Let the Adventures Begin!

SHILOH PLACE

Jack Frost is absolutely AWESOME.
His book Spiritual Slavery into Sonship is a must read.
I cannot tell you how much this book has changed my life.

“You have many teachers but few father’s.”

I love how my pastor defines revival. It’s not about bright lights and people gathering and getting all excited. It’s about “Family.” We as a church must rally around fathers and mothers, rather than movements and meetings. Love can only be expressed in the context of relationship. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself!

I just saw Steve Chua speak last weekend and I was deeply moved (and convicted).
He talked about the difference between being God’s friend or rather just being a servant. I’m totally not doing justice to his sermon, but Steve asked us to examine our prayers. Are we praying for what God can do for us or are we praying to know Him more? God doesn’t love us based on what we DO for Him. So the question is, do we love God based on what he can DO for us?

God spoke to me this morning about the difference between the desires of my heart vs. the desires of my flesh. The bible says that God will grant us the desires of heart. In the past I’ve always thought that to mean my dreams, my desires, my vision, passion, ambitions, etc… it’s not to say these things are bad, but they may not necessarily be the desires of my heart.

A few weeks backs I wrote about how God had answered my prayer about healing my parents relationship. Even though I wanted something else, He gave me something better. As I was giving thanks to God for healing my parents, I began to realize the desires of my heart. For so long my father and I have had a distant relationship, but as of late it’s changed radically. My dad has always loved God, but in the past I never was able to love him wholeheartedly. As I thanked God for restoring their marriage, I also thanked God saying, “Lord thank you for giving me my father back…”

My hearts cry has always been to have a relationship w/ my dad. Whether my brain knew it or not is a different story. God knows the desires of your heart and is so willing to act upon our prayers. He knows the difference between us praying for our NEEDS rather than us praying from our hearts.

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you…”
Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

Thank you God for everything. You are amazing.

There’s times when I hear about or see the success of other people that makes me slightly envious.
I know it’s wrong, and as much as I hate to admit it, I know it’s there. I can still feel a sense of insecurity saying, “God what about me?” or I wish something would happen to me. I don’t know if other people struggle with this but, I sure do.

As I was talking to God this morning, He revealed a few things that were on my heart that He wanted to change.

Dad: What is it Ed that you want in life?
Ed: I want to be successful!
Dad: Why?
Ed: So that I can feel worthy or feel like I accomplished something. I want to do this or that and say, “I made it.”
Dad: Is that what you really really want?
Ed: yeah, I want to feel proud of the things that I’ve done. I wanna be a “somebody.”
Dad: So Let me get this straight. You want to say that you “made” it. You want to say that you did this or you did that and have people acknowledge you and say, “Good job Ed!” and after a job well done, you want people to pay you for it? and you want to feel proud about what you’ve done. That is what you want?
Ed: uhh.. sounds about right.. yes. no?
Dad: All these things are fine, success, prosperity, influence etc… but if “you” are the only one doing it. Where does that leave me?

I love God, and how one little word changes my complete perception in life. How the Lord disciplines the ones that He loves. Forgive me for worshipping the idols of Self and Pride. Lord at the end of the day I want to declare the good things that You have done in my life. I want to say, God did this in my life and God has done that in my life. That God is faithful until the end and that WE did a lot of cool things together!

WWJD

I love this picture. I’m not saying I completely agree with the person’s response, but I am glad that he spoke up.

I know I’ve judged people in the past, so God forgive me.
Many times we forget that Jesus(The Son of God, God himself in the form of a man) hung out with tax collectors, prostitutes, the worst criminals, the sinners, and they all loved him.

Whether you believe something is right or wrong, should not determine whether or not you choose to love.

Seeing my parents reconcile is truly a miracle to me.
Even though right now they’re going through the hardest times of their lives, I’m so amazed and proud that they’re relationship is the best I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

I have a tendency to ask God for things on my birthday.
Last March I really wanted to go to Israel. So I prayed and prayed and believed that God would open the door for me to go in the future. A couple weeks later I felt God telling me to ask for something else. The conversation went something like this.

God: Ed I want you to ask for something else on this birthday.
Ed: but God, I want to go to Israel.
God: I know you already asked for that, but i want you to ask for something else.
Ed: But I really really want to go to Israel God. What could you possibly want me to ask for???
God: I want you to ask me to heal your parent’s relationship.
Ed: Wha???!!! I’ve already prayed for that, and it’s pretty much IMPOSSIBLE… They’re old and are never going to change. My dad is out of it, and my mom is numb. Besides, it’s MY birthday wish! so… NO!
God: …
Ed: No!

(The room is silent as Ed is beating himself up)

Ed: fine!
Ed: God I pray that you heal their relationship. Amen.

Even though it’s been over 4 months since I prayed that, I can’t help but think of the conversation I had every time I visit my parents now.

Thank you God, I guess you do know what you’re doing.

I just attended a friend’s wedding last night and it was absolutely wonderful.
I love weddings. Everything about weddings are so symbolic.
The bride, the groom, the ring, the promises, the vows, the witnesses, etc…

The one thing that stuck out to me most last night was… love.
Everyone spoke about how much they really really LOVED these two people.

I often ask people what they think the opposite of love is, and many times I hear “hate”.
Personally, I believe the opposite of love is selfishness.
I believe that love can only truly be displayed in the context of relationship.

I once heard a story of a father and his overweight son. Whenever they went into the grocery store, he’d buy his son whatever treats his son wanted. When asked why the father did this he replied, it’s because I love him and want him to be happy. The person replied, you are not loving your son. Rather, you are doing these things in hope your son will love you.

Loving someone and pleasing someone are two different things.
Pleasing someone for the sake of being loved is actually fear.
It is actually selfish.

Love is all about being self-less, and isn’t dependent on the other person’s reaction.
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

As the prodigal son came to his senses, he thought if he could just be one of his father’s servants he’d be all good.

Our natural tendency after we’ve done something wrong is “how can I make it up?” i.e. I just want to be a servant in my father’s house. What can I “DO” to pay God back?. If I go back to God… I’ve got a brilliant idea… I can just “serve” Him.

I know I’m guilty of this all the time. We bargain with God saying, if you get me out of this jam, I’ll “do” this or I’ll “do” that. If you notice, this is the servant/slave mentality. The slave mentality is to “do” something in exchange for something you think you deserve.

If we all got what we deserved… well there’s a scary thought.

Anyhow, the Father’s heart is 1.He’s waiting and expectantly searching for us to come home. 2. When we do come home, He doesn’t treat us like “servants” but celebrates us and puts a ring on our finger restoring us to sonship.

We are saved by grace and that’s pretty much it.
There’s nothing i can do to make him love me more, and there’s nothing i can do wrong to make him love me less.

Praise be to Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.
I love you Lord.

-ed

A friend of mine had a conversation w/ God in heaven and it went something like this.

Friend: Hi Lord, whatcha doing?

God: Nothing much son, just reading the paper.

Friend: wha?? God you are Almighty… You are omnipotent…
There’s no newspaper in heaven!

God: Sure there is son.

It’s called the GOOD NEWS.

I thought it was funny.
Hope it made you smile!

I had the pleasure of having dinner with a spiritual father last night, and it totally pumped me up.
It’s amazing what a little time spent can do when sitting with people you admire.

God is doing some Amazing things in Hollywood.
He’s pouring his Spirit out on His sons and daughters!

Get read for Revival!

All for his Kingdom,
-ed

I saw this.. and got excited.

I have one the old microsoft wireless blue light one…
and it works GREAT!

now they have different colors..