True Growth, True Grace and the True Gift

Hey Readers,

The following devotional blog is one that I'm hoping will speak to you.  More and more each day the verses in this passage speak greatly to me. I hope to use this one later down the road but we will have to wait and see what the Lord wants to do with it.

"But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want and it will be granted. When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father" John 15:7-8 NLT

I have to say this is an interesting passage, verses 7- 10 are placed in the midst of Jesus' sermon I am the vine you are the branches.  It is important that we realize and understand that.  When we look at these four verses we can easily misunderstand the purpose behind them.  For the longest time I thought that verse 7 simply meant that God would give me everything I wanted if I just asked him.  I was wrong.  There is so much that we can grasp from this passage.

You see, all I was looking at was the second part of verse 7, "you may ask anything

 you want and it will be granted".  The connection was never made to the first part of that verse or its surrounding verses. The most important part of this passage does not refer to getting all that we desire, it refers to the challenge of remaining in HIM.  Life is full of its ups and downs; I know I've faced many of the downs even in the past two weeks. There have been some ups but sometimes it is going to seem like there are many more downs that ups. This is just part of life. The thing we need to remember is that while things seem to be heading the wrong way, God knows the outcome and he promises that it is wonderful, but only if we apply the first part of verse 7 to our lives "But if you remain in me and my words remain in you".

Apart from Christ, our efforts unfruitful. Therefore without Christ at the wheel in our lives, sure we can ask for things from him but that doesn't mean we will get it. We must let HIM work in our lives first. We must let HIM take up those burdens that we often carry and surrender our lives to HIS will. As our lives our given over to HIS will it does not mean we will always be fruitful or that we will always get what we want here on earth, it only means that one day God will fulfill the desires of our hearts, as it says in Psalm 37 (this is another topic entirely).

Remember this; our purpose in life is not to get all that we ever wanted but to embrace a life that strives to remain in HIM and to let HIS words remain in us.  I say this means that our only purpose in life is to remain in the love of God. As long as that is our true motivation all we will ever need is to grow in the grace that God gave us through the gift of HIS son who died for us because of the love HE has for HIS father.

Thanks again for visiting "The Gathering Room"

Stand Strong and continue to believe the teachings given to you   (2 Thes. 2:15b NCV),

M.E.

Reflections; The Light Load

Hey Readers,

Here is another devotional blog, I read this and it really spoke to my heart, again :-).

"Accept my teachings and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your lives. The burden that I ask you to accept is easy; the load I give you to carry is light."  Matthew 11:29-30

What ever is placed upon my heart I can give freely to God and not worry about it any more, I however must leave it before him and not pick it back up again, which tends to get harder as the days go on, but Gods love for us is so much more that the worries of the day and we cannot let those worries keep us from the promises that God has given us. A time will come when we will ask ourselves "is this really happening, God why, what do I do with this, whats the next step" and it will be OK, because God is in control, we need not ask those questions if we fully rely on God and let his hand guide us.

God is so big that if we were to place upon him all the worries of the word that every person had, he would still have plenty of room to double or even triple that, God is so big that the worries of this world are easy for him to carry, when our burdens weigh us down, all we have to do is give them to God. and his burden still will remain light.

Remember Gods Got his Hand on you, Never let Go, step out of the fear, and let God take your heavy burdens upon himself and make them light again...

I hope you all got something out of this, I know I sure did :-)

Thanks again for visiting "The Gathering Room"

Stand Strong and continue to believe the teachings given to you

(2 Thes. 2:15b NCV),

M.E.

Reflections; Infinite Love

Hey Readers,


Hey Every one it has been quite a long and busy few weeks, sorry I haven't been updating these for you.  Here is another one of my simpler Devotional Blogs. Hope you learn something.....


"For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" John 3:16

God loves us all more than we will ever be able to fathom. He blesses us with glimpses of this love through our experiences and in our relationships, but to wrap our minds around this love will only be possible once we are with Him in heaven. What is so mind boggling to me is that no matter what we do here on earth His love will always remain and always grow. 


There is so much more He wants to offer every one of us if we let Him. Love is what I like to call infinite, we may feel as though we have ultimately reached the limit at times but there is always room to make more. God gave up the thing he loved most so we could be forgiven and have that everlasting life; this is infinite love. It doesn't stop there, however. 


Even after the sacrifice of His son, we still sin and He still forgives us when we ask Him to. This tells me that His love for us grows stronger every day. What a thought to base our life upon. What a love He has for us.

Here's some questions to consider...

How much of this action of Love do we truly embrace in our lives?
Are there areas in our lives in which we fall short of this action of Love?


More to come in the days ahead, still hoping to get back in the swing of this, I really do enjoy it all :-)

Thanks again for visiting "The Gathering Room"

Stand Strong and continue to believe the teachings given to you

(2 Thes. 2:15b NCV),

M.E.

Revising the Vision

Hey Readers, 


Over the next few weeks I will be posting some of my older devotional blogs, not sure why but I felt I needed to post them all. These postings will not be published again on Facebook, however I will continue to post the new ones when God Brings them to me. I am hoping this will help me keep better track of what God has blessed me with so that eventually I can put all of them into a devotional book for publishing one day.


