Choosing Life

It can be hard at time to make the kind of choices that ultimately lead to life. We are tempted all the time to choose what seems flashy or tantilizing or even easy at first. But ultimately some choices lead us down a dead end and finally to frustration and anything but fulfillment.

The Bible in Deuteronomy 30 talks about making hard choices.


Deuteronomy 30:16 "And I command you today: Love God, your God. Walk in his ways. Keep his commandments, regulations, and rules so that you will live, really live, live exuberantly, blessed by God, your God, in the land you are about to enter and possess.

Are you making the best choices for your life this week?

Seek God's wisdom in prayer
Read your Bible a bit every day
Get sound advice from spiritual sources

Sometimes the best way may not seem like it at first. Trust and obey.

CHOOSE

Blessings to you

Reverend Bill McBride

DIRECTION?

What Direction are you pointing? We can learn a lot about ourselves when we understand the direction we are pointing. Where we point is where we go.

Are you pointing toward God and uncovering what God wants you to do and be this week?


By the choices we make, the direction we point and the life we live as people of faith, we are revealing God to others. Are you a good sign for God this week?

God loves every person so much and is so close that we can point ourselves to God and know that God will love us and guide us this week.


Point yourself toward God through prayer, Bible reading, worship and good deeds and you will heading in the right direction.

Blessings

Rev. Bill McBride

How's Your Vision?

When it comes to getting around in our world, adequate and if needed corrected vision is important. Without vision a person must hone their other senses and sometimes accept help from another who is sighted; a helping animal or a special friend.

In the Old Testament portion of the Bible in Proverbs 28:19 it says "Without a vision the people perish." If you want to stay alive and really live you must have good vision.

I offer to you this week a simple formula for living well with corrected vision. The sacred teachings do offer us some important correction for our sometimes skewed vision. I call this formula the P-T-L process.

Pray - talk often with God and seek wisdom and instruction.
Think - daily about what would Jesus do if he were in my shoes.
Learn - all you can about the rules of life as outlined in the sacred texts.

Check out this eye chart. Can you read it?

How are you doing at insightful vision this week?

Blessings

Rev. Bill McBride

Any New Things Lately?

Seen any new things happening in your life today? If your answer is no, you need to wake up and smell the roses. There are "new things" happening all the time all around you. and most of them are GOOD! Sure bad stuff does happen to good people, but most of the time good things are happening, we just fail to see them and learn and appreciate them. What a shame!

God is re-creating your world almost every moment. Our challenge is to look ahead with hope and promise. Sometimes though, we are afraid to look ahead with promise and possibility because we wonder if life today or tomorrow will be any better than life yesterday?

In Isaiah 43 God is about to bring His chosen people back to their land from captivity in Babylon. On the doorstep of freedom they think back to when God released them from captivity in Egypt. They wonder if things will ever be as good as they were in the past?

Isaiah 43:16-21 (The Message) This is what God says,  the God who builds a road right through the ocean, who carves a path through pounding waves, The God who summons horses and chariots and armies— they lie down and then can't get up; they're snuffed out like so many candles:"Forget about what's happened; don't keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new. It's bursting out! Don't you see it? There it is! I'm making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands. Wild animals will say 'Thank you!' —the coyotes and the buzzards—Because I provided water in the desert, rivers through the sun-baked earth, Drinking water for the people I chose,  the people I made especially for myself, a people custom-made to praise me.

God has to remind them through the prophet Isaiah, that their Creator is always in the process of making things new for those who trust and believe.

This is our contemporary lesson form this peak into history.

• Do you believe that today can be a new day for you?
• Do you enter into the day with the expectation that there is something useful and helpful to learn, if you simply look around you and observe?

If you do and if you can, you are well on your way to attracting all the good you deserve. Go for it! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Blessings

Rev. Bill McBride

Thinking and Becoming

Consider how strongly connected your mind and your thinking is to what you experience and do. When it comes to doing extraordinary things; our theme for this week, we often think and say "Well, I can't do anything extraordinary. I'll stick with the ordinary. Let's leave the extraordinary to Jesus and his miracles or at the very least those special few really gifted individuals."

But that is not how God wants to work today with you. God wants to use ordinary people to do extraordinary things.


What extraordinary thing is God wanting to do with ordinary you this week?

