Sunday notes…..Now and When.

What’s your definition of faith? For most, its a total dependence on God. But my Pastor gave such a beautiful and apt definition yesterday that I thought it worthy to share to the world: a willingness to anticipate God. That means we don’t focus on the NOW that we’re in, we focus on the WHEN God has promised!

Did you get it? 🙂 God has made so many promises to us but as soon as there’s a hitch somewhere we get off focused. We focus on the NOW.

Right NOW my body might be in pain, but WHEN….

Right NOW my business is struggling, but WHEN…

Right NOW I might not like the job that I have, but WHEN…

Right NOW my kids seem to have lost their minds, but WHEN…

Right NOW my marriage is a little rocky, but WHEN…

Right NOW my ministry is struggling to grow, but WHEN…

Right NOW I might be a piece of work, but WHEN God gets His hands on me…..

Some of us can look back on when we were all pieces of work and if you or those around you had focused on your NOW they wouldn’t have waited around to anticipate what God was up to. Those kids that had you praying hard when they were teenagers, but they have turned into beautiful productive young men and women. That marriage that started out rocky and ify but the latter is now better than the former.

Even our own lives; some of us never thought we would ever stop sleeping around, drinking, smoking, cussing, lying and stealing etc. But God had a WHEN 🙂

So today, I would like to encourage you to not focus or be distracted by what you are in right NOW….focus, anticipate and prepare for God’s WHEN!

Please share this and encourage someone else; especially someone who is struggling in their NOW. (sometimes all we need is a different perspective)

Be Blessed

JC

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Friends……..Part 1

my ride or die 🙂

We have these Advanced Bible Study sessions at my church on the second Tuesday of every month and I love being there because it is fun to study and then sit down with my brothers and sisters and share what we come up with on different topics. Our topic tonight was Friends/Friendships. This is a topic that is dear to me and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and some of the points we came up with.

A friend is a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations. Someone said a friend is someone (other than family) that they love above normal. Someone else said a friend is someone they love just as if they were family. For most of us we throw the word around loosely and we have no real criteria to figure out who gets that special place in our lives. For some of us friendships are conditional and we only give what we hope to get back.

I personally believe in friendships; they require loyalty and investment. I think that a friendship is guided by love. And love is two things to me: unconditional and selfless. For friendships to thrive, the love has to be mutual. There are a few things that are critically important to friendships: