Greetings Church, from Costa Rica! One of the things I love about this country is how big the sun is in the sky so early! The window in my room faces east, and about 5AM, well it's like someone all of a sudden shines a flashlight in your eyes. Yea, I know it's crazy...but I love it. And the coffee! Costa Ricans make the best coffee...and they brew it in a sock. No, not that kind of sock. The coffee is grown right here...I can see the coffee fields from my window on the side of a volcano.
Spending the day today visiting with some pastors and ministry sites, and hopefully some time to pray with the prayer team. Jamie and I had dinner with the team at the home of Carlos and Reisa, our contacts here. Love those people! They have been a great blessing to our teams and the Church.
"While we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal." 2 Cor. 4:18
Congratulations to all of the faithful that are reading through the New Testament with Connie and I. If you haven't started, start here today! If you started, but fell off the wagon, get back on! Let's all finish strong in the Word this year! Go to the download link at www.lwfc.org to view the guide. you can even have the day's reading sent to your phone via text message!
Whatever you may be dealing with in your life today, keep focused on the unchanging truth of the Word Of God! This passage says we don't look (focus) on temporary things...and the attacks of your enemy as well as the "junk" life throws at you are all subject to change when we choose to focus, not on them, but on what the Bible says SHOULD be in our lives. God's blessing, calling, shaping, cleansing, healing...all are eternal! The poverty, shame, depression, stagnation, and confusion of outward circumstances are only temporary, but the longer you FOCUS on it, the longer it affects you.
How temporary are these negative circumstances? Will this all finally go away in the "sweet by and by"? Actually, all of these issues beging to fade in comparison to God's purpose and plan when we renew our minds and begin to focus on the Word until His Word becomes bigger on the inside of us than our circumstances. Yep, we're back to Rom. 12:2 AGAIN! This is the most important principle a Christian can learn. Forgive me, if I souund like a broken record, but Church, we REALLY need to get this!
Go to the bookstore, onsite or online, and get those confession cards and promise books, and start replacing your thoughts with God's thoughts. You'll be amazed at how your outward circumstances change in proportion to how your mind changes with His Word!
Sounds like you are having a glorious day already! I miss you. Just wanted to share with you something I found while meditating and studying this scripture -
"Dark energy is the name given to an unexplained force that is drawing galaxies away from each other, against the pull of gravity, at an accelerated pace. Dark energy is a bit like anti-gravity. Where gravity pulls things together at the more local level, dark energy tugs them apart on the grander scale. Dark matter is a hypothesized form of matter that doesn't interact with light, so it is invisible. Astronomers deduced its presence by noting its gravitational pull on stars in galaxies. Taken together, dark matter and dark energy seem to make up most of the mass of the universe (matter and energy are considered to be two forms of the same thing, thanks to Einstein's famous equation E=Mc^2). Dark energy is thought to account for 74 percent of the universe, while dark matter adds about 22 percent, and normal, visible matter contributes a puny 4 percent." From Space.com
See Ps 18:9-13; Heb 11:1-3; 1:1-4
Isn't that amazing! Even according to man's meager knowledge, the things seen (temporal, visible things) comprise only 4% of the things which are. Everything else is eternal. How sad that we tend to focus on temporal things. We do indeed need to learn to lift our eyes and change our perspective.
I love you today. Be blessed in everything you do.
P. Steve says:
Wow. See who the intelligent one is of the two of us?
I miss you, too! Be home tomorrow night!
Posted by: Connie Caronna | June 03, 2009 at 10:41 AM