If You're Waiting

If you're waiting for a blessing from God, be the blessing someone else is waiting for. 
If you're waiting for healing, be an instrument of healing someone else for someone.
If you're waiting for provision, be the provision someone else is waiting for.
If you're waiting for a big breakthrough, be apart of someone else's breakthrough.
If you're waiting for an answer to prayer, be the answer to someone else's prayer
If you're waiting to hear from God, speak the words of God to someone who needs to hear from Him.
If you want to be forgiven, give the blessing of forgiveness to someone.
If you want others to be gracious and patient with you, be gracious and patient with others.
If you really truly want to be loved and accepted  unconditionally, love and accept others unconditionally.

Don't delay. Do it today.

40 Days of Discovery- Day 22

I read two different books, totally unrelated, that talked about learning to reign with Christ.  I believe God's people have FAR more power than we realize.  We were intended to do more than we realize.  I'm convinced of that!  We were meant to do GREAT--even impossible things.  (Things that are humanly impossible.)  We must not take God's mission, and diminish it to something manageable for us to accomplish with out Divine intervention.  Instead of us doing things that require us to depend on God, we tend to set our aims lower.  I know I do.

God's people, like Israel, are meant to advance the Kingdom of God in every segment of society.   We must defeat the enemy that is already there.  We overcome him by the blood of the lamb, and the word of our testimony of Jesus Christ.  We must not make alliances with him.  We must not compromise.  If we do, the enemy will take back the land that we have taken.  And before you know it, we'll be worshipping him, and living under his oppressive reign. God's people are to rescue people from his evil grips.  We rule in righteousness.

We are meant to rule.  NOW!

We cannot do this great work of God if we are weighted down with sin, insecurity about who we are, distracted, or pursuing lesser things.   I must go into battle with no worries!  This battle is too serious to be distracted by financial worries.  It 's too important for us to be distracted by accumulating "stuff".  He wants us focused on the work. 

God's word to me:  "Get busy doing the work of the Kingdom.  I'll take care of all of your needs.  I know your needs.  Get rid of EVERYTHING that hinders you from doing the work of the kingdom. EVERYTHING.  I'd rather you lose an arm, than miss the Kingdom.  This is serious business!  I want you to live in this glorious Kingdom, enjoying all of the benefits of it, but I also want this Kingdom continually expanding.  I care about those poor harassed sheep that aren't in the Kingdom yet.  I have compassion for them.  I want none to perish apart from me."

So the question is:
What is our allotment?  Where has God placed us?  Honestly, we're primarily around other Christians. Yes, we have our community. Lord, show us how we can expand your kingdom in this community.  Show us how to join with others in our community to make your Name known.  We also have passions.  We love to create.  Ed wants to write and perform his music.  He loves connecting with other musicians.  I love being around creative people.  I'm looking into some possibilities for advancing the Kingdom in Austin's music scene.

Teach us how to live as royalty.  Teach us how to rule.  May your kingdom advance, and may your plans be accomplished on earth as it done in Heaven. Amen.

40 Days of Discovery- Day 8

 I was doing some research today on freegans.  I love the idea of people using the excess food that stores and restaurants throw away and living off of it.  It breaks my heart when I consider that we throw away of 50% of the food we produce.  That is maddening!  How could we be so frivilous, when so much of the world is dying of hunger.  A child dies every 5 seconds from hunger.  5 seconds.  And we're throwing food, good food in the trash.  Yes, I throw food away too.  And it sickens me.  Lord forgive us for living so selfishly, and carelessly, for thinking that we are entitled to live so lavishly.  How many times have I complained because I don't like what I'm eating?  Too many.  Praise God I have food.  My mom told me stories about her actually not having food to eat.  One time she said they licked salt for dinner, because they had nothing else.  Another time they ate garlic.  There was even a time when there was no water in the well.  So my grandmother, (We call her Madea), sat on the porch and prayed, and God sent rain.  They ran inside to get buckets to catch their water. 

Americans don't seem to need God like that anymore.

Ok, so I was doing some research on freegans and came across an interesting site:  www.thestoryofstuff.com  My daughter and I watch the movie they produced called, "The Story of Stuff".  It is quite enlightening.  Much of it I already knew from reading"Confessions of an Eco-sinner".  Something like that.  But I did discover an interesting quote that I'd like to share.  It was an excerpt of an article written in 1955 by Victor Lebow, a Marketing Consultant,  for  the Spring 1955 issue of the Journal of Retailing.  I found the entire article online at: http://hundredgoals.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/journal-of-retailing.pdf

The article

Here's an excerpt of the article.  It's quite eyeopening! Remember this was written in a journal for retailers.

"The Real Meaning of Consumer Demand
Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.
These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat,drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole “do-it-yourself” movement are excellent examples of “expensive” consumption.
What becomes clear is that from the larger viewpoint of our economy, the total effect of all the advertising and promotion and selling is to create and maintain the multiplicity and intensity of wants that are the spur to the standard of living in the United States..."


"Strong Influence of Television
Probably the most powerful weapon of the dominant producers lies in their use of television. To a greater degree than ever before a relative handful of products will share a monopoly of most of the leisure time of the American family. We will have over 30 million television households next year. And television achieves three results to an extent no other advertising medium has ever approached. First, it creates a captive audience. Second, it submits that audience to the most intensive indoctrination. Third, it operates on the entire family."

What do you think?  Have we been duped?

God help us!  We're enslaved and we don't even know it.