In light of this, the blog site Enjoying Life Daily: God's Promises Anew will be merged into The Gathering Room and then will be deleted for Good. With it being the first blog I ever created it will take time.  Please feel free to read the old ones and the news ones. There is still a lot we all can learn from these devotional's and I am sure I will even learn some things myself through this process.  In the future I hope to go back to posting a devotional blog on The Gathering Room once a week and to apply some of the new methods I am learning to what I write. With God's blessing it will happen :-)


Hope that this will make it easier for you all to keep up with what God brings me to give to you and look forward to seeking where God takes this little dream of mine in the future.  I have already posted some of my older devotional blogs, they all have the word Reflections in front of the title, to make it easier for you all.

Thanks again for visiting "The Gathering Room"

Stand Strong and continue to believe the teachings given to you

(2 Thes. 2:15b NCV),

M.E.

Reflections; Love and Loving

Hey Readers,

This is one that really hits home :-), Hope you all enjoy it

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" John 15:12 
Loving one another? I wonder what the world would be like if more people loved as Christ does. I think the world would be a better place to live if more people loved like Christ did. I have often said my ministry motto is simply "Love them crazy just like Jesus" This concept has been burning in my heart more and more with every day I am blessed with.

As I write this I am reminded of several scripture verses that speak of loving others, this tells me that loving others is quite important to our walk in Christ. In fact I feel that it is one of the most important actions we are blessed with the ability to do. I believe that we are all called to love one another as Christ has loved us. It can be hard sometimes, but with the strength of the Lord guiding our every step it is always possible.

Our relationship with Christ is not based off of taking the easy way out. We are told in the scriptures that we will face trials. There will always be twists and turns we have to go through in our lives, it can be submitting to authority, working though our problems, meeting the challenges placed before us, facing our past, embracing our future, or even finding the strength to live in the present.

It is what we do when we are faced with those situations that matter most. With all my heart I believe that IN ALL THINGS GOD HAS CALLED US TO LOVE AS WE ARE LOVED.

We need to be faithful to loving one another in every aspect of our lives. Our motivation in life must follow these four steps.

LOVING GOD
LOVING OUR SPOUSE (if you have one of course)
LOVING OUR FAMILY
LOVING OTHERS

Thanks again for visiting "The Gathering Room"

Stand Strong and continue to believe the teachings given to you

(2 Thes. 2:15b NCV),

M.E.

Reflections; Confess and Believe

Hey Readers,

This one is was one of my first ones, it's shorter but I think it still has merit :-)

"If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9

Jesus truly is our Lord and He wants to give us all the blessings of life HE can. Occasionally we can forget that we are called to live life believing in HIM with all our hearts. When the world around us tells us we are doing something that doesn't coincide with its view, we often conform to that belief to keep ourselves from standing out. What is interesting is that our life isn't suppose to be one that blends in, it is suppose to be something more. Jesus sure didn't blend in did he? Just like Jesus, we are meant to stand out and be an example that others can stand by and look to.

Take time in your life to confess openly 'Jesus is Lord' and believe with all your heart what you have just spoken. I guarantee your life will begin to change for the better and that your heart will feel so much better because of it. We have a calling to be set apart so lets simply embrace it.

Thanks again for visiting "The Gathering Room"

Stand Strong and continue to believe the teachings given to you

(2 Thes. 2:15b NCV),

M.E.

Reflections; Freedom and love

Hey Readers,

Just thought I would add some of my older devotional blogs, here is the first one :-). Hope you enjoy it.

"Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed" John 8:38

We can have freedom in Christ. We can trust that because He sacrificed himself, the door was opened for the rest of us to be set free from the sin of this world. If we are willing to repent and ask for it, forgiveness will be given without a second thought given. God is always right there waiting for us to ask for Him to step in and clean us up. Of course we will have to face the consequences for our sins, but they are forgiven and then they are forgotten. If this is the case, why do we often take a step back when we are asked to seek forgiveness? Is it because we are afraid of what we may have to face? Is it because we feel guilty or ashamed to seek it? Trust that God will take care of you.

"Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment." Matthew 22:37-38

Loving God takes a lot more than simply saying a few words that sound nice. It takes a lifetime commitment and a life long journey of striving to give God everything. We must truly desire to give him all our heart, all our soul and all our mind. Sure we can sing "Lord I Give you my heart, I give you my soul" but without the life long commitment to back it up, whatever we sing or speak is meaningless. If we live life only loving God with just our heart or just our soul and mind, we open the door for material things to take a step forward and force God to take a side step back. We need to live for Him with every breath we take. We need to honor Him in everything in our lives. We need to surrender it all to the desires of His heart and not the desires of our own. They will line up in time :-).

When we give it all to Him, I believe we begin to love Him more and more every moment we are awake. Loving God is the adventure of a lifetime. He can lead you to places you would never even imagine he could lead you to. Embrace His love with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind and you'll see what He can do...

Thanks again for visiting "The Gathering Room"

Stand Strong and continue to believe the teachings given to you

(2 Thes. 2:15b NCV),

M.E.