The Result of Grace and a Prayer

God spoke to me through his Word today in my daily devotional time. I am reading Great Days with Great Lives by Chuck Swindoll. Today the passage was Genesis 43: 31-34. It is so interesting to me how God's word is so full and says so much in few words and that without his help we can miss so much. It is like He has something different to show us each time we read a passage. I am also grateful for the wonderful pastors and writers like Dr. Swindoll that he uses to teach us things.

So today I learned about the result of grace given by one man to another. Joseph was a man who had much to be bitter about. His brothers had treated him horribly as had the Egyptians, but here he was forgiving his brothers and giving them more than they deserved. He fixed them a feast. At the beginning of the feast they were afraid and anxious but by verse 34, "they feasted and drank freely with him." His forgiving spirit replaced fear with happiness. True acceptance and love smooths anxious hearts and brings deep joy and peace.

Oh, LORD may I forgive like Joseph. Many of us who work where I work have been hurt deeply and it can be so hard to forgive. We need so much to be happy again. But we have been given so much grace and forgiven of so much by you. Teach me how to forgive the way Joseph did and to be an instrument of grace.

Travis Cottrell Worship Experience 4: Words from Beth

These are some of the things that I understood Beth Moore to say.

The purpose of praise is to exalt God and to engage the worshiper. There are different songs for different purposes. No song of praise will move us more then the ones in which we have lived the lyric.

No one can sing of your redeemer like you can. No one can lead the song of the redeemed except the redeemed (Rev. 14).

Songs help us to say what we feel and feel what we say.

Sometimes we have worship experiences we weren't expecting, like Peter, James, and John who went up the Mountain of Transfiguration (Matthew 17). It was as if during that moment, Jesus slightly dropped his veil of humanity and they didn't know what to do.

We know that we have truly worshiped when we have fallen face down under the weight of our sin and stand up to see only Jesus.

Sometimes we resist true worship because we don't feel true. We need to come to worship in our true estate - we need mercy. We must do more than need mercy, we must want mercy. We are changed in worship when we worship him out of our honest experience. We must worship out of the space of our need.

Sometimes we must worship when we don't feel like worship. Worship is a choice. Paul and Silas were beaten and in chains (Acts 16). They didn't feel like worship but they choose to worship. They sang hymns and prayed in the midst of so much pain. The result was that God came in a powerful way. The worship of Paul and Silas also had an effect on others, the centurion and his family. Sometimes you praise first and you feel it later.

Sometimes it takes a violent earthquake to change our status quo. Everything shakes so we can see the one who can not be shaken.

Sometimes we don't know what we are looking for until we have found it.

People are not looking to see how well you are together, they are looking to see how you are after the earthquake has hit.

What happens in worship does not stay in worship, we live it out in our lives.

My Prayer: O Lord, may my worship be true. May I walk away from this special experience a different person.

Travis Cottrell Worship Experience 3: Words from Travis

In this post I just want to share what I understood Travis to say that spoke to me.

How great is our God? How great do you need him to be?

Every time we come into the presence of God we should leave changed.

Throw open your arms and in your struggles say, "This is the day the Lord has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it."

The dark is getting darker. We need to raise the level of passion to reach this generation for Christ. For you see they know we are here.

Travis Cottrell Worship Experience 2: Why was this so special?

This was a very special worship experience. I have been thinking about why it was so special. I think there were several reasons:

1. I prepared for it. I had to decide to go. I drove a long way. It was planned, not only by me, but more especially by Travis. I know that there was much prayer on the part of people that I don't even know to make this experience special.
2. It spoke to both my heart and my mind. The music was great and the images displayed on the screen made this a multimedia experience. Music expresses inner feelings the way nothing else can. When there are no words, there is music. The words that Beth Moore spoke about worship, the scripture she read, and the stories she told caused me to think and remember. I would listen, then sing, then get out my notebook and take notes.
   
3. It gave me a taste of what heaven will be like. You see I wasn't worshiping with anyone that I really knew. I think that heaven will be like that. I will worship with people from all the earth and while I may not know them, we have one great thing in common - Jesus Christ and I wasn't alone.
4. It wasn't a concert, it was worship. I think this is what makes Travis special. He doesn't perform, he ministers. I love the way that there were times when we could listen, but most of the time we were invited to participate. We got to sing too, not just listen. So this was truly a shared worship experience.
5. As always we sang "In Christ Alone." I don't know if this is planned but every time I have heard Travis either alone or with Beth at a LPL event, we have sung this song. This song is so special to me. I think because it came to me when I was struggling so with everything. I sing it when I need to remember that, "No power of Hell, No scheme of man can ever pluck me from His hand. Till he returns or call me home, HERE in the POWER of CHRIST I stand."
   

Travis Cottrell Worship Experience 1: Meeting Bloggers

I will share the worship experience I had at Travis' concert in several short posts. This way I think I will be more likely to get this all done.

I was a little worried about coming by myself. I would have loved to have shared that experience with my family but the Sunday evening time and distance made it hard for anyone to join me. Plus I wanted to spend some time with the children and that would not have been very interesting to anyone else. I had hoped that one of them would go with me, but both had other obligations.

I got to the church early and waited for the doors to open. In front of me were two ladies. When we entered the sanctuary we just happened to end up beside each other. We started a conversation. I found out that they were bloggers and enjoyed talking to them. If Tiffany and Michelle do find my blog, then I want to say how grateful I am again for sitting by you. I didn't feel quite so alone. I also learned one very important reason for blogging that I hadn't thought of at all. Michelle told me that blogging is one way that she shares her faith. She told about people who have found her blog who weren't Christians and this gave her an opportunity to share her faith.

I also learned from these ladies that the governor of Georgia was there. They actually went and spoke to him. That was really neat.

Root Canal

I couldn't wait to get home because I wanted to write a blog about my wonderful worship experience at Travis Cottrell's concert. On the way home Monday my tooth began to hurt. By 12:00 I was crying in pain. Because I was driving I couldn't take anything, even tylenol makes me sleepy. I called Thomas and he got me an appointment with Steve. I made it just in time, I didn't even go home first. Steve did a root canal. It was last year in January that I had one on my upper tooth. It is so great to have such a wonderful Christian friend for a dentist. Needless to say I came home, took my medicine and didn't feel like doing anything else.

Words from Esther

Today I finished the last week and session of Beth Moore's Bible study on Esther. God always speaks to me through these Bible studies. Here is what I learned today:

Everyone has a story. We, like Esther, have been placed here for such a time as this. And one day we will walk before the King and he will hold out his nail scared hand to us and we will throw down our crowns before him and live in the presence of his perfect love.

God weaves our stories with the stories of others. We can not completely fulfill our destiny alone. When I think about the story of my life over the past difficult years I am grateful for the true friends that God placed beside me in the journey. The joy of their partnership is unspeakable.

Word for Today

This is something that I learned during my quiet time today. It came after reading Chuch Swindoll's book on Fascinating Lives. (Link from Insight for Living website: https://secure2.convio.net/ifl/site/Ecommerce/1116597908?VIEW_PRODUCT=true&product_id=3101&store_id=1101).

We can take too much of our identity from our jobs. I think that too much of my identity has come from my job and not my relationship with Christ. God is using my disappointment and failure at my job to pry loose my strong grip on my ability to do a good job so that I can strengthen my grip on him.

Memory Verses 1 and 2

I have decided to be a part of the scripture memory on Beth Moore's blog. My first verse is:

Phil. 3: 12-14
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do. Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God had called me heavenword in Christ Jesus.

Here is my second verse:
Isaiah 43:18-19
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

Getting Started

This is first blog post on my newly created blog. I started the blog to find out why people like communicating in this way. It is so popular that there must be something that makes this a useful and enjoyable technology.