In fact, listen carefully, you are only just a thought away from extraordinary things. Yes you are! "Cogito ergo sum" - "I think, therefore I am" is a philosophical statement in Latin used by René Descartes. If you can think then you can become. And when it comes to our Creator, the sky is really the only limit.

What did these ordinary people end up doing?


We are the ones who limit God working in and through our lives. God does want to do extraordinary things in our lives and for others through us. Miracles are not just for the Bible days any more.

Three lessons come to us from scripture; especially in the extraordinary story of the feeding of the five thousand in Mark 6:30-44.

1. Use what you have right now today. Don't wait for something special to come your way before you make use of the time, talent and gifts you already have.


2. Commit what you have right now to God. Give God the credit for all the good things given to you and that come to you.


3. Expect great things to happen for you, to you and through you for others.

More great things would be seen in our lives and in our world if we all said and thought this: "I Can." As the wise sage said, "The people who say 'I Can' and 'I Can't' are both right."

Blessing to you.

Have an extraordinary week.

Reverend Bill McBride

ARE YOU FULL-FILLED?

Today we answer a question that is on the lips of folks of all ages and stations in life. How Do I Get FULL-Filled?

(Watch the special video on prayer at the bottom of the post)

Allow me to illustrate an answer with a lawn mower. I am privileged to have as part of my extra benefits at my church the chance to use a John Deere X-300 riding lawn mower. Since I live right across the parking lot from church and the church has their X-300 in the shed behind the church building, I get to use this “bad boy” to mow my yard and take care of other yard chores. Talk about a great deal!

For me yard, flower and garden care are a form of outdoor therapy. Plus, Loretta and I enjoy keeping the place looking spiffy and neat.

Now when “my” X-300 needs gas in its tank do you think I go over to the little powered push mower in the shed and siphon out a cup of gas and put that into the John Deere X-300? Of course not. Right next to the X-300 is a five gallon gas tank, which I take to the corner gas station and get plenty of gas, from the source, for my mower ride and work. It never fails. When I keep my x-300 fueled up with gas I can fulfill my lawn mowing needs in wonderful time. Plus, I have a better time riding and mowing.

If my X-300 is not FULL-filled or has just a taste of fuel, it will never run the way it is supposed or get the job done. Catching the lesson here?

Back to the spiritual matter at hand.

If we really want to run our lives on FULL and keep on task and target, we need to go to the source and get all the fuel we need to FULL-fill ourselves from the inside out. This is how a FULL-filled spiritual life really works.

How are you doing this week and getting yourself FULL-filled?

Try these four tips for fulfilling yourself with the important fuel from God

• Go to your God and tell God you want to grow.


• Talk often with your God.


• Trust that your God can and will fill you FULL.


• Behave like it is true; because it is.

This is how to get FULL-filled.

WE ARE TALKING ABOUT PRAYER TODAY

PRAYER IS THAT OPEN HEARTED & HONEST SOUL ENCOUNTER WITH GOD

Prayer Intro from Dan Stevers on Vimeo.

God bless you always.

Rev. Bill

Technorati Tags: fulfillment,God,Jesus Christ,Faith,life,livng,abundant life

Pass The Light Salt Please

Have you ever wondered what it would take to live a safe, successful, satisfied life? I know I have many times. Well the answer is closer than you might think. In fact there really are no secrets to your life being as fulfilling and as happy as you have dreamed, hoped and prayed. (Contrary to popular media and the "new thought" gurus, there really is no "Secret")

We've been thinking together over this past month or so, about the "Be-Happy Attitudes For Success and Fulfillment"; found in Matthew 5:1-12. Today we sum it all up when we discover that behaving like SALT and LIGHT is the way to bookend our understandings in Matthew 5:1-12 and the way to make our lives shine like light and flavor our world like salt.


Light and Salt are excellent metaphors for living a truly amazing and helpful spiritual life.

LIVE LIKE THE LIGHT

LIGHT

• chases away any and all darkness
  


• guides our steps along the path of life
  


• brings life, warmth and health to our world
  

SALT

• preserves
  
  
• heals
  
  
• seasons
  
  
• purifies
  

JAMI SMITH Sings SALT AND LIGHT (4 minutes)

May you be as salt for a world in need of flavor and light for a world stumbling around in the darkness. Happy Easter. Breathe new life into all you think, feel and do this week!

Blessings,

Rev. Bill