NCarolinian

          1 Chronicles 16:11 says, "Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always." (NIV) In one verse, Christians have a directive and reminder to engage our personal God.            Before you arrive at the "and" in this verse, the strong encouragement is to "Look to the Lord" . Notice above and in front of all other meetings with anybody else about any situation, God desires you to seek Him out. This is echoed in the New Testament as well. In Matthew 6:33 , Jesus is recorded as saying, "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well." So, look or seek out The Lord, the person first, as your source for anything and everything and you will have started out on the right foot.           Directly after the "and" word in this 1 Chronicles 16:11 verse is an example of God our Provider. However, here Scripture is specific as to wha...

             Humanity was meant to rule the world. Said another way, we were meant to steward or govern the world and everything in it. Want proof? Great! Read Genesis 1:26-31 . In that passage you will find God giving the first humans dominion over His created nature of this planet - the animals and plant-life. And the control was not over just a small stretch of land or continent, but over the whole Earth.               If you keep reading in Genesis you find we did alright with Adam being tasked to name the animals and God deeming everything "good". However, there came a point when even God's created human helpmate for Adam was not enough to keep them from being convinced they  could rule, govern and/or steward this Earth alone; without the counsel of God.           Humanity believed the lie that we could run our lives ourselves, we could rule this world ourselves and we...

        Be careful how much focus you place on your  skills, talents and gifts in life. The Blesser is always going to be greater than the blessing. James reminds us that - " Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." (James 1:17)            This flow-perspective is a mindset Christians must have in order to cultivate the kind of Christ-like character that needs to be displayed daily in each believer through the Fruits of the Spirit. In other words, if we acknowledge The Blesser and where our blessings come from, keeping a thankful and grateful heart for all our blessings, then the remaining Fruits of the Spirit have a wonderful chance to develop and shine for God.          The reverse of this thinking is a shift of focus away from The Blesser onto the accumulation of gifts and/or quality of gift(s) to the po...

          Unity is so important. "Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.' " (Matthew 12:25)          I feel like there are too many designations, divisions and classifications in our society that continually fight against - we the people.  America has definitely moved away from being one nation under God to one nation under many gods and/or distractions. The color of your skin and one's gender have not only distracted us from moving forward and progressing as a leading nation, but set the spirit of confusion over the country as well.            Unfortunately, that same strife infected The Church many years ago, about the time America was being born.  Christians have branches called Denominations (i.e. Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc...) because of disagreemen...

                    In case  you did not know, faith is a struggle, it is a fight! Paul writes to his protégé, Timothy, saying - "Fight the good fight of faith." (1 Tim. 6:12)           However, Paul does not simply stop there, he continues with the admonishment to -  "Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses." (1 Tim. 6:12)          There seems to be two levels of action implied here - striving (fighting) and seizing (taking hold). These descriptive words do not have anything to do with the initial Salvation of an individual. The Holy Spirit makes this point clear through Paul to the believers in Ephesus -  "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9) ...

                              The idea of walking around naked everywhere as the norm, like Adam and Eve experienced before The Fall, is hard to imagine now-a-days, but not impossible. Clothing is essential - mentally, spiritually and physically.          Clothing has gone a lot of different directions since God clothed Adam and Eve with garments of skin (Genesis 3:21). Besides the fact that clothing is used as a sanitary function and cultural expectation, we observe clothing used for status, protection, making a statement, as a disguise and simply as a comfortable covering.          We have certain, one-time outfits or at least far-and-few-between apparel in our closet. There are clothes that show we are in mourning. There are clothes that display we a part of a wedding party. There are clothes that hint at a Prom nearby. There are clothes we wear ...

          I would venture to say that many people are scared of responsibility and especially that of another person. Early on in the Genesis account we read about Cain sassing back to God about his brother Abel, declaring - "I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9)           However, humanity and especially Christians should be stewards of each other. When God created the human being, the man was alone in kind of creatures. God walked with Adam and spoke with him but it was not the same as having a similar partner/friend. In addition, Adam had been given the responsibility of tending to all the animals of creation and naming them - he needed a helper. God created Eve out from Adam to be Adam's help mate (Genesis 2:18-25) .           Fast forward to when Jesus was hanging on The Cross and He spells out a relationship of stewardship between two people right there -  "When Jesus sa...