DO YOUR BEST

These three words are often used to spur on or encourage a child, grandchild, spouse, teammate, or work associate. It's about all we can ask, isn't it? Just do your best! However, in God's economy, doing our best falls way short of what is possible through the power of the Holy Spirit. While doing some studying in the area of spiritual gifts, I came across a great thought from a book I've been reading: What's So Spiritual About Your Gifts? The book is authored by Henry and Mel Blackaby.
The following is an excerpt that grabbed my attention:

"...too often we're content to serve God by giving our own greatest effort. What is that, however, compared to the power of the Holy Spirit? What does the world really need? To see what we can do or what God can do? How strange it must sound to God when we counsel others (or ourselves), "Just do your best, that's all that matters." Do we want to give the world our best, or let the world experience God's best? To give them only the best we have is to cheat the world of what could have been."

Could it be that by doing my best, I would actually be cheating the world of what could have been?

Great perspective...possibly a paradigm shift?

DOM

BIRTHDAY

There are many things that just keep coming my way...taxes, love, encouragement, raises, affirmation, advice, and birthdays!

Tomorrow I'm celebrating my 57th birthday. I don't feel that old...nor do I look that old, at least not according to my two grand-daughters, Autumn and Savannah. I love those two chics! But here it comes just like a dirty diaper at nap time...another year older. One step closer to the exit. My wish and desire is to just keep on going strong, and go out blazing...which means I'll be on fire! Everyone around my age is talking about retirement or have retired already. Not sure if that's going to happen anytime soon for me...which is okay since there's not alot of good retirement stories in the bible. Are there any?

My secret wish is to have the BeeGee's sing happy birthday to me...but now it's no longer a secret.

Happy Birthday to me!
DOM

THE CITY

Last week I had the privilege of spending a few days with a group of people from Watermark Church, as I traveled with them to New York City and toured them around the city. We packed a bunch of stuff into the short time we had, and it all culminated at the Brooklyn Tabernacle for the Tuesday Prayer Meeting.

A few memorable moments...
-Bathroom break in Ann Arbor on the way to NYC, when the group became one.
-Finding our hotel in Queens
-Subways
-Walking tour of midtown
-St. Patrick's Cathedral - time for rest and reflection
-Ground Zero
-St. Paul's near Ground Zero - time for rest and reflection
-BBQ everywhere we went
-Carnegie Deli for late night "snack" and cheesecake

The most memorable moment:
Brooklyn Tabernacle Prayer Meeting with 3,000+ others. There's no other place like it.

I'm amazed,
DOM

FAITH

Why do we seemingly have more faith in a commercial airline pilot, a dentist, a doctor, a babysitter, an author, and on and on, yet faith in God is questioned?

Here's an interesting quote on faith:
"When you come to the end of all the light you have, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: Either God will give you something solid to stand on, or He will teach you how to fly."
Author Unknown

DOM

INTERSECTIONS

Every day, I am confronted with intersections in my life. No, I’m not talking about the kind of intersections you confront each day when you slide behind the wheel of your behemoth SUV, that has an insatiable appetite for every last drop of oil from the middle east and a consuming desire to indiscriminately wreak havoc and mayhem on American highways. That’s another blog and another time.

Instead, I’m talking about another kind of intersection. It’s an intersection that I am forced to navigate every day – the intersection where my faith in God intersects with my reality. Faith on its own doesn’t create anything, but instead impacts how I respond to current reality. When I make an effort to question that which is unexplainable, tear it apart, or deconstruct it, I am in danger of distorting or losing the very mystery of faith itself. Often, the best way to understand faith is by experience – an Indiana Jones “step off the ledge” experience. Taking that fear-filled step makes absolutely no sense, but faith wins out and I take it. In so doing my faith becomes real and even matures and grows stronger.

On the other hand, when my faith is unclear, unstable or wavering, my mind is beset with a continual flow of questions, causing inner turmoil and obfuscation (I love that word, so I had to use it).

Perhaps because I believe faith is so important and pivotal in Christianity, I am often guilty of making it too complicated. In reality, faith is simple. “Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” (Luke 18:17 Msg) Even a small amount of faith is far more powerful than we realize. “…if you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Mt.17:20 NIV)

Today, as your faith and reality intersect, take on a mole hill and move a mountain.

DOM

Additional quote about this thing called faith:

Even skeptics have faith. They have faith that skepticism is true.
Likewise agnostics have faith that agnosticism is true. There are no
neutral positions when it comes to beliefs."
- I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, Norman L. Geisler & Frank
Turek

COWS AND THE CONSTITUTION

I came across this the other day and thought I'd share it with you...

COWS
Does anyone else find it amazing that our government
can track a cow born in Canada almost three years ago,
right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of
Washington and they tracked her calves to their stalls
but they are unable to locate 11 million illegal
aliens wandering around our country? Maybe we should
give them all a cow!

CONSTITUTION
They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for
Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was
written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for
over 200 years and we're not using it anymore.

Go figure....
DOM

FREE CHOICE

I've been reading a great little devotional book entitled: The Radical Cross By A.W Tozer. This book is a compilation of Tozer's essays on the cross, with many of them directly sprouting from Luke 9:23.

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

It's my choice. I'm completely free to make it. The rewards or consequences are mine...It's all about my choice, but on the other hand it's not all about me at all...it's all about identifying with and following Jesus. Tozer writes: "The believer's own cross is one he has assumed voluntarily...No Roman officer ever pointed to a cross and said, "If any many will, let him."

Tozer makes this observation: "I have long believed that a man who spurns the Christian faith outright is more respected before God and the heavenly powers than the man who pretends to religion but refuses to come under its total domination."

I would love to hear your reaction to this quote.

DOM