the skin of my teeth. " I believe that a great many men will barely get to heaven as Lot got out of Sodom, burned out, nothing left, works and everything else destroyed.
It is like this: when a man enters the army, he is a member of the army the moment he enlists; he is just as much a member as a man who has been in the army ten or twenty years. But enlisting is one thing and participating in a battle another. Young converts are like those just enlisted. It is folly for any man to attempt to fight in his own strength. The world, the flesh, and the devil are too much for any man, But if we are linked to Christ by faith, and He has formed in us the hope of glory, then we shall get the victory over every enemy. It is believers who are the overcomers. "Thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to truimph in Christ." Through Him we shall be more than conquerors.

Excerpt from " The Overcoming Life" Dwight L. Moody

We cannot save oursleves nor santify ourselves, God does that; but God will not give us good habits, He will not give us character, He will not make us walk aright. We have to do that ourselves, we have to work out the salvation God has worked in.
- Oswald Chambers

Knowing God in experience

Our fathers have told us and our own hearts confirm how wonderful is this sense of Someone there. It makes religion invulnerable to critical attack. It secures the mind against collapse under the battering of the enemy. They who worship the God who is present may ignore the objections of unbelieving men. Their experience is self-verifying and needs neither defense nor proof. What they see and hear overwhelms their doubts and confirms their assurance beyond the power of argument to destroy.
Whatever else it embraces, true Christian experience must always include a genuine encounter with God. Without this, religion is but a shadow, a reflection of reality, a cheap copy of an original once enjoyed by someone else we have heard. It cannot but be a major tragedy in the life of any man to live in a church from childhood to old age with nothing more real than some synthetic god compounded of theology and logic, but having no eyes to see, no ears to hear and no heart to love.

Excerpt from " The Divine Conquest" by A. W. Tozer

The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God
Romans 8:16

Now we have recieved, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
1 Corinthians 2:12

The Nativity Story

Nativity - the event of being born / the birth of Jesus

Could this be this year's " The Passion of the Christ "? Scheduled for release in December 20o6 no less....Hmmm...I wonder. Since when was the Lord so popular in Hollywood? Or in the eyes of the world for that matter?

Link: http://www.thenativitystory.com/

Musterion I

" Christanity is full of mystery. All the great doctrines of the faith are, in the last analysis, mysteries. Who can explain creation? ( ' He spoke and it was done ' ) the origin of evil? ( ' By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin.' ) the nature of God? ( ' God is spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable...' ) the nature of man? ( ' made in the image of God...and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.' ) incarnation? ( ' And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. ') passion? ( ' This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.' ) resurrection? ( ' He is the beginning, the first born from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.') ascension? ( ' A cloud took him out of their sight. ') Theology labels and describes these things. It does not explain them.
Sexuality is a mystery. It represents one of the deepest of spiritual mysteries: the relationship between Christ and the Church. We will get hold of this better if it is enacted. There are two ' theaters' in which this mystery is played out: the Christian home, and the local church. This is the reason, I believe, why such clear and unequivocal instructions are issued regarding how men and women are to conduct themselves in those two places. They are actors in a play in which tremendous heavenly mysteries are being enacted on stage. We have got to stick to the parts assigned and follow the director, and in so doing we will discover, as we could not in any other way, our true nature and our destiny."

Excerpt from " The Mark Of A Man" by Elisabeth Elliot

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge...
Proverbs 1:7

God created man in His own image, in THE IMAGE OF GOD He created him; male and female He created them.........God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.
Genesis 1:27, 31